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"So what was it when Lee sent some of his freed slaves to Liberia? Savage racism, sending them to die out of sight in an uninhabitable land?" As usual, you're ignorance of the nature of Lee the man and his family shows no bounds. They helped them do what they wished and in fact helped them to survive where many, many thousands died: They were free to go and they wanted to. Lee acquiesced. Quite different than wanting to send 'em whether they liked it or not. Or are you suggesting that he should have remained true to his concern that they would not do well there? Abe didn't give a shit, that's for sure;

Before the Civil War, Robert E. Lee freed most of his slaves and offered to pay expenses for those who wanted to go to Liberia. In November 1853, Lee's former slaves William and Rosabella Burke and their four children sailed on the Banshee, which left Baltimore with 261 emigrants. A person of superior intelligence and drive, Burke studied Latin and Greek at a newly established seminary in Monrovia and became a Presbyterian minister in 1857. He helped educate his own children and other members of his community and took several native children into his home. The Burkes's letters describing their lives in Liberia show that they relied on the Lees to convey messages to and from relatives still in Virginia, and the letters also reflect affection for their former masters.

Letters from the Burkes to Mary Custis Lee, wife of Robert E. Lee, were published in the 1859 edition of The African Repository with Mrs. Lee's permission. This letter from Mrs. Burke to Mrs. Lee demonstrates personal warmth between the two women. Mrs. Burke shows concern for Mrs. Lee's health, tells Mrs. Lee about her children, and asks about the Lee children. The "little Martha" referred to was Martha Custis Lee Burke, born in Liberia and named for one of the Lee family. Repeating her husband's enthusiasm for their new life, Rosabella Burke says, "I love Africa and would not exhange it for America."

Because the soil around Monrovia was poor and the coastal areas were covered in dense jungle, many early emigrants to Liberia moved up the nearby St. Paul's River, where they found land suitable for farming. There they established small communities of people from the same geographic region in America. This photograph gives an idea of the appearance of the countryside in which the settlers began their new lives.

In 1920, The American Colonization Society sent its first group of immigrants to Sherbro Island in Sierra Leone. The island's swampy, unhealthy conditions resulted in a high death rate among the settlers as well as the society's representatives. The British governor allowed the immigrants to relocate to a safer area temporarily while the ACS worked to save its colonization project from complete disaster.

"So what was it when Lee sent some of his freed slaves to Liberia? Savage racism, sending them to die out of sight in an uninhabitable land?"

The "little Martha" referred to was Martha Custis Lee Burke, born in Liberia and named for one of the Lee family.

What do YOU think, genius, Stockholm syndrome?

1862 - The American president, Abraham Lincoln, extended official recognition to Liberia. See "The relations and duties of free colored men in America to Africa: A Letter to Charles B. Dunbar."

Abe jumps in when the Lees and many others had made the place somewhat habitable.

1865- 346 immigrants from Barbados joined the small number of African Americans coming to Liberia after the American Civil War. With overseas immigration slowing to a trickle, the Americo-Liberians (as the settlers and their descendents were starting to be called) depended on immigrants from nearby regions of Africa to increase the republic's population. The Americo-Liberians formed an elite and perpetuated a double-tiered social structure in which local African peoples could not achieve full participation in the nation's social, civic, and political life. The Americo-Liberians replicated many of the exclusions and social differentiations that had so limited their own lives in the United States.

Well, they had Abe as a role model. After they saw how the rape of the South was going, why not try to duplicate it?