Little bit late but since this has no comments, Liberia was designed to be a little America and basically was. The freeman that colonized were endorsed by a group called the American Colonization Society founded mainly as a way to get free slaves away from the still slaves. They didn't care where the freeman were originally from, Liberia was picked due to how close it is to America. People were dying due to illness and they just sent more freeman because they would lose support and the ACS would end. The colony was also ran with a white governor around the first 20 years. I say that to say that the colonizers treated the locals poorly. The racism of the south is the only government they knew. indigenous people couldn't marry colonizers and could not vote. They couldn't even claim citizenship until the early 1900s. Even in 1929 the president and vice president abdicated due to allegations of slavery of indigenous people. It's crazy to think that this is what happened to a country founded by free slaves but the key thing is that is was made for black people either born free or their master manumit them, runaway slaves were not apart of the colony. They were thrown to land abandoned by colonizers for 150 years before them and told just do what the united states does.