PERRY AS A MISSIONARY AND CIVILIZER.
PERRY, in his report written Jan. 21, 1844, on the settlements
established by the Colonization Society expresses the feelings that came
over him as he gazed on Cape Mesurado (Montserrado) after a lapse of
nearly a quarter of a century. When, as first Lieutenant on the _Cyane_,
he first looked upon the site of Monrovia, the beautiful promontory was
covered with dense forests, of which the wild beasts were the only
occupants. On this, his third visit, he found a thriving town full of
happy people. Churches, school-houses, missionary establishments, a
court-house, printing-presses and ware-houses, vessels at anchor in the
harbor, made a scene to delight the eyes. Though there were farms and
clearings, the people, he noticed, preferred trade to agriculture. While
many were poor, many also were rich, and all were comfortable. He
considered that upon the whole the experiment of colonization of the
free blacks of the United States was a success. More settlements, a line
of them on the coast, were however needed to enable the colonist to
assist in suppressing the slave-trade, to encourage the civilized
natives, and to increase commerce.
Monrovia, so named in honor of President James Monroe, at this time
contained five hundred houses with five churches and several schools.
The Sunday-schools were conducted like those in New England.
The flag of Liberia contained stripes and a cross, emblems of the United
States and Christian philanthropy. The flag of the Liberian
Confederation is now a single white star on a square blue field with
stripes. Its twelve thousand square miles of territory contain twenty
thousand colored people from the United States, five thousand “Congos”
or recaptured slaves, and eight hundred thousand aborigines.
At that time, the various settlements under the care of the American
Colonization Society were separate petty colonies or governments and
not, as now, united into one republic of Liberia. Perry was, at first,
puzzled to know his exact relations to the governors of Monrovia and
Cape Palmas, who styled themselves “Agents of the United States.” While
eager to assist them in every way, he yet knew it his duty to refrain
from anything calculated to give them a wrong impression.
There was to be no deviation from the settled policy of the United
States not to hold colonies abroad. The political connection between the
United States and Liberia, the only colonial enterprise ever undertaken
by our country, was but a silken thread. The aim of our government
seemed to be to honor the rising negro republic, to protect American
trade and missionaries, and to overawe the elements of violence among
the savages, so as to give the nascent civilization on the coast a fair
chance of life. In this spirit, Perry performed faithfully his delicate
duties.
It was noted by the naval officers that the freedmen from America looked
down upon the natives as savages, and were horrified at their heathenism
and nudity. The unblushing display of epidermis all around them shocked
their feelings. Each African lady was a literal Flora McFlimsey “with
nothing to wear.” In building their houses, the settlers followed rather
the model of domestic architecture below Mason and Dixon’s line than
that above it. The excellent feature of having the kitchen separate from
the dwelling was transported to “Maryland in Africa,” as in “the old
Kentucky home.”
The colored missionaries were having encouraging success. The pastor at
Millsburg, a town named after the Rev. Mr. Mills, one of the first
missionaries from the United States, was a fine, manly looking person.
One of the settlers was an Indian negro, formerly a steward on Commodore
McDonough’s ship and present at the battle of Lake Champlain. He
afterwards removed to Sierra Leone to afford his daughters, who were
dressmakers, better opportunities.
Edina and Bassa Cove were settlements under the patronage of the
Colonization Societies of New York and Pennsylvania. The Maryland colony
was at Cape Palmas, that of Mississippi at Sinoe, while another
settlement was named New Georgia. The freed slaves, remembering the
labors in the cotton fields under the American overseer, could not
easily rid themselves of their old associations with mother earth. Labor
spent in tilling the soil seemed to be personal degradation. To earn
their bread by the sweat of their brow and the toil of their back in the
new land of freedom was, to them, so nearly the same as slavery that
they utterly forsook it, and resorted to small trade with the men of the
beach or deck. In the bush, imitating the Yankees, whom they had been
taught to abhor, they peddled English slave-goods manufactured at
Birmingham for ivory and oil. In dress they followed out the customs of
their masters at home, copying or parodying the latest fashion plates
from New York, Philadelphia or London. In church, many silk dresses
would be both seen and heard among the women.
