The History of Liberia

After Jim Crow laws were passed stating that no blacks were safe in the United States, even in free states, some of the founding fathers of the U.S. (most prominently Thomas Jefferson, a slave owner) decided that black Americans needed somewhere they could really feel safe if they were freed, so why not Africa? A team of Americans , including Thomas Jefferson, Henry Clay and Paul Cuffe, a Native American slave ship captain, secretly sent a ship to Africa, taking with them 33 African Americans and settled an unmapped city in West Africa called "Freetown." Over the next sixty years, slave ships going to pick up more slaves would secretly ship escaped or freed blacks back to Africa, slowly populating the secret civilization called the ACS (American Colonization Society) and helping them establish a shadow government in Africa. When the Civil War seemed inevitable in the late 1840s, many Southerners who had been part of the ACS movement started sending boats FULL of blacks over to Freeville.

When Great Britain discovered this secret colony, they made an attempt to annex it as part of the United Kingdom. They figured that the United States would be afraid to admit what they had been building and would abandon the colony, giving the UK prime coastal land in West Africa. Instead, the United States officially granted the ACS their independence and renamed them Liberia. Five states—New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Missouri, Maryland, and the southern state of Virginia, who founded the ACS—all pitched in interest free loans to the Liberian government so they could fund an army. In nearly bankrupted the states, but they felt morally obliged to act.

In 1847, Liberia drafted their constitution and was founded as a free Republic. They renamed Freeville to "Monroeville," in honor of James Monroe, who had raised over $100,000 for the colony while he was sitting President of the United States. Though it's just as rife with conflict and war as any African country, it is still a sovereign nation, still in good standing with the Anglican world, and this year elected their first female President, in an election which was completely free of corruption, and are on their way to drafting a balanced budget.

So you tell me that American History isn't just as fascinating as European.