As one early report explained, "The Colony belongs to, and is under the immediate control and jurisdiction of the Board of Managers of the American Colonization Society.

Much of what would become Liberia was a collection of independent settlements sponsored by state colonization societies: Mississippi-in-Africa, Kentucky-in-Africa, Louisiana, Virginia, and several others.

In 1815, Paul Cuffee attempted a settlement for freedmen on Sherbro Island, but it failed within five years and the survivors fled to Sierra Leone.

[2]: 457 [3]: 150  In 1816, leaders like Henry Clay, Robert Finley, and Francis Scott Key, formed the American Colonization Society, with the purpose of relocating freedmen to the Pepper Coast.

[13] It was difficult for the early settlers, made of mostly free-born blacks who had been denied the full rights of United States citizenship.

[citation needed]Tropical diseases were a major problem for the settlers, and the new immigrants to Liberia suffered the highest mortality rates since accurate record-keeping began.

Any problems, including those of disease and deaths, were viewed as the trials and tribulations that God provides as a means of testing the fortitude of man.