Serious drawbacks to successful colonization existed. Among the freed
slaves the women were in the proportion to men three and a half to one.
Even the adult males were like children, having been just released from
slavery, with little power of foresight or self reliance. The jealousy
felt by the black rulers toward the white missionaries was great, while
heathenism was bold, defiant and, aggressive.
American black men could be easily acclimated, while the whites were
sure to die if they persisted in a residence. The strain on the
constitution of a white man during one year on the African station
equalled that of five or six years on any other. Most of the British
officers made it a rule of “kill or cure,” and, on first coming out on
the station, slept on shore to decide quickly the question. It was
almost certain death for a white person unacclimated to sleep a night
exposed to the baleful influence of the land miasma. Perry as a
lieutenant, when without instruction, did the best he could to save the
men from exposure. He avoided the sickly localities and took great
precautions. Hence there was no death on the _Shark_ in two years,
though, besides visiting Africa, all the sickly ports in the West
Indies, the Spanish Main and Mexico were entered. Now a Commodore, while
cruising off “the white man’s grave,” Perry made the health of his men
his first consideration. When on the _Fulton_ in New York, he had been
called upon by the Department to express his views at length upon the
best methods of preserving life and health on the Africa station.
Possessing the pen of a ready writer, amid the press of his other
duties, he wrote out an exhaustive and readable report of twelve pages
in clear English and in his best style.
This epitome of naval life is full and minute in directions. The methods
followed in the _Shark_, with improvements suggested by experience, were
now vigorously enforced on all the ships of the squadron. The men were
brought up on deck and well soused, carefully wiped, dried, warmed and,
willy-nilly, swathed in woolens. Stoves were lighted amidships, and the
anthracite glowed in the hold, throwing a dry, anti-mouldy heat which
was most grateful amid the torrid rains and tropical steam baths. Fans,
pumps, and bellows, plied in every corner, drove out the foul air that
lurked like demons in dark places. All infection was quickly banished by
the smudges, villainous in smell but wholesome in effect, that smoked
out all vermin and miasma.
The sailors at first growled fiercely, though some from the outset
laughed at what seemed to them blank and blanked nonsense, but their
maledictions availed with the Commodore no more than a tinker’s.
Gradually they began to like scrub and broom drill, and finally they
enjoyed the game, becoming as hilarious as Dutch housemaids on cleaning
day. Spite of the nightly rains, the ships in their interiors were never
mouldy, but ever fresh, dry, and clean. Health on board was nearly
perfect.
In his own way, the vigilant Commodore fought and drove off the
scorbutic wolf with broadsides of onions and potatoes, and kept his men
in superb physical condition and his staff unbroken, while British
officers died by the score, and left their bones in the white man’s
grave. After the dinner parties and entertainments on shore, the
American officers left promptly at eight o’clock so as to avoid night
exposure.
Long immunity from sickness at length began to breed carelessness in
some of the ships, when away from the eye of the Commodore. In one
instance the results were heart-rending. The wild blacks in 1843 made an
attack upon Bissas, a Portuguese settlement on the coast south of the
Gambia river, incurring the loss of much American property. The
Commodore dispatched Lieutenant Freelon in the _Preble_ to help the
garrison and prevent a further attack from the hostile natives.
The _Preble_ went up the river on which the settlement was situated, and
anchored there for thirteen days. Out of her crew of one hundred and
forty-four men, ninety were attacked by fever. The ship, from being
first a floating hospital, became a coffin, from which nineteen bodies
were consigned to the deep. The plague-stricken vessel with her depleted
crew arrived at Porto Praya, and, to the grief of the Commodore, there
was an added cause of regret.
The ship’s commander and the surgeon had quarreled as to the causes of
the outbreak of the pestilence. The lieutenant stoutly maintained that
the outbreak was owing to “the pestilential character of the African
coast, and the Providence of God.” The surgeon, taking a less
pseudo-pious, more prosaic but truer view, laid it to nearer and easily
visible causes. The acrid correspondence between cabin and sick bay was
laid before Perry. He read, with much pain, of the “insults,” “lies,”
and other crimes of tongue or pen mutually shed out of the ink bottles
of the respective literary belligerents. Kellogg, the surgeon, asked the
Commodore for an investigation. As Perry did not think it wise at that
time either to withdraw the officers from survey duty, or to endanger
the convalescents by keeping the _Preble_ near shore, he ordered the
infected vessel out to sea.
