Liberia ^*- 



flag on the same. Johnson refused point-blank,^, the British 

 vessel sailed away, and a resolute turning of the maddened 

 colonists on their native enemies produced a lull in the attempts. 

 Fortunately this trying position was not unduly prolonged. 

 On August 8th, 1822, arrived at Cape Mesurado the American 

 brig Strong from Baltimore, with fifty-three new colonists, new 

 supplies of stores, and a white American as the Director of the 

 colony. This was Jehudi Ashmun, a native of Champlain in 

 New York State and the practical founder of Liberia. 



Jehudi Ashmun came of New England Puritan stock. 

 His father was Samuel Ashmun, a well-to-do settler. Jehudi 

 was the third son out of ten children, and was born April 21st, 

 1794. He grew up at a time and in surroundings when 

 Methodist Christianity in the United States was in its most 

 enthusiastic, dominant, and yet almost repellent form. He 

 seems to have been naturally a bright-spirited, happy boy ; but 

 he was constrained by the feeling of those around him to ex- 

 perience that sudden call to religion at an emotional age which 

 during the last century impressed so many lives in the middle 

 classes of England and America with good and bad results. 

 The bad results in the case of Ashmun (as evidenced by his 

 copious written diaries, prayers, meditations, and so forth) was 

 the gradual evolution of a God of Terrors, before whom he was 

 perpetually accusing himself in exaggerated language of awful sin." 



The life of Jehudi Ashmun^ was written in 1835 by 



^ Johnson was no warm friend of the British, as he had fought on the American 

 side in the war of 181 2. 



* One of his characteristic prayers, written down in his diary, begins: "Oh 

 heart-searching and rein-trying God ! who requirest ... a broken heart of all 

 who worship Thee, . . ." p. 388 in the Rev. K. R. Gurley's Life of Ashmun. 



^ The accompanying portrait of Ashmun has been carefully reproduced by 

 the author from an engraving in Mr. Gurley's book. Ashmun is described as 

 being a good-looking man, with refined features, tall, slender, in later life rather 

 ascetic, at all times an impressive personage. 



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