No. 410.
General Sickles to Mr. Fish.
[Extract.]
United States
Legation in Spain,
Madrid, July 5, 1873.
(Received July 31.)
No. 643.]
Sir: I have the honor to transmit herewith a copy
and translation of a memorial of the Spanish Emancipation Society, lately
presented to the Cortes Constituyentes. The petitioners include a number of
the most influential members of the legislative body. The main facts and
arguments, showing the expediency and necessity of the immediate abolition
of slavery in Cuba, are stated with unusual brevity and force. The admirable
results of the liberation of the slaves in Porto Rico have greatly
encouraged the friends of emancipation. The slaveholders in Cuba are at a
loss for pretexts for delay now that domestic servitude in the sister island
has disappeared without any disturbance of public order or diminution of the
sugar crop.
The colonial minister, Mr. Suñer y Capedevila, has
recently stated in the Cortes his purpose to bring forward in the name of
the government a radical emancipation bill. In several conversations with me
he has reaffirmed these declarations with an earnestness and warmth of
expression leaving no room to doubt his zeal. It is simply a question
whether the perpetual changes of ministers in this country may not interrupt
the labor of Mr. Suñer, as has before happened to
several of his predecessors.
The president, Mr. Pi y Margall, is equally frank and
emphatic in his avowed determination to put an end to slavery in Cuba. He
does not propose to wait for the suppression of the rebellion, nor for the
solution of the financial crisis in the island, nor for the restoration of
tranquillity in Spain. On the contrary, he regards emancipation and other
cognate reforms as the best means of restoring peace and prosperity to Cuba.
He assures me he desires to see Cuba and Porto Rico admitted as states in
the Spanish federal union. These are, likewise, the views of the colonial
minister.
Mr. Castelar, Mr. Bias Quintero,
Mr. Salmeron, and other influential members of the
committee appointed to draft the federal constitution, are understood to
entertain similar views. * * *
I am not without hope that the political administrative and social reforms we
have so long urged upon this country in the government of its American
possessions may be attained by means of suitable provisions embodied in the
constitution of the republic.
I am, &c.,
[Inclosure A.—Translation.]
Petition of the Spanish Abolition Society to the
Cortes Constituyentes, Madrid, June 1, 1873.
To the Cortes Constituyentes:
The undersigned, president, vice-president, active members, and
secretaries of the Spanish Abolition Society, with the greatest respect
show that, whereas—
- First. The definitive law of abolition for Cuba has not yet
been promulgated, although referred to the preparatory law of
July 4, 1870, and solemnly and repeatedly promised by the
Spanish government before Congress and the civilized
world.
- Second. The preparatory law of 1870, notwithstanding its
urgent character, remained in suspense, as far as its principal
articles were concerned, until the appearance of the regulations
published in the Madrid Gazette, August 18, 1873.
- Third. The regulations in question not only totally ignore the
important inquiry of the captain-general of Cuba concerning the
fulfillment of the fifth article of the preparatory law, but
also, from the nature of many of their provisions, they render
necessary a new set of explanatory
regulations, at the same time creating institutions of the
efficiency of which there can be no doubt.
- Fourth. Notwithstanding the promulgation of the regulations in
the Gaceta de Madrid nine months ago, not
a single one of its provisions has yet been put into operation
in Cuba.
- Fifth. On the contrary, the superior government of the island
of Cuba has decided to modify a rule of the old slave
regulations which was favorable to the negroes, and to declare
henceforth—and for the purpose of constraining them—that the
value of a slave shall be estimated according to his personal
merits, thus interposing an obstacle to emancipation.
- Sixth. In Cuba the law of 1870 has been grossly
misinterpreted, and the old emancipadors
have been made to subscribe labor
contract for eight or ten years, under conditions
sufficient to annul such contracts for substantial error and
irregularity in conformity with the express text of the Spanish
law of contracts.
- Seventh. In violation of our colonial laws and in derision of
the provisions of the Porto Rican abolition law passed March 22d
last, many slaves have been taken from the lesser Antilla and,
as such, sold in Cuba, when their presence is a source of real
danger; and, in fact, the owner of one of those unfortunate
beings, has already met his death at the hands of a Porto Rican
mulatto.
- Eighth. The insurrection in Cuba has caused the dispersion of
more than 55,000 slaves who do not, in point of fact, appear
enrolled in the census of 1871 in the divisions corresponding to
the districts of Santiago de Cuba,
Las Tunas, and
Moron.
- Ninth. The partisans and upholders of the Cuban insurrection
have renounced all the rights to their former slaves guaranteed
to them under Spanish laws; this renunciation having been
effected either indirectly, as in the case of the constitution
proclaimed in the insurgent camp in April, 1869, in which (Art.
