One month after the town began, a local slave trader attacked the settlement, encouraged by a French slave buyer, killing 20 of the pacifistic repatriates and sacking the town.
A militia of 120 men dispatched by boat from Monrovia, along with indigenous allies, retook the town and forced the chief responsible for its destruction to build it at his own expense.
Some survivors of the attack returned to Bassa Cove later that year and were joined one year later by 200 repatriates, bearing food, clothing and arms from the Pennsylvania and New York colonizationists.
Footnote: Cassell, 1970, p. 106-108; Shick, 1980, p 33.
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