Joseph Jenkins Roberts - Second Presidency (1872-1876)

Second Presidency (1872-1876)

In 1871, president Edward James Roye was deposed by elements loyal to the Republican Party on the grounds that he was planning to cancel the upcoming elections. Roberts, one of the Republican Party's leaders, won the ensuing presidential election and thus returned to office in 1872. He served for two terms until 1876. While he was incapacitated by illness from 1875 until early 1876, Vice-President Anthony W. Gardiner was acting president.

In the decades after 1868, escalating economic difficulties weakened the state's dominance over the coastal indigenous population. Conditions worsened—the cost of imports was far greater than the income generated by exports of coffee, rice, palm oil, sugarcane, and timber. Liberia tried desperately to modernize its largely agricultural economy.

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