Political Career
Payne was elected as the fourth president in 1868 and served a two-year term. During his presidency, he worked to end the slave trade that still took place along Liberia's coast. (Other reports though (History of Liberia and Joseph Jenkins Roberts) say: “The slave trade from Liberian ports was ended by the British Navy in the 1850s.”) He improved government relations with the native communities and peoples, whom he believed the newer settlers and politicians had for the most part ignored.
He worked to extend Liberia's trading and political ties with Europe. Denmark was the first European nation to recognize the independent Liberia, either in 1849 or 1869 (accounts differ - provide sources for both, then).
Payne was elected a second time in 1876 and served until 1878. Escalating economic difficulties began to weaken the state's dominance over the coastal indigenous population. When the financially burdened ACS withdrew its support from the colony in the years after the American Civil War, conditions worsened as Liberia struggled to modernize its largely agricultural economy. The cost of imported goods was far greater than the income generated by the nation's exports of coffee, rice, palm oil, sugarcane, and timber. Payne increased the country's foreign trade.
Read more about this topic: James Spriggs Payne
Famous quotes containing the words political and/or career:
“We assume that politicians are without honor. We read their statements trying to crack the code. The scandals of their politics: not so much that men in high places lie, only that they do so with such indifference, so endlessly, still expecting to be believed. We are accustomed to the contempt inherent in the political lie.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“What exacerbates the strain in the working class is the absence of money to pay for services they need, economic insecurity, poor daycare, and lack of dignity and boredom in each partner’s job. What exacerbates it in upper-middle class is the instability of paid help and the enormous demands of the career system in which both partners become willing believers. But the tug between traditional and egalitarian models of marriage runs from top to bottom of the class ladder.”
—Arlie Hochschild (20th century)