Joseph Jenkin Roberts was a mulatto born in Virginia in 1809. At the age of twenty, with his widowed mother and younger brothers, he went to Liberia and engaged in trade. In course of time he proved to be a man of unusual tact and graciousness of manner, moving with ease among people of widely different rank. His abilities soon demanded recognition, and he was at the head of the force that defeated Gatumba. As governor he realized the need of cultivating more far-reaching diplomacy than the Commonwealth had yet known. He had the coöperation of the Maryland governor, Russwurm, in such a matter as that of uniform customs duties; and he visited the United States, where he made a very good impression. He soon understood that he had to reckon primarily with the English and the French. England had indeed assumed an attitude of opposition to the slave-trade; but her traders did not scruple to sell rum to slave dealers, and especially were they interested in the palm oil of Liberia. When the Commonwealth sought to impose customs duties, England took the position that as Liberia was not an independent government, she had no right to do so; and the English attitude had some show of strength from the fact that the American Colonization Society, an outside organization, had a veto power over whatever Liberia might do. When in 1845 the Liberian Government seized the _Little Ben_, an English trading vessel whose captain acted in defiance of the revenue laws, the British in turn seized the _John Seyes_, belonging to a Liberian named Benson, and sold the vessel for £8000. Liberia appealed to the United States; but the Oregon boundary question as well as slavery had given the American Government problems enough at home; and the Secretary of State, Edward Everett, finally replied to Lord Aberdeen (1845) that America was not "presuming to settle differences arising between Liberian and British subjects, the Liberians being responsible for their own acts." The Colonization Society, powerless to act except through its own government, in January, 1846, resolved that "the time had arrived when it was expedient for the people of the Commonwealth of Liberia to take into their own hands the whole work of self-government including the management of all their foreign relations." Forced to act for herself Liberia called a constitutional convention and on July 26, 1847, issued a Declaration of Independence and adopted the Constitution of the Liberian Republic. In October, Joseph Jenkin Roberts, Governor of the Commonwealth, was elected the first President of the Republic.