Richard Dorsey Loraine Mohun (April 12, 1864 – July 13, 1915) was an American explorer, diplomat, mineral prospector and mercenary.. Mohun worked for the United States government as a commercial agent in Angola and the Congo Free State. During his time as commercial agent, he volunteered to command a unit of Belgian artillery in a campaign to force Arab slavers from the colony.
Mohun remained in the service of the US government during this time and was subsequently posted as consul to Zanzibar. In this capacity, he was called upon to act as an intermediary between the combatants in the Anglo-Zanzibar War. Following the conclusion of his three-year posting, Mohun returned to the Congo to prospect for minerals, and later worked with the Belgian authorities.
His most ambitious undertaking was a three-year expedition, beginning in 1898, that laid a telegraph line from Lake Tanganyika to Stanley Falls. He then spent some time prospecting in South Africa before returning to the Congo to reform the Abir Congo Company on behalf of Leopold II of Belgium.
Early life
Richard Dorsey Mohun was born in Washington, D.C., on April 12, 1864. Mohun's family had a long association with Africa - his grandfather, William McKenny, had been a prominent figure during the colonisation of the continent and built up a comprehensive collection of photographs during his time there. Mohun, who was privately tutored at the family home, is known to have seen these photographs whilst growing up. Mohun developed an interest in the slave trade, which continued under Arab control in Eastern and Southern Africa, and became the fourth member of his family to campaign for its eradication. Mohun's sister, Lee intended to train as a nun to join a Catholic mission in the Congo, where the slavers were active, and was only dissuaded by her family who asked her to minister to African-Americans in Washington instead.
Mohun received a commission in the Pay Corps of the United States Navy in 1881 and served on a four-year cruise in the Mediterranean. His grandmother, religious writer Anna Hanson Dorsey, arranged for him to meet her acquaintance, Denis J. O'Connell, at the Pontifical North American College in Rome in 1885.. Mohun was appointed Assistant Paymaster in 1885 and served with the United States Department of the Navy upon his return from the cruise. He was promoted to the rank of lieutenant in 1889, the same year he resigned his navy commission to join the United States Department of State.
Mohun and his brother, Louis, were involved in the short-lived Nicaragua Canal Construction Company, a private American enterprise seeking link the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. Louis had been on survey expeditions with the company since 1888 and construction works began at Corinto in 1890. Richard secured a position as an auditor with the company's transportation division by 1891 but the project was hit by tropical disease and the Mohuns returned home to Washington by January 1892.
United States agent in the Congo
The well-connected Anna Hanson Dorsey was close friends with the mother of the American Secretary of State James Blaine and Blaine and Dorsey shared ties with Notre Dame University. Dorsey was able to use this influence to arrange the appointment of Mohun as US commercial agent to the Congo Free State on 22 January 1892, filling a vacancy caused by the death-in-post of US Navy Lieutenant Emory Taunt the previous year. The US had maintained an agent in the Congo ever since it had been formally recognised and the commercial agent also acted as the nation's diplomatic representative to the Free State. The post came with a $5,000 annual budget and a remit to investigate the commercial potential of Congo and to promote trade between the two countries, which previously had been almost non-existent. Mohun was appointed ahead of the missionary Samuel Norvell Lapsley who had been championed by a state senator from Alabama.
Mohun left America for Genoa, Italy with Louis and their sister, Laura. The three travelled in Europe for 2–3 months before Mohun reported to Brussels to meet with King Leopold II who, in spite of his callous reputation, impressed him with his apparent ambition to bring peace and western civilization to the Congo.. Mohun then journeyed to the Congo with Louis, who was to act as his sub-agent. The US commercial post in the Free State was then at Boma near the Atlantic coast, but Mohun also operated from Léopoldville, further inland. In July 1892 he assisted US citizen Warren C. Unckless in establishing a rubber factory on the Sankuru River near Lusambo for the Société anonyme belge pour le commerce du Haut-Congo. Unckless, a plantation manager in Costa Rica, had imported experienced rubber cutters from South America to begin the enterprise but came under attack from tribesmen and a Belgian force had to be dispatched to provide security. Mohun spent much of his time in exploration of the country's interior, visiting several areas where no white man had ever ventured and making a survey of the quality of the agricultural land and the crops grown by the native population.
