When wealthy Mississippi cotton planter Isaac Ross died in 1836,
his will decreed that his plantation, Prospect Hill, should be
liquidated and the proceeds from the sale be used to pay for his
slaves' passage to the newly established colony of Liberia in
western Africa. Ross's heirs contested the will for more than a
decade, prompting a deadly revolt in which a group of slaves burned
Ross's mansion to the ground. But the will was ultimately upheld.
The slaves then emigrated to their new home, where they battled the
local tribes and built vast plantations with Greek Revival-style
mansions in a region the Americo-Africans renamed "Mississippi in
Africa." In the late twentieth century, the seeds of resentment
sown over a century of cultural conflict between the colonists and
tribal people exploded, begetting a civil war that rages in Liberia
to this day. Tracking down Prospect Hill's living descendants,
deciphering a history ruled by rumor, and delivering the complete
chronicle in riveting prose, journalist Alan Huffman has rescued a
lost chapter of American history whose aftermath is far from
over.
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