24) the absolute freedom of the negroes is declared, or else
explicitly, as in the case of the rich planter, Don
Miguel Aldama, who executed a full power, dated
December 6, 1872, authorizing the abolition societies of Spain,
Paris, and London to demand, either before the courts or from
the Spanish government, the freedom granted by him to more than
1,100 slaves which had belonged to his plantations of Armonia,
Santa Rosa, Concepcion, San José, and to Santo Domingo.
- Tenth. By various judgments of councils of war and some of the
ordinary courts of Cuba, dated October and November of 1870 and
1871, the state has seized, either by means of confiscation or
to attack the civil responsibility, that always accompanies
criminal responsibility, more than 10,000 slaves belonging to
the insurgents, while article 5, of the preparatory law of 1870,
declares that “the state can hold no slaves.”
- Eleventh. Nearly two-thirds of the negroes employed in
field-labor (some 292,000, according to the census of 1862) are
bozales—that is, slaves
surreptitiously introduced in defiance of the treaties
celebrated with England in 1817 and 1835, and in contravention
of existing laws in Cuba, especially since 1845.
- Twelfth. It is notorious that the Havana journals continue to
publish advertisements of the sale of negroes
de nacion, a phrase which means that the slave in
question is a bozal, or native African,
and therefore that there is no legal right to his
possession.
- Thirteenth. In like manner advertisements continually appear
in the Cuban journals offering for sale children of from four to
ten years, without father or mother, thus positively showing the
contemptuous way in which the stringent provision of the law of
1870, relative to the union of slave families, is
violated.
- Fourteenth. The colonial minister, notwithstanding that a
national representative in the late Congress urged him to lay
before the Cortes certain data relative to the execution of the
law of 1870, and, among these, in particular, a statement of the
number of slaves emancipated in consequence of excessive cruelty
(sevicia) on the part of their
owners, has not been able to communicate the data called for,
because they are not in his
possession.
- Fifteenth. Among the infamous inventions of some slave-holders
is an instrument for the corporal punishment of their slaves, by
which blows are inflicted without breaking the skin or leaving
any outward mark. Full details of this have been received by the
Abolition Society, and are offered as evidence of a new
violation of the law of 1870.
- Sixteenth. It is a well-known fact circumstantially described
by travellers who have recently visited the interior of Cuba,
and recognized by even the bitterest enemies of abolition, that
the bulk of the insurgent bands in Cuba consists of fugitive
plantation negroes and Chinese run-aways, who prefer death
rather than return to their former servitude.
- Seventeenth. The burning of plantations situated in the
western department and in districts like Matanzas has been
recently begun, and rumor attributes these acts to the Chinese
and slaves.
- Eighteenth. The law of March 22, 1873, has begun to be put
into operation in Porto
[Page 1005]
Rico without any indication whatever of
the conflicts prophesied by its enemies; on the contrary, it has
tended to quiet the agitation that existed there, and to
overcome, with extraordinary rapidity, the difficulties of the
political situation of that island produced by the obstinate
opposition of the slave-holding element to all reform, and
especially to the reforms proposed by the government of Madrid,
as well as by the necessity of proceeding to an election for
deputies to the Cortes under a new electoral census, whereby the
number of votes would be largely increased, and under the
influence of a political change of the nature of that which has
brought about throughout the whole Spanish nation, the
substitution of the republic for the democratic monarchy;
and,
- Nineteenth. Whereas, in contradiction of the foregoing
prognostics and calumnies, of which the negro race has so long
been the object, it is a fact that all the old slaves have
remained spontaneously working as
freedmen (libertos) on the plantations of
their former masters, with the sole exception of those belonging
to the few planters in Porto Rico who had become known for their
cruel treatment of their slaves, against which the latter have
protested, asking and obtaining the privilege of entering the
service of other masters; and, further considering,
- First. “That slavery is an outrage upon human nature, and a stigma
upon the only nation that still maintains it in the civilized
world,” according to the eloquent and manly declaration of the
superior revolutionary Junta of Madrid on the 15th of October,
1869.
- Second. That servitude is in every way incomprehensible in the
dominions of a nation which, like the Spanish, after framing for itself the political constitution of
1869, and having recognized the existence of the
natural and inalienable rights of man, has had sufficient
moral force to strive for and obtain a democratic republican form of government.
- Third. That as often as the Antilles have been consulted on the
subject, just so often have their inhabitants proposed to the mother
country the abolition of slavery, as is proved, among other things,
by the report of the Cuban commissioners to the government in 1866,
and according to the plan proposed in that report by a scheme of
gradual emancipation, slavery would have already ceased to exist in
1873.