One can easily imagine with whose opinions Perry sympathized, as he read
the documents in the case. Perry never even suspected that religion and
science needed any reconciliation, both being to him forms of the same
duty of man. In narrating the actual occurrences at Bissas, the surgeon
showed that most of Perry’s hygienic rules had been systematically
broken. The _Preble_, for thirteen days, was anchored within a quarter
of a mile of the shore, exposed to the exhalations of a bank of mud left
bare by the ebb-tide and exposed to the rays of a vertical sun. At
night, the men were allowed to sleep out on deck with the miasma-laden
breezes from the swamps blowing over them. While painting the ship, the
crew were exposed to the sun’s glare. They were sent day and night to
assist the garrison of Bissas, and, in two cases, returned from sporting
excursions fatigued and wet. The first case of fever began on the 5th,
and the disease was fully developed in fourteen days. The sad results of
the visit of the _Preble_ up the miasmatic river were soon manifest in
scores of dead. Perry’s grief at the loss of so many valuable lives was
as keen as his vexation was great, because it was unnecessary and
inexcusable.
In two other instances also the energy and promptness of the Commodore
proved the saving of many lives. One of our ships put into Porto Praya,
with African fever on board and short of water. The water of Porto
Praya, being unfit for sick persons, Perry at once supplied her tanks
from the flag-ship. Then quickly sailing to Porto Grande, he returned
promptly with fresh relief for the stricken men. Another vessel being
short of medicines, the Commodore proceeded with the flag-ship to the
French settlement of Goree, immediately returning with quinine. His
celerity at once checked the death list and multiplied convalescents.
Within the cruising ground prescribed for the African squadron, it was
found that there was not a suitably enclosed burial place for the
officers and sailors who might die. Men-of-war and merchant sailors had
been thrown overboard or buried in different spots here, there, and
everywhere, on beaches just above high water mark, on arid plains and on
barren bluffs. So prevalent was the refusal, by Portuguese, of the rites
of burial to Protestant sailors, that it was their custom to have a
cross tattooed on their arms so that when dead they might get sepulture.
The reason for this sporadic burial of our men must be laid at the doors
of bigotry. In some parts of Christendom, even among enlightened
nations, where political churches are established, there lingers a
heathenish relic of superstitious sectarianism under the garb of the
Christian religion, in what is called “consecrated ground.” By this
pretext of holiness, the sectaries logically carry into the grave the
feuds and hatreds born of the very wickedness from which by their creeds
and ritual they expect to be saved. This feeling is in southern Europe
and the papal colonies, so intensified that it is next to impossible for
a man denying the Roman faith to obtain burial in a cemetery governed by
adherents of the Pope. Even the semi-civilized Portuguese refused to
give interment to American officers in what they denominate “consecrated
ground.”
This gave Perry an opportunity to establish a burial place for the
American dead of every creed. In the words of the bluff sailor, after
referring to the fact that “Catholics” do not like “Protestants” in
their grounds, he says, “With us the same spirit of intolerance shall
not prevail, and in our United States Cemetery the remains of Jew and
Gentile, Catholic and Protestant will be laid in peace together.”
Accordingly, the cemetery for the dead of the _Preble_ was prepared at
Porto Grande. A plot of land having been purchased, was given in fee by
the authorities. It was duly graded, and a stone wall seven feet high
erected to enclose it, and thus protect it from the wash of rains and
the trespasses of vagrant animals. Timber for headboards was furnished
from the ship, and the amount of two hundred dollars for expenses
incurred was subscribed by the officers and men.
The governor of the island of Santa Iago was ordered by the general
government to give a legal title to a cemetery for “persons not
Catholics.” The burial ground plotted out by the Commodore adjoined the
other village cemetery at the same place called “The Cocoanuts.” The
three new walls enclosing it were respectively one hundred by one
hundred by ninety-four feet. The width of the wall masonry was three
“palms” or twenty-seven inches, and the foundation was to be
three-fourths of a yard deep. In this true God’s acre, more truly
consecrated by the christening of Christian charity than the bigot’s
benison, Perry was glad to permit also the burial of some British
sailors. In a letter of thanks from Commodore W. Jones, of her Britannic
Majesty’s squadron, the latter writes of the cemetery at Porto Grande,
“In which you kindly permitted the interment of such British seamen as
would have had their remains excluded from the (Roman) Catholic
cemeteries at those places.”
