Lott Cary
Born into slavery in Charles City County, Virginia, Carey purchased his freedom and that of his children at the age of 33 after saving money from being hired out by his master in Richmond.
[1] He emigrated in 1821 with his family to the new colony of Liberia, founded by the American Colonization Society for the resettlement of free people of color from the United States.
In 1780, Lott Cary was born into slavery and humble surroundings in Charles City County, Virginia, on the plantation of John Bowry.
[2] In 1804, his master, a planter and Methodist minister hired Cary out in Virginia's capital city of Richmond, about 25 miles away.
[3] In 1807, Cary joined the First Baptist Church of Richmond, a congregation that included whites and African Americans.
During the second Great Awakening and religious revivals of this period, Baptist and Methodist preachers recruited enslaved people into their congregations.
Believing that free blacks threatened the stability of their slave society, in 1816, Virginia politician Charles Fenton Mercer and the Reverend Robert Finley founded the American Colonization Society (ACS) intending to enable free blacks and formerly enslaved people to emigrate to Africa and establish a colony.
Those favoring abolition wanted to free enslaved blacks and provide them with the chance to go to Africa to escape continuing discrimination in the United States.
The slaveholders wanted to expel free blacks from the South and the United States to remove what they perceived as a threat to the stability of their slave societies.
In 1819, The American Colonization Society published the Journal of Samuel John Mills[4] along with “Letters from Africa to Persons of Color in the United States.”[5] Cary's first biographer describes how the journal and letters, which invited "the free colored people of the United States to come and join them" produced "an immediate determination in Lott Cary and Collin Teague to remove to Africa.
"[6] By 1821, Cary had accumulated a sum to pay for his and his second wife's expenses for transportation to the new colony of Liberia on the African coast.
[2] When asked why he would leave a community in which he was respected and led a comfortable life, he replied: 'I am an African, and in this country, however meritorious my conduct, and 'respectable' my character, I cannot receive the credit due to either.
The native Mandé and other ethnic tribes resisted the colonization and expansion by the American settlers, and many armed conflicts took place between the groups.
