Beschreibung:

Title: Unsigned manuscript document - 1847 Illegal Slave Trade to Spanish Cuba Author: Place: Havana, Cuba Publisher: Date: October 20, 1847 Description: 5¾x8". 2 pp. With official stamp of “Gobierno Superior Civil, Ysla de Cuba”, in Spanish, addressing “Su Majestad” in the text; probably from the Spanish Governor, Don Leopoldo O’Donnell, to the teenaged Queen Isabella II of Spain. Assuring Her Majesty that the official prohibition of the Slave Trade had been “faithfully observed”, its “mandates enforced” by “special precautions” – despite the recent landing of some Blacks on the southern coast at Trinidad, an “infringement” which had not gone “unpunished.” Written seven years after the Amistad affair, in which illegally enslaved Africans had revolted aboard a Spanish vessel sailing from Cuba. the US Supreme Court ultimately deciding that the Africans were not the “property of Spain”, as the Spanish Government had contended, but should be set free. Subsequently, O’Donnell, the Spanish Governor at Havana, while repressing a slave uprising in 1844, had imprisoned, tortured and executed thousands of slaves (and free Blacks) on the island. This letter of assurances that the Governor was strictly enforcing Spain’s prohibition of the slave trade was contradicted by British documents showing that more than 200 enslaved Africans, many mere children, had been landed at Trinidad by a schooner which had then been sunk or set on fire to conceal the crime (in which the provincial Governor himself had been implicated). Slavery was, in fact, still big business on Cuba, some 4000 African slaves, “valued” at $450 dollars each, being employed in production of 56,000 tons of sugar. A rare and significant document. Lot Amendments Condition: Text bleeding/offsetting; very good. Item number: 238187