*we* never really had that power. Lets be very clear as to how Liberia came into existence here.
Liberia was a colony of US slaves states, not the US directly. And in 1847 declared "independence" from the Salve States and charged the US the crimes of slavery. Not once did the US give them land, or carve up an already embattled region and hand it over to a group that was, in essence, diametrically opposed to other cultures in that region.