Second, Sumner worked to secure diplomatic recognition of Haiti and Liberia. Ever since the Haitian Revolution at the turn of the nineteenth century, in which enslaved people liberated themselves and declared freedom from France, the United States had refused to recognize the island as its own country. It had also denied recognition to Liberia, a country on the West African coast founded in the 1820s by Black emigrants who had been sent by the American Colonization Society. Southern statesmen feared that the recognition of either country would bring Black ambassadors to the capital, a sight
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