Mohun frequently came into conflict with the native tribesmen. When his mail bag and personal papers were stolen and a local chief refused to return them he proceeded to wage war on the chief accompanied by four gunmen and a steamboat. Mohun attacked and burnt at least ten villages before he captured the chief's son whom he threatened to hang. In return for his son's life the chief returned the mail bag, alongside a second that Mohun had not noticed was missing. Another time, seeking to view the native method of making cloth, he visited a remote town accompanied by only six followers covertly armed with revolvers. The party came under attack by spears and poisoned arrows. Having fought off their assailants Mohun captured the town and "burned it to the ground to teach them a lesson". Mohun was always conscious of his public image and wrote a diary with a view to later publication. Mohun's diary contains little in the way of self-criticism and he reflects upon his responsibility for this incident by stating that he was "satisfied in my own conscience that I had rid the country of a brute and unnecessary member of society.". On another occasion he witnessed the funeral of a local chief who had four of his wives and 10 slaves buried alive with him. Mohun was unable to intervene, in spite of his horror at the situation, as he had only a small escort and was heavily outnumbered.
Mohun, who came under attack five or six times within six months, blamed much of the violence on Arab slavers who Mohun claimed had directed the killing of all of the white men in the east of the country and allowed their bodies to be eaten by cannibals. The slavers, who originated from the East coast of Africa, were in conflict with the heavily outnumbered Belgian authorities in the Congo Arab War. Francis, Baron Dhanis, vice-governor general to the Free State, had been leading an expedition against slavers - who were led by Sefu, the son of Tippu Tip - since July 1892.
Chaltin Expedition
In 1893 Mohun was appointed commander of the artillery attached to a Belgian expedition, commanded by Louis Napoléon Chaltin, sent against the slavers led by Rumaliza. Mohun had risen to the position owing to the illness of the original Chief of Artillery, a Belgian Army officer, and joined the expedition via the steamer Bruxelles sometime after it had started off from Basoko.. Just prior to his joining the expedition had destroyed entirely the 1,200-house village of Tchari. Mohun accompanied the expedition to Bena-Kamba where the party suffered an outbreak of smallpox before 555 of the survivors continued on towards Riba Riba. The expedition passed through Ikhamba, entirely deserted except for an array of 16 severed heads left as a warning by the slavers. Around this time Mohun led part of the expedition into a village where he disturbed a cannibal feast, he arrested the village chief who was tried and hanged. On another occasion he was traversing the jungle alone when he came across six armed Arab slavers in a clearing. In the subsequent fight he killed four of the slavers before the remaining two fled.
On March 29 the Chaltin Expedition reached a deep stream and, in searching for a fording place, came across a large group of Arab slavers. The expedition launched a surprise attack on the camp, supported by an artillery piece, and routed them after several hours fighting. The expedition found only one dead body left on the field, though it was supposed that the Arabs had lost more men and carried the bodies away with them in retreat. Mohun was with a force of 150 men sent over the stream to Riba Riba with the intention of reaching the town before the retreating slavers could give warning. Once again they encountered a deserted town, except for two hands nailed to a flagstaff taken from the corpses of two European men killed the week before. Mohun's group burned the town to the ground before returning to the main party of the expedition. The force suffered another outbreak of smallpox and it was decided to send the sick back to the steamer at Bene-Kamba. The main force rested for a number of days before following on. During the three-day march the expedition encountered the bodies of the sick that had died on the return journey and a roll call at Bene-Kamba revealed some 104 men had died in the first two weeks of the expedition.
The expedition proceeded by the steamer to Stanley Falls and split into two detachments. One attacked the slaver's factory and the other their nearby boma under supporting artillery fire from the steamer. Some 75 slavers were killed, including their chief, and a further 100 slaves, soldiers, women and retainers taken prisoner. The slavers, comprehensively defeated, were driven from the country and the war effectively brought to a close.. Mohun accompanied a force sent to investigate the slavers town of Romie and discovered it to already be in the hands of Congo State forces. At Romie Mohun encountered several of the Belgian native troops engaging in cannibalism of the dead Arabs. This practice had been outlawed by Chaltin and was punishable by death. Mohun recorded that he fired a single shot which put an end to the matter.
Mohun then marched 500 miles with the expedition to Kasongo, the former home of Tippu Tip, in January 1894. There his force of 1,400 native auxiliaries and porters and 150 soldiers joined with Dhanis' 26,000 men for an assault on the fortified town. In the subsequent fighting the Belgian forces, assisted by artillery, killed 3,000 of the slaver's men, blew up their powder magazines and burnt the town. Still in Kasongo by February Mohun had intended to take a force of some sixty soldiers, 100 porters and 90 others to Tanganyika where he planned to catch a steamer to South Africa to arrange passage to the Congolese coast. From there he planned to settle his affairs, resign his post and return to America. He hoped in the process to intercept a slave caravan that had been fleeing eastwards from the expedition loaded with slaves, ivory and gold.