The Presidency of William V.S. Tubman: President of Liberia 1944-1971

By Ralph Greenwood

This is a path breaking analysis of the Presidency of William V.S. Tubman of Liberia 1944-1971, and his attempt to end the subjugation of the African majority in Liberia by the American Liberian minority. During his presidency he put forth a great deal of effort to get Liberia involved in becoming a participant in the world community of nations.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Sep 7, 2021
• ISBN: 9781662411922

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Liberia is located on the west coast of Africa, about 250 miles north of the equator (Figure 1). In relation to the continent of North America, Liberia is due east of the Panama Canal and the mouth of the Amazon River. It is also 70 miles southwest of Sierra Leone. The land area of Liberia consists of approximately 43,000 square miles.¹

The history of Liberia is divided into three major epochs: (l) the period from ancient times to 1800; (2) the colonial period (1800–1848), which includes black American colonization to independence; and (3) the Liberian Republic, the period of unification and integration.

During the first period in the seventh century, the Egyptian pharaoh Necho sent a Phoenician fleet out that circumnavigated the African continent. Other scholars and navigators taking the same route as the Phoenicians believed, in contrast to Herodotus the historian, that the African continent was on their left and the sun was on their right. They, therefore, took this as evidence that the

Figure 1 Liberia

Phoenicians had circumnavigated Africa. Herodotus states the following:

The Phoenicians set out from the Red Sea and sailed the Southern Sea. Whenever autumn came, they would put in and sow the land to whatever part of Libya (Africa) they might come, and there await the harvest. Then, having gathered the crop, they sailed on so that in their third year they rounded the pillars of Heracles and came to Egypt. They said (what some may believe, though I do not), that in sailing around Libya they had the sun on their right hand.²

Recorded contact is not reestablished until 1461, when the Portuguese navigator Pedro de Centra led an expedition of caravels to the Liberian coast. With the discovery of the abundance of grains of malagueta pepper, a then precious commodity in Europe, the Portuguese named it the Grain Coast. A British royal company established two trading posts along the coasts, named Mesurado and Grand Sisters, in 1663. Both trading posts were destroyed by the Dutch in the following year.

Colonization under white governors, 1800–1848

The second period included the development of two new interests on the Liberian coast: (1) the repatriation to Africa of freed American slaves and (2) colonization along the coast of West Africa. Early in the nineteenth century, antislavery sentiment had begun to rise in the United States of America, and some visionaries saw the future Liberia as a possible site for the repatriation to Africa of freed American slaves and future freed slaves from the slave transport ships on the high seas. For example, the American Colonization Society (founded in 1816) advocated the colonizing of American freed slaves in Liberia. There were also those visionaries in both America and Europe, such as the Robert Finley, Paul Cuffe, and Bushrod Washington in America and their European counterparts, William Wilberforce and Granville Sharp, who viewed future Liberia as a needed and important colony. Thus began the colonization period in Liberian history.

When the origins of the settler community (the Americo­Liberians) are subjected to critical analysis, it is assumed that not only prior conditioning of this class takes on greater significance, but the transference of the United States antebellum culture to the African scene and the inability of the elites to exercise those traits represented a paradoxical approach to the integration and unification of Liberia as a multicultural republic.

Two important factors that generated the most conflict between the Americo-Liberian class, most of whom were freed slaves and the indigenous African population (which consisted of three major tribal groups—Bassa, Grebo, and Gio), were (1) land tenure and (2) cultural differences.

In matters of land tenure, Africans resisted attempts by unscrupulous Americo-Liberians to deprive them of their land with little or no compensation.

