We have already stated that seven children of the colonists had been captured by the enemy. Ashmun tells us: “Two of the captured children have been given up in consideration of a small gratuity. Five are still in the hands of the natives; for their relief a very extravagant ransom was demanded which it was steadily resolved not to pay . . . redeeming trait . . . in their treatment of these helpless and tender captives. It was the first object of the captors to place them under the maternal care of several aged women, who, in Africa, as in most countries, are proverbially tender and indulgent. These protectresses had them clad in their usual habits and at an early period of the truce, sent to the colony to inquire the proper kinds of food, and modes of preparing it, to which the youngest had been accustomed. The affections of their little charges were so perfectly won in the four months of their captivity as to oblige their own parents, at the end of that time, literally to tear away from their keepers several of the youngest amidst the most affectionate demonstrations of mutual attachment. This event did not occur until the 12th of March, when their gratuitous redemption was voted almost unanimously in a large council of native chiefs.” We have referred to Elijah Johnson. He was an extraordinary man. His parentage is quite unknown; June 11, 1789, he was taken to New Jersey; he had had some instruction, gained perhaps in New York; by religion he was a Methodist and had studied for the ministry; he had had some experience in military life in New Jersey, New York, and Massachusetts; he had fought in the war of 1812 against the British; he came to Africa with the first colony of emigrants in 1820; in 1822 he was one of the founders of the settlement at Cape Montserrado; when Ayres proposed the abandonment of the enterprise, he vigorously opposed him, and his influence had much to do with holding his fellow colonists; to the British captain who, on the occasion of a difficulty, offered to quell the trouble with the natives if he be given ground for the erection of a flag, Johnson is said to have replied, “We want no flagstaff put up here, that will cost us more to get it down than it will to whip the natives.” When Wiltberger left the colony entirely to itself, it was Johnson who was put in charge; his son, born in Africa, became President of the Republic; Elijah Johnson died March 23, 1849.