Of the events of the period special interest attaches to the murder of I.F.C.  Finley, Governor of Mississippi in Africa, to whose father, Rev. Robert Finley, the organization of the American Colonization Society had been very largely due.  In September, 1838, Governor Finley left his colony to go to Monrovia on business, and making a landing at Bassa Cove, he was robbed and killed by the Krus.  This unfortunate murder led to a bitter conflict between the settlers in the vicinity and the natives.  This is sometimes known as the Fish War (from being waged around Fishpoint) and did not really cease for a year.

(b) The Commonwealth of Liberia

The first governor of the newly formed Commonwealth was Thomas H. Buchanan, a man of singular energy who represented the New York and Pennsylvania societies and who had come in 1836 especially to take charge of the Grand Bassa settlements.  Becoming governor in 1838, he found it necessary to proceed vigorously against the slave dealers at Trade Town.  He was also victorious in 1840 in a contest with the Gola tribe led by Chief Gatumba.  The Golas had defeated the Dey tribe so severely that a mere remnant of the latter had taken refuge with the colonists at Millsburg, a station a few miles up the St. Paul’s River.  Thus, as happened more than once, a tribal war in time involved the very existence of the new American colonies.  Governor Buchanan’s victory greatly increased his prestige and made it possible for him to negotiate more and more favorable treaties with the natives.  A contest of different sort was that with a Methodist missionary, John Seyes, who held that all goods used by missionaries, including those sold to the natives, should be admitted free of duty.  The governor contended that such privilege should be extended only to goods intended for the personal use of missionaries; and the Colonization Society stood behind him in this opinion.  As early as 1840 moreover some shadow of future events was cast by trouble made by English traders on the Mano River, the Sierra Leone boundary.  Buchanan sent an agent to England to represent him in an inquiry into the matter; but in the midst of his vigorous work he died in 1841.  He was the last white man formally under any auspices at the head of Liberian affairs.  Happily his period of service had given opportunity and training to an efficient helper, upon whom now the burden fell and of whom it is hardly too much to say that he is the foremost figure in Liberian history.

Joseph Jenkin Roberts was a mulatto born in Virginia in 1809.  At the age of twenty, with his widowed mother and younger brothers, he went to Liberia and engaged in trade.  In course of time he proved to be a man of unusual tact and graciousness of manner, moving with ease among people of widely different rank.  His abilities soon demanded recognition, and he was at the head of the force that defeated Gatumba.  As governor he realized the need of cultivating more far-reaching diplomacy than the Commonwealth