This struggle began and forthwith sparked land wars as the settlers from the United States arrived on Liberian soil. This was destined to happen since the annual reports of the American Colonization Society are replete with instances in which whomever controlled the land also controlled the resources therein and thereupon. Initial land negotiations between officials of the American Colonization Society and local chiefs resulted in the signing of a treaty that permitted the sale of land in the Mesurado area to the Liberian settler group.³

Shortly thereafter, however, warriors attacked the settlement contending that the indigenous chiefs, under their customary law, had not renounced their claim to the land. The chiefs contended that they had only granted permission for the settlers to temporarily occupy the land so they would not be stranded in the harbor.⁴ The settlers produced land titles and deeds to the contrary, signed by those same chiefs whom the settlers interpreted as a validation of their complete ownership of the land in question. These initial misunderstandings between the first Liberian settlers and indigenous tribes precipitated the involvement in prolonged hostilities, which were occasionally exploited by European traders.

Traditional tribal law dictated that the chief was automatically the trustee of tribal land. However, that trust did not allow the chief to dispose of the land without the consent of the tribe.⁵ Although some communal land might have been privately owned by various family groups, each had delegated the authority to a chief the responsibility of protecting and preserving such land. The sale of the land by the chief or anyone else entering into such signed agreements would have contravened traditional laws and customs regarding communal land.

According to the US Constitution, the migration or importation of such persons as any of the states shall think proper to admit; shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a tax duty may be imposed on such importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each person. The enumerator is known as the Twenty Year Compromise.: it allowed the Southern states to achieve their quota of slaves for the purpose of taxation and representation, which the Northern industrial interest and wealthy financiers could so amicably afford. However, the Congressional Act of 1819 authorized President James Monroe to seize any American vessel involved in the transportation of slaves and directed the president to return all Negroes thus seized to Africa; hence, the American slave trade virtually came to a halt.

Other factors led to a heightened American interest in colonization. On the one hand, the ideology of slavery was hardening the American South, and the presence of free blacks in the slave states came to be regarded as an implicit threat to the institution of slavery. On the other hand, philanthropic organizations, such as the American Colonization Society (founded in 1816), urged that slaves be freed and settled on the West African Coast.⁶ Thus, recently captured slaves found aboard seized slave ships and slaves who had been freed in America were the two main population sources from which the Liberian Republic emerged. In the Act of 1819, Congress authorized the president to appoint agents in Africa to receive slaves freed from captured slavers and appropriated $100,000 for all purposes under the act. President James Monroe ordered a naval vessel and two American agents to go to West Africa in 1821 and take with them those slaves who had been seized or freed by their masters.⁷

The first attempt to analyze Liberian history must take into consideration the norms, mores, and folkways of a settler culture as a colonizer of the indigenous population: the new culture had to assimilate itself as equal into that population, or it had to gain supremacy over the indigenous culture by subjugating it under the control of the settler community, the Americo-Liberian class. From all indications, the latter was the preferred choice, although it met with great hostility from the Africans. Great cleavage and class distinctions have developed and are ongoing, which makes manifest a certain arrogance emanating from an assumed feeling of superiority by the Americo­Liberian class over the indigenous tribal population.

The dispute was initially resolved when some of the most influential kings or tribal chiefs, as they were sometimes referred to, approached the settlers:

After the very first attack on the new settlement, some of the most influential kings in the area repeatedly came to the aid of colonists. King Boatswain, for example, even threatened to take the heads from the shoulders of any chiefs who disturbed the colonists.⁸

With the resolve of these disagreements, a much less hostile environment prevailed. This relationship subsequently resulted in widespread acceptance of the settlers as neighbors of the tribal kings, but it also resulted in the support and protection of them by the chiefs. Some hostile tribes, however, did not adhere to the proclamation issued by the chiefs.

The conflict really reached resolve in 1823 when Captain Spense of the USS Cayne arrived in Liberia to respond to these attacks and to assist the settlers in the construction of forts for future protection. With force being exerted, the chiefs and other renegade tribes were put on notice that cooperation would be the rule rather than the exception. That brought to an end the hostilities and forged a strong bond of mutual defense against the indigenous groups for a period of time.

Of greater significance, the Americo-Liberian class enjoyed the support of influential chiefs and some tribal groups and established a partnership that became known as the Commonwealth of Liberia after other Americo-Liberian settlements, which were joined under a central government in 1839. This government was administered by the American Colonization Society, a private organization established to repatriate black Americans to the west coast of Africa.

