BENSON, STEPHEN ALLEN

Benson Stephen Allen (1816-1865) was born in the State of Maryland in the United States of America in 1816 and migrated to Liberia in 1822. He became a resident and citizen of Grand Bassa County 40 miles southeast of Monrovia. He was one of the few men from the leeward countries who was able to break the political hegemony of the Montserrado County Presidents who had always considered it the prerogative of that county to provide presidents for Liberia.

PHOTO CAPTION: Benson Stephen Allem. SOURCE: EA Library

Benson was president of Liberia from 1856 to 1864. During his administration, the independent state of Maryland in Liberia ceased to exist as an independent state in Africa after 24 years of existence and became annexed as a county, Maryland County, in Liberia in 1857.

His administration was noted for several advances in Liberia. Liberia College was founded in 1862, and Benjamin Anderson made several explorations into the interior of Liberia. These explorations delimited the interior boundaries of Liberia which subsequently and unfortunately were readjusted by the French and British who took away portions of Liberian territory and added them to their African colonies of the Ivory Coast and Sierra Leone.

Besides challenging the assumption of Montserrado president’s sole right to rule Liberia, Benson’s campaign and subsequent election as the second president of Liberia was a question of great political controversy. The system, which was imported by the Mulattoes, who practised segregation against the full-blooded Negroes from the United States and those of Africa, was rife during the period, and it became a matter of political expediency to settle the question at the polls if civil strife was to be averted.

This strife, nevertheless, occurred with the election of Edward James Roye in 1870. The issue was whether the Mulatto regime, as typified in the several presidential terms of Joseph Jenkins Roberts (1848-1856), who was a Mulatto, would prevail forever, or whether the full-blooded Negroes would also be given a chance to become presidents of Liberia. Benson was the first Negro of settler origin who was expected to provide this leadership. His successful election was an answer to the controversy. At the time the Negroes were in the majority. Benson on a Republic Mulatto ticket, however, won the election in preference over Joseph Jenkins Roberts.

The Negroes had complained against the light complexion of Roberts saying he reminded them of yet being in the days of slavery when they were governed by white masters in the United States.

DR. ABEODU B. JONES