Title.
I'm not as educated on the subject as I should be. I'd like to know why Liberia wasn't successful at its mission and why the project is considered a failure. (Also, could it have been a success or was it doomed to fail?)
Professor Power-Greene did an AMA two years ago that discussed black freedmen's resistance to participating in the ACS mission in Liberia.
Among the reasons that he lists for why free blacks in the United States chose not to participate were:
Concern over the reports of high mortality rates for settlers.
Most free blacks continued to have family members in slavery, that they hoped to free. Migrating to Liberia would make that more difficult.
There was some concern that a successful movement to migrate free blacks to Liberia would serve to eliminate them as a social class in the United States.
Do you mean failing to relocate more African Americans or failing as a state?