“It seems hard that Englishmen should thus be indebted to the charity of
strangers for a little Portuguese earth to cover them. It is a
consolation that, in countries where superstition so far cancels
gratitude and Christian feeling, that the noblest grave of a seaman, and
in my opinion far the most preferable, is always at hand.”
Relieved by Commodore Skinner, Perry arrived in the _Macedonian_, off
Sandy Hook, April 28, 1845.
During his service on this station, Perry exhibited his usual energy and
patriotism in being ever sensitive to the honor of the flag, the navy
and his country. In the exercise of his duty, he was frequently drawn
into situations which evoked sharp controversies with the magistrates
and officials of different nationalities in regard to restrictions in
their ports, certain ceremonies, salutes, and minutiæ of etiquette. With
practiced pen, this American sailor, a loving reader of Addison, showed
himself a master in diplomacy and the art of expression. Uniting to the
bluff ingenuousness of a sailor, something of the polish of a courtier,
he almost invariably gained the advantage, and came off the best man.
His conduct in delicate matters evoked the praise of both the American
and English governments.
The American commanders on the African coast were too much handicapped
by their instructions to be equally successful with the British cruisers
against the slavers. Claiming the right of visitation and search, the
Englishmen boarded all suspicious vessels except the American, and broke
up the slave depots. The American men-of-war, in the actual work of
destroying the slave traffic, formed rather a sentimental squadron,
“chasing shadows in a deadly climate.”
The insatiable demand of Cuba for slaves made man-stealing and selling
profitable, even if the speculators in human flesh lost four cargoes out
of every five. Most of the masters of barracoons were Spaniards, and
some were college-bred men, with harems and splendid mansions. The price
of a slave on the coast was $30, while in Cuba it was $300. Blanco
White, who had a fleet of one hundred vessels, barracoons as large as
Chicago stock-yards, and a trade of eight thousand human carcasses a
year, lost in one year by capture, eight vessels. As he recovered
insurance on all of them, his loss was slight. The business of slave
export, like that of the Nassau blockade-runners during our civil war,
had in it plenty of gain, some lively excitement, but little or no
danger. Decoys were commonly used. While a gun-boat was giving chase to
some old tub of a vessel, with fifty diseased or worn-out slaves on
board, a clipper-ship with several hundred in her hold, with loaded
cannon to sweep the decks in case of mutiny, and with manacles for the
refractory, would dash out of her hiding-place among the mangroves and
scud across the open sea to Cuba or Brazil.
During Perry’s stay on the African coast, the French had a squadron of
eleven vessels, and the British a fleet of thirty, eleven of which were
steamers. The other Powers were willing to save their cash, and allowed
the British to spend their money and do the work. The French capturing
not one prize, turned their attention to seizing territory. Their policy
in Africa, as in Asia, was an attempt to make new nations by means of
priests and soldiers. It began with brandy, progressed with bombardment,
and wound up with military occupation. The beginning of their African
possessions was the seizure of Gaboon, where in 1842, five American
missionaries had begun labor. By limitation of his orders, Perry was
unable to do anything in the case, though notifying the Department of
the facts and the danger.
A French critic writing in 1884, of French “expansion,” “prestige,” and
“civilization,” in their so-called possessions, mostly in the torrid
zone, speaks of this system of “artificial hatching, which was to
produce a swarming brood of little Frenchmen.” “We see,” says he, “the
broken eggs, but find neither omelette nor chicks.”
At present, in 1887, the west coast of Africa, valuable as affording
gateways into the interior, is owned as follows: by England, 1300 miles;
by Portugal, 800 miles; by Liberia, 350 miles; by Germany, 750 miles; by
natives, 900 miles. Missionary stations now occupy many of the old
slave-marts. By faith and knowledge, prayer and quinine, the white man
is making the dark continent light. Ethiopia is lifting up her
gift-laden hands to God.