Born and raised in the town of Champlain, Clinton County, NY, Jehudi Ashmun (1794 – 1828) was a religious leader and social reformer who helped lead efforts by the American Colonization Society to “repatriate” African Americans to a colony in West Africa.
The organization, formed in 1816 by Quakers and slaveholders, founded the colony of Liberia as a place to resettle free people of color from the United States, believing in part that Black people would face better chances for freedom and prosperity in Africa than in the United States.
Ashmun studied at Middlebury College in Vermont and transferred to the University of Vermont for his senior year. After graduation, he was ordained a minister in Maine.
At the age of 26, Ashmun was the leader in 1822 of a group of settlers and missionaries to Liberia on the ship Elizabeth. His wife went with him but was among the many settlers who died of malaria and other tropical diseases in the new settlement. Of the 4,571 emigrants who arrived in Liberia between 1820 and 1843, only 1,819 survived.
Settling in Monrovia he served as the United States government’s agent (the de facto governor) for two different terms: one from August 1822 until April 1824, and another from August 1824 until March 1828.
He helped build the defenses of Monrovia against attacks by slave raiders and also indigenous people, including the Kru and Grebo. Americo-Liberians became a small elite that held disproportionate political power with indigenous Africans excluded from birthright citizenship until 1904.
Ashmu also worked to develop the colony’s trade with the US, Great Britain, and Europe, and worked to increase agricultural production. He was partly responsible for annexing lands from neighboring peoples, and exploiting natural resources in the interior.
Between 1822 and the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861, more than 15,000 freed and free-born African Americans, along with 3,198 Afro-Caribbeans, relocated to Liberia. Liberia declared independence on July 26, 1847, which the U.S. did not recognize until February 5, 1862.
Ashmun helped create a constitution that enabled African Americans to hold positions in the government. Their descendants, known as Americo-Liberians, dominated the government into the late 20th century.
By contrast, in the early decades of the neighboring British colony of Sierra Leone, the government was dominated by whites. Freetown was originally founded for the resettlement of free blacks from Britain and Upper Canada (many of them were Black Loyalists – many formerly enslaved people who had joined the British for freedom during the American Revolution.
Ashmun’s book, History of the American Colony in Liberia, 1821–1823 (1826) is the earliest written history of the Liberia colony.
Suffering ill health in Liberia, Ashmun returned to the United States in 1828 but died later that year in New Haven, Connecticut. He was buried there in Grove Street Cemetery.
The Clinton County Historical Association will present a talk on Thursday, September 28, 6:45 pm entitled “The Extraordinary Life of Champlain’s Jehudi Ashmun” with frequent New York Almanack contributor Helen Nerska.
This event will be held at the Lake Forest Senior Living Community, 8 Lake Forest Drive, in Plattsburgh, NY. Doors open at 6:30 pm.
Illustrations, from above: A map of Liberia Colony in the 1830s, created by the ACS, and also showing Mississippi Colony and other state-sponsored colonies; and a portrait of Jehudi Ashmun, ca. 1825.
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