PLATTSBURGH — The American Colonization Society received $100,000 by the U.S. government in 1819 to underwrite the resettlement of formerly enslaved Blacks and free Blacks on the African continent.
Liberia was called “Little America” by President James Monroe, for which the country’s West African capital, Monrovia, is named for.
Americo-Liberians landed there for five decades, and a Champlain native, Jehudi Ashmun, oversaw the early settlers’ arrival and transition there from southern and northern states.
Clinton County Historical Association and Museum Director Helen Nerska presents The Extraordinary Life of Champlain’s Jehudi Ashmun (1794–1828) today at 2:30 p.m. at Meadowbrook Healthcare, 154 Prospect Ave., Plattsburgh.
“He was born in Champlain, and his father was one of Champlain’s founding fathers, Samuel Ashmun. Samuel and a couple of his sons went on to sign abolitionist protest documents,” Nerska said. “Not Jehudi. He was gone by then. Amos Pettengill, he sort of discovered Jehudi. Pettengill’s biographer says he rescued Jehudi. Pettengill will say he sort of gave gave him more focus on life.”
Under Pettengill’s guidance, Ashmun joined the Congregational Church and went to study at Middlebury College. The mentor and protegee stayed connected until the latter’s demise.
“At Middlebury is the first of his recorded illnesses,” Nerska said. “He had illnesses. Some of them were a ‘sign to the intensity of his character,’ so we don’t know what that means these days. But the man was very intense, and throughout his life, he always did more than was absolutely necessary to a normal person.
“He had to go home, and he went back to Middlebury.”
Ashmun eventually graduated from Vermont University — today’s University of Vermont. His first job was as principal and the only instructor at the Bangor Theological Seminary in Bangor, Maine.
“It was originally known as the Maine Charity School. He’s credited with bringing the seminary to the attention of the public and getting it sort of started,” Nerska said. “Apparently, also, the reason he didn’t stay there is because he had a relationship with someone, Catherine Gray in Champlain, a schoolteacher. Then, he moved to Maine, and in Maine, he met another woman.
“Apparently when Catherine found out, she decided she wanted him back, and they resumed their relationship, but that upset people in Maine. Even though the school trustees supported Jehudi, the students did not.”
Ashmun relocated to Washington, D.C., where he was connected to the Protestant Episcopal Church.
“When he was there, he edited and published a 32-page monthly magazine for three years, so every month for three years, he produced a 32-pages of dialogue,” Nerska said. “At the same time, he was also publishing a book about a guy who was actually the first to look for alternate locations for free Black population. They were also looking for those that were freed from slave ships — the guy he was writing the memoir on did this. They thought by Jehudi telling Samuel Bacon’s story that Jehudi became committed to the same cause as Bacon.”
Originally known as the American Society for Colonizing the Free People of Color of the United States, ACS was founded in 1816 by a group of white elites, including Rev. Robert Finley; Charles Fenton Mercer; Henry Clay; Daniel Webster; Bushrod Washington, George Washington’s nephew and ACS’s first president; Elias Caldwell; and Francis Scott Key.
Formed to assist in the colonization and removal of free Black people, the ACS quickly recruited support and financial backing from enslavers, the Protestant and Presbyterian churches and others, including federal government officials, according to whitehousehistory.org.
“The U.S. government was acquiring land there through a couple of agencies,” Nerska said. “Of course, they took the land in Africa, which turned out to be Liberia. They took it by force, so the natives were still going to defend their land when Jehudi arrived.
“He arrived, and he had to immediately start fighting the natives. This is the situation he arrived at. He was a colonization agent, and he was the first one that this land had called Liberia.”
In 1822, Ashmun was accompanied by his wife Catherine, who died about a month after their arrival from malaria.
“Everybody was dying from malaria every time they went into these new environments. Jehudi himself was very sick and, apparently, guided his colonists who were fighting against the natives,” Nerska said. “The colonists had guns, and the natives, of course, didn’t. He was there for awhile. The colony had been set up by this guy originally who had taken the land from the natives, but that guy left leaving it to Jehudi to manage.
“Then, apparently, he came back and left again. (Jehudi) wrote his own book, ‘The History of the American Colony in Liberia.’ Jehudi arrived at the colony with his colonists to prevent the extermination of the colony because the natives were at war. He arrived, and he actually set up the government there.
“This is on behalf of the American Colonization Society that he is doing this, and they are the ones that believed people should be returned to Africa.”