By 1821, Monroe had dispatched US naval officer Robert Stockton, as an agent of the society, to West Africa. With a drawn pistol in one hand and a pen in the other, Stockton embezzled—some say for $300—a strip of Atlantic coastal land south of Sierra Leone from a local ruler, who probably did not hold title to his people’s land. The United States thus joined the growing band of nations seeking to colonize Africa. By 1824, American settlers had built fortifications there. They renamed the settlement “Liberia,” and its capital “Monrovia,” after the US president. Between 1820 and 1830, only 154
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