Sunday, Feb. 1, 2004, Washington Post
A Troubled Country and Its Resettled Americans
By Jonathan Yardley
MISSISSIPPI IN AFRICA
The Saga of the Slaves of Prospect Hill Plantation and Their Legacy in
Liberia Today
By Alan Huffman. Gotham. 328 pp. $27
Liberia, the deeply troubled little country on the Atlantic coast of
Africa, in large measure exists because of a strange mixture of fear,
philanthropy, guilty conscience and self-deception in the antebellum United
States. It came into being in 1820 as a territory of the American
Colonization Society, whose members believed that the way to solve the
manifold problems posed by slavery generally and freed blacks specifically
was to resettle them in Africa. Never mind that they had been born in the
United States and that in many cases their families had been here for
generations; to abolitionists who hated slavery and to slave-holders who
feared that freed blacks would incite slave rebellions, sending them to
Africa would get them out of sight and out of mind.
One slaveholder who saw colonization as an attractive option was a
Mississippian named Isaac Ross, who "ordained, from his deathbed, the
destruction of the very thing that he had spent his life building up -- his
prosperous, 5,000-acre plantation" called Prospect Hill in Jefferson County.
At his death in 1836 his will "stipulated that at the time of his daughter
Margaret Reed's death, Prospect Hill would be sold and the money used to pay
the way for his slaves who wanted to emigrate to Liberia." Precisely why
Ross chose to do this remains unclear. "Some attribute his interest to
philanthropy," Alan Huffman writes, "others to something close to a filial
love for his slaves, and still others to fear -- either of the fate that
would befall his slaves after he died, or of what would become of the South
once they and hundreds of thousands of others were inevitably freed." His
daughter supported the will, but his grandson, Isaac Ross Wade, spent years
trying to overturn it, in court and in the Mississippi legislature.
Ultimately he failed, and by early 1848 slaves from Prospect Hill had begun
the long journey to Africa. Ultimately about 200 of Ross's 225 slaves went
there, "where they were joined by approximately 200 slaves freed by other,
more sympathetic Ross family members." The place where they settled was
known as Mississippi in Africa, "at the mouth of the Sinoe River." Initially
it was "distinct from the greater colony of Liberia," but soon it was
incorporated into the colony and remains part of the independent nation that
Liberia subsequently became.
Nothing about the resettlement was easy: "In addition to epidemics of
various African fevers, and conflicts with indigenous tribes, the
Mississippi colony was underfunded and did not enjoy good relations with the
Liberian government in Monrovia, partly due to disagreements between the
Mississippi Colonization Society and the American Colonization Society." Its
"government was essentially bankrupt and its residents were isolated and
reeling from depredations by tribes" that, among other things, felt
themselves unfairly criticized for participating in the slave trade and
deeply resented what they saw as the freed slaves' privileged position.
The settlers from Mississippi don't seem to have done much to ingratiate
themselves with their new neighbors. However odd it may seem now, they
sought to replicate the social system they had left behind in Mississippi:
"Many built massive houses reminiscent of plantations back home, staffed
with servants from the native tribes," and "subjugated the underclass of
native tribes whenever they had the opportunity, creating a dynamic
reminiscent of their former master-slave roles," though it is still unclear
whether they actually enslaved native Africans.
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