However, the Americo-Liberian class proceeded to isolate themselves from the indigenous population by establishing a separate society from that which already existed in Liberia. This was even more abhorrent to the indigenous people than the illegal acquisition or so-called sale of the land to the settler class. Thus, the Americo­Liberians’ origins in the American South accounts for much of the social structure, norms, and folkways of present-day Liberia. This inheritance also includes architectural designs, dress standards, social behavior, and the use of the English language.

Some Americo-Liberians exhibited haughty attitudes and behavior toward the indigenous or tribal customs and values that they regarded as uncivilized. They tenaciously emphasized that which was different from what they referred to as tribal savages.⁹ Therefore, conflicts seemed destined to develop between the settler community, the Americo-Liberian class, and the indigenous population. For example, one of the earliest of the Liberian settler laws required of the indigenous population to carry torches at night to warn Americo-Liberians of their approach. It is not surprising that many tribal or indigenous persons began to refer to the Americo-Liberians as white men.¹⁰

The American and Liberian aristocracy had much in common, mainly because of the slave traditions and the roots existing from them. The master-slave relationship set not only the tone of the relationship but also the standards by which it was to be perpetuated:

Their standards were those of the antebellum American South. Far from rejecting the institutions, values, dress, and speech of a society that had rejected them, these free persons of color painstakingly attempted to reproduce that culture on an alien shore. What they had rejected, apparently, was a situation that denied them full participation in American society. Few, in fact, agreed with settler Lott Carey, in regarding Africa as home. Their value were essentially those of nineteenth-century whites in the United States.¹¹

Upon arrival in Liberia, the lighter-skinned blacks and mulattoes perpetuated, too, a racial discrimination against the darker-skinned indigenous Africans. Therefore, they were divided into groups by the hue of their skins. Almost forthwith, they had begun to establish laws forbidding not only marriage among the various groups but also social intercourse. The real irony of this type of behavior must be attributed to their lack of understanding of the master­slave relationship upon the indigenous people with themselves as masters and the indigenous people as slaves. Consequently, because of this preferred ideology of the settler community, the Americo-Liberians subordinated that part of the indigenous population, which offered the least resistance to their will to a position comparable to that of a slave. Within approximately twenty years, many of the lighter-skinned mulattoes either died out or amalgamation of the different hues had taken place: outstanding differences in hues or skin color had disappeared among the Americo­Liberians. More significantly, however, as skin differences became less important, class differences were exaggerated, which kept Americo-Liberians apart from local Africans.¹²

The real irony of this state of affairs is that they had not only transferred their antebellum culture from the Southern United States to Liberia, but they had also recreated the same inferior-superior syndrome. Yekutiel Gershoni writes:

Perhaps the greatest obstacle to integration was the attitudes of the America-Liberians. Imbued with feelings of superiority, they treated the indigenous population with contempt, even those Africans who did convert to Christianity. Americo-liberians took great care to guard their distinctiveness by erecting social and economic barriers between themselves and Africans. They were not willing to sit next to a native in church. Christian Africans were obliged to enter America-Liberian churches through the back door, while the African culture and customs were treated with contempt and ridicule.¹³

By 1848, the black Americans had transferred antebellum culture to Liberia. Although color differences had given way, unification still took place under Governor Thomas Buchanan (a cousin of James Buchanan, who became president of the USA in 1857), who arrived in Monrovia as governor in 1836. He was Liberia’s last white governor. When he died in 1841, he was succeeded by an octoroon from Virginia, Joseph Jenkins Roberts.

The Period of Independence

The First Republic

The period of the First Republic (1848–1980) attempts to identify certain problems emanating from the task of unification and integration. It is contended that the Period of Unification must be characterized as a period of contradiction and ambivalence. Liberia became a constitutional republic in 1847.

