History of Liberia | Page 3

cassada; supply the coasting trader's demand for palm-oil; raise tobacco; procure salt by evaporating sea-water; engage in hunting and fishing. They carry on a number of rude industries such as the manufacture of basket-work, hats, mats, fish-nets; a crude sort of spinning and weaving. Iron ore exists in abundance, and the natives have long known how to smelt it and obtain the metal, from which they manufacture rude weapons, spurs, bits, stirrups and kitchen utensils. The cheapness of imported iron ware has driven out this interesting art on the coast; but in the interior it is still practised by the Mandingoes, who are also fine goldsmiths, and manufacture highly ornamented rings. There are also silversmiths among the Veys, who do good work. The leather industry, too, has been carried to some perfection.
With all their disadvantages the natives seem to extract a good deal of enjoyment out of existence. They are very fond of singing and dancing to the rude strains of a drum and harp, and usually prolong their revelries far into the night.
Taken as a whole, the native character has many fine traits; and from the civilization and development of this part of her population, Liberia has much to hope.

II.
THE COLONIZATION IDEA.
It is always a most interesting part of historic inquiry to search out the very earliest sources, the first feeble germ of the idea whose development we are investigating. It is difficult to decide from what one origin can be traced the continuous development of the idea which resulted in the birth of Liberia; but toward the close of the last century there arose a number of projects, widely differing in object and detail, which bore more or less directly upon it, each of which may be said to have contributed some special feature to the fully rounded and developed plan.
The earliest of these sprang from the once notorious hot-bed of slavery--Newport, R.I. As early as 1773 the Rev. Samuel Hopkins, then widely known as a theological writer, and responsible for the system termed Hopkinsianism, conceived the idea of a missionary effort in Africa, undertaken by natives properly trained in the United States.[2] This at first did not include the conception of a permanent settlement; but on consultation with the Rev. Ezra Styles, afterward President of Yale, it developed into a definite plan for a colony. The scheme proved popular; it was widely advertised by sermons and circulars both in this and the mother country; and by 1776 funds had been collected, Negro students placed under suitable instruction at Princeton, and success seemed almost assured. The outbreak of the Revolution, however, swept away all the thought of carrying Hopkins' cherished enterprise into execution, and after peace was restored his most strenuous efforts failed to arouse the old interest. Later thinkers, however, found suggestion and encouragement in his labors.
The colony founded at Sierra Leone by English philanthropists drew in part its inspiration from Hopkins' idea, and in turn suggested later American plans. After the celebrated decision of Lord Mansfield in the Somerset case (1772), many slaves escaped to England, where they congregated in the dens of London in helpless poverty and misery. James Ramsay's essay on Slavery soon turned public attention to the Negro, and Dr. Smeathman's letters suggested quite a scheme of colonization. A movement in behalf of the oppressed race asserted itself at the University of Cambridge, in which Clarkson, Wilberforce, Granville Sharp and others took part. As a result of these efforts some four hundred Negroes and sixty whites were landed at Sierra Leone in May, 1787. Disease and disorder were rife, and by 1791 a mere handful survived. The Sierra Leone Company was then incorporated; some 1,200 colonists from the Bahamas and Nova Scotia were taken over, and the settlement in spite of discouraging results was kept up by frequent reinforcements until 1807, when it was made a Government colony and naval station. Its growth in population and commerce has since steadily increased, and it now numbers some 60,000 persons chiefly concentrated in the city of Freetown, and all blacks save one or two hundred.
It may be as well to mention here two other sporadic attempts to lead colored colonists to Africa. In 1787 the gifted and erratic Dr. Wm. Thornton proposed himself to become the leader of a body of Rhode Island and Massachusetts colonists to Western Africa; he appears to have been in communication with Hopkins on the subject a year later, but the effort fell through for want of funds. The other is much later. Paul Cuffee, the son of a well-to-do Massachusetts freedman, had become by his talents and industry a prosperous merchant and ship-owner. Stimulated by the colony at Sierra Leone, and longing to secure liberty to his oppressed race, he determined to transport in his own vessels, and at