-^ The Founding of Liberia 



Ashmun offered himself, and was appointed, and together with 

 his wife left for the Grain Coast in an American sailing ship 

 which took eighty-one days to reach Cape Mount by way of 

 the Azores. Ashmun took with him, among fifty-two other 

 Negro settlers, the Rev. Lot Carey. 



This man also deserves some description. Carey was a 

 pure-blooded Negro, short, broad, thick-set, ugly of features, 

 but a man of remarkable natural ability and dogged determination. 

 He was a slave employed by his owner in the southern states 

 to manage a large store where the tobacco of the plantation 

 was kept for sale. He married early, like most slaves, and had 

 several children. He also contrived, somehow or other, in 

 between his hours of work, to get a little elementary education, 

 so that he could read and write. He possessed extraordinary 

 business ability and a remarkable memory, and was so clever 

 and upright in his commercial transactions that his master 

 again and again rewarded him with gratuities in the form of 

 five-dollar bills, or allowed him, when off duty, to do a little 

 work for payment on his own account. Gradually in this way 

 he accumulated a sum of money with which to purchase his 

 freedom and that of his wife and children. Learning that he 

 had nearly reached the required amount, some of the merchants 

 who. had dealings with his master clubbed together out of 

 respect and liking for Carey, and enabled him to tender eight 

 hundred and fifty dollars for his redemption and that of his 

 family. He became a freeman, therefore, in 1813. He then 

 studied eagerly, and qualified himself for the ministry. He 

 took an ardent interest in this repatriation scheme, and was 

 selected as one of Ashmun's principal assistants. 



Ashmun infused from the moment of his arrival new 

 energy and hope into the minds of the Liberian pioneers. He 

 brought to the Mesurado promontory, apparently from Bushrod 



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