The Deepest South: The United States, Brazil, and the African Slave Trade

Into Africa

Into Africa U.S. nationals were leaders in fomenting the illicit slave trade and, as a result, permanently transformed Brazil for all time. In doing so, these U.S. nationals—and some from Europe and Brazil—“acting alone or in conjunction with the bandits, intervened in the affairs of these [African] chiefdoms to provoke conflicts that generated export captives.”1 The “Igbo example clearly shows that slavery and the slave trade were the primary cause of violence in the West African sub-region for over three centuries.”2 John C. Lawrence of the U.S.’s African Squadron confided to his diary in December 1844 that slavers “foment brawls among Chiefs. . . . it answers a double purpose, that of furnishing the slave market . . . as well as affording protection to themselves as the attention of these savages are diverted from the white residents.”3 The African Slave Trade reached new heights of destruction as it was coming to a close, particularly in terms of violence, as a result of improvements in weaponry. As early as 1837, one Brooklynite had noticed the central role of Brazil in this late stage of the trade, for “the proximity of this coast to the shores of Africa renders the importation of Negroes to this country extremely easy; with constant and favorable winds, they are enabled to perform the passage in ten or fifteen days, and dispose of their slaves at reasonable prices.”4 Fifteen years later, the famed jurist, Joseph Story, pointed to the role of U.S. nationals as being central to the African Slave Trade. “American citizens are steeped up to their very mouths (I scarcely use too bold a figure) in this stream of iniquity”; they “throng to the coasts of Africa under the stained flags of Spain and Portugal, sometimes selling abroad their ‘cargoes of despair’ and sometimes bringing them into some of our Southern ports. . . . I wish I could say that New England and New England men were free of this deep pollution”—but he could not.5 One of his compatriots acknowledged that because Brazil was “much nearer to Africa” than Cuba, “slavers [could] reach this market much easier and dispose of 2 33 their human chattels at less risk”—and, of course, Brazil was a larger market as well.6 In particular, the troubled combination of U.S. nationals , Brazilian slavery, and a struggling Africa made for a dreadful combination for the latter especially, while fabulously enriching those involved in this unclean enterprise.7 So, what was Washington doing as its nationals were wreaking havoc in Africa and drastically altering the demographic makeup of Brazil? An African Squadron, which like its Brazilian counterpart, was supposed to arrest this seamy traffic across the ocean. However, “between 1843 and 1861, the squadron captured only eleven slavers and these were released on nominal bail or were tried and let off with negligible fines. . . . [few] conviction[s] [were] ever handed down by . . . American court[s] as a result of the activities of the African Squadron. This was in striking contrast to the British Squadron, which between the years 1839 and 1850 alone seized over seven hundred ships, a number that surpassed the entire merchant marine of many nations.” In contrast to the U.S., “the British were energetic in their attempts to suppress the slave trade. Between 1814 and 1850, British naval units seized 169 Bahian ships alone, the vast majority in West African waters.”8 Increased involvement of U.S. citizens in illegal slave trading to Brazil and Cuba9 came “particularly after 1839 when Great Britain authorized its warships to seize slave vessels flying the Brazilian, Spanish and Portuguese flags, thus making the United States the last major Western nation unwilling to permit the boarding and searching of its ships at sea. . . . U.S. citizens [therefore] offered a wide variety of advantages and services to slave traders. These included swift Baltimore clippers with American crews.”10 And then there was the U.S. flag, which was hoisted by pirates of various nationalities, as it proved to be kryptonite as far as a wary London was concerned.11 By early 1851, one British representative in Philadelphia was moaning that “two thirds of the slavers which reach Brazil or Cuba, may be said to owe their safety” to the U.S. flag, while “fast sailing vessels”—some constructed with British capital in “New York, Baltimore, Philadelphia”—were similarly de rigueur in this nasty business.12 It was not as if this...