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.[16] 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.