The standing of Liberia under international law was highly uncertain at that time. No nation recognized it as a sovereign state. When the infant republic began to levy duties on British trade, the British government sent a diplomatic query to the United States. In this note, dated August 9, 1843, the British wanted to know what degree of official patronage and protection, if any, did the United States extend to the colony of Liberia?¹⁴ In reply, the US secretary of state, Abel P. Upshur, said that the American government regarded Liberia as occupying

…a particular position as possessing peculiar claims to the friendly consideration of all Christian powers; that this government [the U.S.] would be very unwilling to see it despoiled of its territory rightfully acquired or improperly restrained in the exercise of its necessary right and powers as an independent settlement.¹⁵

This position, in effect, was an acknowledgment of Liberian sovereignty with a guarantee of American protection. This policy continues to be the substance of the US position.

Meanwhile, however, the American Colonization Society found itself in an anomalous position. It was a private society attempting to run a government. The society chose to withdraw from Liberia, allowing the latter to be recognized as a sovereign state. In 1847, the settlers in Liberia held a convention and drew up a constitution very similar to the United States Constitution. They adopted the motto The love of liberty brought us here.¹⁶ It is very ironic that they would adopt this motto when they, in fact, considered themselves Americans and not Africans; paradoxically, the freed slaves were precipitously subjecting the indigenous Africans to slavery. Britain and other Western powers quickly recognized the independence of the Liberian Republic. However, the United States, because of great opposition from Southern interests, did not follow immediately with a formal recognition of Liberia until 1862. The reason Liberia was not formally recognized by the United States until 1862, which was during the Civil War, was because of Southern opposition.

With the withdrawal of the American Colonization Society, Liberia was left to fend for herself. The era of white governors sent from the United States was ended, and the US responsibility for Liberia as established in the Act of 1819 came to an end. Nevertheless, strong bonds between the United States and Liberia continued.

For instance, in 1852, the US frigate John Adams supported the authorities in Monrovia against a tribal uprising, and similar assistance was provided in 1875. Moreover, American missionary organizations and colonization societies continued to provide thousands of dollars each year in aid, which helped to keep the country solvent.

After twenty-seven years of tutelage, direction from the outside abruptly ended. Independence was received as a mixed blessing. Joseph Jenkins Roberts and other settler leaders were undecided whether or not to refer to themselves as settlers, Africans, or Americans. They resolved the problem by calling themselves Americo-Liberians.

Nevertheless, President Joseph Jenkins Roberts took the oath of office as president on the first Monday in January 1848.¹⁷

The period from 1848 to 1870 was when octoroons, or light-skinned people, dominated the presidency of Liberia. After President Joseph Jenkins Roberts, subsequent presidents up until 1870 included Stephen Allen Benson (1856–1864), Daniel Bashiel Warner (1864–1868), and James Spriggs Payne (1868–1870).

Between 1847 and 1870, political parties were formed, and one ingredient of the power struggle that evolved was skin color. The True Liberian party (later the Republican party) was founded in 1847 and became a symbol of the dominance of light-skinned blacks in Liberian politics, particularly during the presidency of Joseph Jenkins Roberts. Abagoni Cassell writes

Roberts, in the midst of his second term, had to face the turmoil of another election. His party, the Republicans, then called the True Liberian party embraced the more conservative elements. the opposition, Whigs, who later developed into the True Whig party were the radical and progressive ones. The accusation in the campaign that the mulattoes, who dominated and largely controlled the Republican party, were trying to set up hegemony within the Republic, reserving the highest government posts for themselves, to the exclusion of pure blacks, those of undiluted Negro origin. This claim seems to have some merit, for all the principal government officials were very light skinned, and they did tend to keep together and to appropriate the best positions to themselves.¹⁸

The Republican party dominated Liberian politics by winning all elections prior to 1870. Of great significance was President Edward Roye, however, who became the first person of entirely black ancestry to be nominated and elected by the True Whig party in 1870.

The Period of Unification and Integration

Much has been written about the Americo-Liberian arrogance and feelings of superiority over Liberia’s indigenous population. Generally speaking, two factors lead to