- Fourth. That an analogous spirit has been exhibited by many of the
present holders of slaves in Havana, as is shown by the meetings
held by them in July and August, 1870, at the palace of the
captain-general, and also by the meeting held in the early part of
1873 in the Spanish casino, in that city, in anticipation of
immediate and radical action of the home government.
- Fifth. That a portion of the Havana press has declared itself in
favor of abolition, although expressing this with the reserve
imposed upon the press by Cuban legislation.
- Sixth. That even the conservative party of the peninsula was
agreed in 1870, in spite of the harshness of the war in Cuba and the
difficulties of home politics in Spain, upon the necessity of a
definite law of emancipation, as is proved by the report of the
committee, almost wholly composed of conservatives, which was
appointed in the Cortes of 1869 to examine the emancipation project
presented by the government.
- Seventh. That the greatest peril of the situation in Cuba is an
armed propaganda which the insurgent negroes may undertake in favor
of abolition, and this danger is so evident that the military
authorities have recently prohibited the transfer of negroes from
the central to the western department.
- Eighth. That, according to the opinion of the same peninsular
conservatives, and perhaps as a consequence of the agitation set on
foot against the law of emancipation for Porto Rico, it is a matter
of fact that the reform so brilliantly and successfully realized in
the lesser Antilla is exerting a positive influence on the negroes
held in the cities of Cuba.
- Ninth. That the slavery question being now one of international
law, (derecho de gente,) both slavery and the
former conduct of the Spanish government have been protested against
by the ministers and representatives of the most authoritative of
the great free peoples; while on the other hand, in foreign
countries, an extraordinary movement of sympathy toward our
government was occasioned by the mere presentation to the late
Congress of the Porto Rico abolition law.
- Tenth. That the retention of the bozales in
bondage is a peril to the good relations between our cabinet and
that of England, especially as, as is well known, the latter, at the
beginning of the century, paid forty millions of reals as indemnity
for the capital engaged in the slave trade, and on condition that it
should be finally put a stop to.
- Eleventh. That the ill-success of the preparatory law need not,
and should not, surprise those who are familiar with the history of
the emancipation of labor, wherein it is recorded that such measures
have always failed, and that the legislators
have been forced to resort to others more radical, such as immediate
abolition, as took place in Jamaica, St.
Thomas, the Dutch colonies, and is even now taking place
in Brazil.
- Twelfth. That it is an indisputable fact in the history of
abolition by radical means, that it not only has falsified the blind
hopes of its enemies with respect to the evil results
[Page 1006]
they supposed it would
lead to, but it has served to restore tranquillity to countries
disturbed both by the appalling prophecies and unworthy machinations
of the pro-slavery party, and by other causes foreign to the problem
of slavery, and referable to the general situation of those
communities of which eloquent examples are found in Antigua,
Guadalupe, Barbadoes, Santa Cruz, the United States, and, at the
present time, Porto Rico.
- Thirteenth. That deducting from the total number of slaves held in
Cuba in 1872, (in all, 264,692, of which 2,237 were coartados,*) the bozales, and all those embargoed and
confiscated from the insurgents in Cuba, it may be shown that there
are not more than 70,000 negroes in that island whose possession has
even a show of legality.
- Fourteenth. That the abolition of slavery may, at the present
time, be a highly politic measure to end the Cuban insurrection,
while its with holdment is a continued motive of resistance, as was
the case in 1793 and 1804 in the island of Santo Domingo; and
- Fifteenth. That even supposing the insurrection in Cuba to be
terminated materially without resort to
certain radical measures affecting slavery, the return to the sugar
plantations and farms of the many negroes who, since 1869, have been
fugitives, or joined to the insurgents, would be a continual motive
of sanguinary disturbances and conflicts of every kind.
The Cortes are prayed to proceed to the discussion and passage of a
definitive law for the abolition of slavery in Cuba.
Madrid, June 1,
1873.
- FERNANDO DE CASTRO.
- GABRIEL RODRIGUES.
- JOAQUIN M. SANROMA.
- RAFAEL M. DE LABRA.
- MANUEL RUIZ DE QUEVEDO.
- FRANCISCO GINER.
- F. DIAZ QUINTERO.
- SALVADOR TORRES AGUILAR.
- LUIS PADIAL.
- MANUEL REGIDOR.
- RAFAEL CERVERA.
- LUIS VIDART.
- BERNARDO GARCIA.
- FELIX DE BONA.
- ANTONIO CARRASCO.
- FRANCISCO DELGADO.
- RICARDO LOPEZ VASQUES.
- JULIO VISCARRONDO.
- J. F. CINTRON.
- M. PADILLA.
