Jehudi Ashmun (1794-1828) was the white American governor of Liberia Colony, West Africa, whose leadership enabled the early settlement at Monrovia to survive armed attacks from local Africans.

Jehudi Ashmun was born on a farm near Champlain, N.Y., on April 21, 1794. He studied at Middlebury College and graduated from the University of Vermont in 1816. In 1818 after 2 years as principal of a theological academy in Maine he resigned following a misunderstanding over his marriage of that year. He failed as editor of the Constellation, a Baltimore religious weekly, and as editor of the Theological Repository, a Washington monthly magazine of the Episcopal Church.

While in Washington in 1820 Ashmun learned of the work of the American Colonization Society (ACS) and wrote several articles supporting it. Intrigued, he started a newspaper, the African Intelligencer, to publicize the ACS program of sending free African Americans from America to found a colony in...