In 1816, a group made up mostly of Quakers and slaveholders in Washington, D.C., formed the American Colonization Society (ACS). The Quakers opposed slavery, and the slaveholders opposed the freedom of Blacks, but they agreed on one thing: that Black Americans should be repatriated to Africa. The Quakers felt that freeborn Blacks and former slaves would face better chances for freedom in Africa than in the United States. They also saw repatriation as a way of spreading Christianity through Africa. The slaveholders' motives were less charitable: They viewed repatriation of Blacks as a way of avoiding a slave rebellion like the one that had taken place on the island of Santo Domingo, today's Haiti.
Despite opposition from many Blacks and from white abolitionists, the repatriation program, funded by ACS member subscriptions and a number of state legislatures, moved forward. In 1822, the first 86 voluntary, Black emigrants landed on Cape Montserrado, on what was then known as the Grain Coast. They arrived with white agents of the ACS who would govern them for many years. Many others followed, settling on land sometimes purchased, sometimes obtained more forcefully, from indigenous chiefs.
The first years were a challenge: The settlers suffered from malaria and yellow fever, common in the area's coastal plains and mangrove swamps, and from attacks by the native populations who were, at various times, unhappy -- unhappy with the expansion of the settlements along the coast; with the settlers' efforts to put an end to the lucrative slave trading in which some ethnic groups were engaged; and at the settlers' attempts to Christianize their communities. Despite these difficulties, the Black settlers were determined to show the world that they could create, develop, and run their own country. And so they kept arriving.
In 1824, the settlement was named Monrovia, after the American president (and ACS member) James Monroe, and the colony became the Republic of Liberia. Over the next 40 years, 19,000 African American repatriates, sometimes known as Americo-Liberians, settled in Liberia, along with some 5,000 Africans recaptured from slave ships, and a small number of West Indian immigrants.