Samuel Benedict (c. 1792–1854) was a Liberian politician and jurist who served as the 1st Chief Justice of Liberia. He was born a slave in the U.S. state of Georgia in 1792, Emma Jones Lapsansky-Werner and Margaret Hope Bacon, Back to AfricaHoward Temperly, After Slavery and purchased his freedom and that of his family.Loren Schweninger, Black Property Owners in the South, 1790-1915 He emigrated to Liberia in 1835, on the ship Indiana.Roll of Emigrants that have been sent to the colony of Liberia, Western Africa, by the American Colonization Society and its auxiliaries, to September 1843
Prior to Liberia's independence, Benedict was a judge of the Superior Court and a merchant.Carl Patrick Burrowes, Power and Press Freedom in Liberia, 1830-1970 He later presided over the Liberian Constitutional Convention of 1847, which officially declared Liberia's independence from the American Colonization Society. He was one of Montserrado County's delegates at the convention and a signer of the Liberian Declaration of Independence.
Representing the Anti-Administration Party (AAP), Benedict was defeated by longtime political foe Joseph Jenkins Roberts in the 1847 election to serve as Liberia's first president.Randall M. Smith, Dear Master: Letters of a Slave Family
Benedict later became the first Chief Justice of the Liberian Supreme Court. He died in 1854.
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