This short book—104 pages of text followed by extensive notes—describes the life of Hilary Teage, called the “Jefferson of Liberia” for his role in drafting the Liberian Declaration of Independence. The author's goal is to draw out of obscurity this exceptional figure, totally forgotten in the historical record, and to shed light on his role in founding the Liberian republic. Teage's writings are the author's main source of biographical information.
Even though the table of contents lists what appear to be chapter headings, the book is structured as one continuous narrative divided into nine sections. In “A Very Superior Man,” Burrowes introduces Teage as a resourceful, creative, and passionate figure who used the Liberia Herald newspaper to advocate for Liberian independence and later served in public roles as a senator (1848–1849), attorney general (1850–1852), and secretary of state (1852–1853) (3). “That Boasted Land of Equality” recounts the early story of the Teage family as American slaves in Virginia. “A Vague Idea of Freedom” traces their road from slavery to freedom and the decision of Hilary's father, Colin, a Baptist minister, to emigrate with his family to Africa as a missionary, along with his friend Lott Cary, an influential and more well-known figure.
“Like a Motherless Child” describes the early controversies surrounding questions of colonization, emancipation, and Thomas Jefferson's ideas of racial separation at the time of the creation of the American Colonization Society. Here, Burrowes underlines the “effaced” yet seminal role of Colin Teage and Lott Cary in “the uneasy marriage of two visions of African colonization: one white, the other black . . . in the retelling of the colonization story” (34). In “Wanderers from Samaria,” with the family now settled in West Africa, the spotlight finally shifts to Hilary, also a Baptist pastor like his father, and his prodigious rise in the social and political leadership of the colony.
“Rising in the Scale of Being” describes Teage's early work as the influential editor of the Liberia Herald and his business ventures, some inherited from his father, that eventually ended in insolvency. These failures led him to open a law practice in 1848.
In “Profound Knowledge,” Burrowes presents Teage's ideas in the crucial years between 1830 and 1850 when Liberia transitioned from colony to republic. During this period, Teage was “the intellectual with the greatest influence over local events” (52) because of his views on “liberal republicanism, empirical analysis, free enterprise economics, and limited government” (53) and his romantic aesthetic evident in his writing. A brilliant speechwriter, Teage's masterpiece, however, was the Liberian Declaration of Independence that “displayed [his] poetic skills, evident in the repetition, as well as his polemical powers to describe in terms both poignant and detailed the American racism that had shaped his world view and driven him, his family, and his compatriots to Africa” (58).
“A Republic on Africa's Soil” recounts the events of the last decade of Teage's life, when, in his several roles as a statesman, he displayed his commitment as a Christian, a supporter of republican government, and a critic of the concept of “civilization.” He promoted forward-thinking legislation in favor of women's economic rights in the Declaration of Independence. Although a black nationalist, he did not support African traditions rooted in servility, the exploitation of women, or the slave trade. He championed education—particularly religious education—as the way to ensure a peaceable and orderly society based on “reason and virtue” (71), because these disciplines drove away the “evils of ignorance, idleness and passion” (70).
In “Poet, Prophet, and Pan-African Patriot,” Burrowes summarizes Teage's legacy as a “prophet of modernity” in his goal to transform “social relations along modern lines” (75). Although Teage received little formal education himself, throughout his life he championed education that shaped the mind through “a marriage of empiricism and the deep message of religion”—ultimately the call to love, justice, compassion, and humility before God as expressed by the biblical prophet Micah (78). Burrowes deems Teage's most valuable intellectual contribution to be his view that “republicanism, Christianity, and black nationalism were mutually reinforcing aspects of ‘civilization,’ a way of life characterized by monotheism, the spread of literacy and democratic government, and embellished with rationalism, the arts and sciences” (75).
Teage's exceptional legacy lies in his writings because they “represent one of the earliest intellectual integrations of the previously disparate elements of black nationalism, Protestant Christianity, and republicanism” (preface, ii). But while the author uses Teage's writings to construct an intellectual profile, he does not draw from them to give readers insight into how Teage actually experienced the events and how his ideas played out in his personal life, his faith, and his relationships. In fact, one does not get a sense of the man himself. All that is known of his personal life is that he was married to “Eliza M.” but, apparently, remained childless—a lacuna that Burrowes explains by saying that “nineteenth-century standards of privacy and decorum served to obscure his private life” (50). One wonders if there were other reasons for this lack of information regarding his personal life.
Burrowes is to be commended for his portrayal of an important African Christian pioneer that fills a gaping hole in the historical record. However, this important piece of African and colonial history deserves a more fulsome account using a chapter structure and a more leisurely prose that better interprets for the reader the importance of various events, ideas, and individuals.
Overall, this story left me hungry for more—for example, better understanding of Teage's influence on women's economic status at that time. The groundbreaking ideas and pioneering leadership of this remarkable man deserve further scholarly research.
