two hundred thousand in the United States. Accordingly the American
Colonization Society was proposed this year and founded January 1, 1817,
with Bushrod Washington as President. It was first thought to encourage
migration to Sierra Leone, and eighty-eight Negroes were sent, but they
were not welcomed. As a result territory was bought in the present
confines of Liberia, December 15, 1821, and colonists began to arrive. A
little later an African depot for recaptured slaves taken in the
contraband slave trade, provided for in the Act of 1819, was established
and an agent was sent to Africa to form a settlement. Gradually this
settlement was merged with the settlement of the Colonization Society, and
from this union Liberia was finally evolved.

The last white governor of Liberia died in 1841 and was succeeded by the
first colored governor, Joseph J. Roberts, a Virginian. The total
population in 1843 was about twenty-seven hundred and ninety, and with
this as a beginning in 1847 Governor Roberts declared the independence of
the state. The recognition of Liberian independence by all countries
except the United States followed in 1849. The United States, not wishing
to receive a Negro minister, did not recognize Liberia until 1862.

No sooner was the independence of Liberia announced than England and
France began a long series of aggressions to limit her territory and
sovereignty. Considerable territory was lost by treaty, and in the effort
to get capital to develop the rest, Liberia was saddled with a debt of
four hundred thousand dollars, of which she received less than one hundred
thousand dollars in actual cash. Finally the Liberians turned to the
United States for capital and protection. As a result the Liberian customs
have been put under international control and Major Charles Young, the
ranking Negro officer in the United States army, with several colored
assistants, has been put in charge of the making of roads and drilling a