last vote, insisted that his term ran to January, 1874, and issued a proclamation forbidding the coming biennial election.  He was deposed, his house sacked, some of his cabinet officers tried before a court of impeachment,[1] and he himself was drowned as he was pursued while attempting to escape to a British ship in the harbor.  A committee of three was appointed to govern the country until a new election could be held; and in this hour of storm and stress the people turned once more to the guidance of their old leader, Joseph J. Roberts (two terms, 1872-1875).  His efforts were mainly devoted to restoring order and confidence, though there was a new war with the Greboes to be waged.[2] He was succeeded by another trusted leader, James S. Payne (1876-1877), whose second administration was as devoid as the first of striking incident.  In fact, the whole generation succeeding the loan of 1871 was a period of depression.  The country not only suffered financially, but faith in it was shaken both at home and abroad.  Coffee grown in Liberia fell as that produced at Brazil grew in favor, the farmer witnessing a drop in value from 24 to 4 cents a pound.  Farms were abandoned, immigration from the United States ceased, and the country entered upon a period of stagnation from which it has not yet fully recovered.

[Footnote 1:  But not Hilary R.W.  Johnson, the efficient Secretary of State, later President.]

[Footnote 2:  President Roberts died February 21, 1876, barely two months after giving up office.  He was caught in the rain while attending a funeral, took a severe chill, and was not able to recover.]

Within just a few years after 1871, however, conditions in the United States led to an interesting revival of the whole idea of colonization, and to noteworthy effort on the part of the Negroes themselves to better their condition.  The withdrawal of Federal troops from the South, and all the evils of the aftermath of reconstruction, led to such a terrorizing of the Negroes and such a denial of civil rights that there set in the movement that culminated in the great exodus from the South in 1879.  The movement extended all the way from North Carolina to Louisiana and Arkansas.  Insofar as it led to migration to Kansas and other states in the West, it belongs to American history.  However, there was also interest in going to Africa.  Applications by the thousands poured in upon the American Colonization Society, and one organization in Arkansas sent hundreds of its members to seek the help of the New York State Colonization Society.  In all such endeavor Negro Baptists and Methodists joined hands, and especially prominent was Bishop H.M.  Turner, of the African Methodist Episcopal Church.  By 1877 there was organized in South Carolina the Liberian Exodus and Joint Stock Company; in North Carolina there was the Freedmen’s Emigration Aid Society; and there were similar organizations in other states.  The South Carolina organization had the threefold