The coast upon which the colony was
established had for several hundred years been one of the
chief resorts of the slave dealers of the western shores of
Africa. Their "factories" were situated at numerous points
on both sides of the early settlements. The coast tribes,
broken up and demoralized by the traffic, waged ceaseless
wars for the sole purpose of obtaining for the trader a
supply of his commodity. It was their only means of getting
supplies of the products and manufactures of civilization;
and, as we have seen, when they found the presence of the
newcomers an obstacle to their chief industry, they took up
arms to expel them.
Until the year 1807 there was no restriction whatever on the
traffic, and the proportions which it reached, the horrors
it entailed, are almost incredible. Sir T. F. Buxton
estimated on careful calculations that the trade on the
western coast resulted in a loss to Africa of 500,000
persons annually. At length the progress of humanity drove
England to declare war on the infamous traffic, and her
cruisers plied the length of the continent to prevent
infractions of her decree. At enormous expense the entire
coast was put in a state of blockade.
The result was mortifying. Instead of disappearing, the
exportation of slaves was found actually to increase, while
the attending horrors were multiplied. Small, swift cutters
took the place of the roomy slave ships of older days, and
the victims, hurriedly crowded into slave decks but a few
feet high, suffered ten fold torments on the middle passage
from inadequate supplies of food and water.
The colonists, even in their early feebleness, set their
face resolutely against the slave trade: its repression was
a cardinal principle. Their first serious wars were waged on
its account. Ashmun risked his life in the destruction of
the factories at New Cesters and elsewhere. The slavers,
warned by many encounters, forsook at first the immediate
neighborhood of the settlements, and, as the coast line was
gradually taken up, abandoned at length, after many a
struggle, the entire region. Six hundred miles of the coast
was permanently freed from an inhuman and demoralizing
traffic that defied every effort of the British naval force.
Nor was this all. The natives were reconciled by the
introduction of a legitimate commerce which supplied all
they had sought from the sale of human beings.
In still another way did the colony exercise a humane
influence. Among the natives exists a domestic slavery so
cruel and barbarous that the lot of the American plantation
Negro seemed paradise in comparison. Life and limb are held
of such small value that severe mutilation is the penalty of
absurdly slight transgressions, or is imposed at the
arbitrary displeasure of the master, while more serious
offenses are punished by death in atrocious form: as when
the victim is buried alive with stakes driven through his
quivering body. The institution is of course a difficult one
to uproot. But among the natives in the more thickly settled
portions of the country it has ceased, and is mitigated
wherever the influence of the Government penetrates, while
the number of victims is greatly diminished by the cessation
of inter tribal warfare.
In this way Liberia has proved, from the standpoint of
humanity, pre-eminently successful.
History of Liberia, 1891