Slavery in Cuba began earlier and lasted longer than anywhere else in the Americas.
Nearly
all ancient cultures made captives of war serve as slaves, such as in
Egypt, Babylon, Persia, Greece, China, India, Africa, and Rome.
Julius
Caesar conquered in Gaul and brought so many captured slavic peoples
into to Rome that the term 'slav' took the connotation of permanent
servant.
Over half of Rome's population were slaves.
Another form of slavery was generational indebtedness, spread by Roman Emperor Diocletian.
The
Roman economy was so bad that people unable to pay their mortgages
abandoned their properties, renounced their Roman citizenship and went
off to live with the barbarians.
Diocletian
stimulus plan made it so people could never be free from their debts
tying them and their children to the land in perpetuity, creating the
feudal system.
When
Muslims conquered areas of Spain, Portugal, France, Italy, Greece and
the Mediterranean, over a million Europeans were carried off into
slavery.
Catholic religious orders began, such as the Trinitarins or 'Mathurins,' who collected donations to ransom slaves.
In Africa, an estimated 180 million Africans were forced into Muslim slavery.
In
pre-Columbian America, the Inca Empire had a system of mandatory public
service known as mita, similar to the Aztec's tlacotin.
When
Spain conquered the New World in the early 1500's, conquistadors deposed
Indian government leaders and ruled in their stead.
As
Indian populations had been trained to obey government orders, they
willingly obeyed their new leaders, even though it meant dying of forced
labor in silver mines, such as Potosi.
Spaniards set up a system called encomienda or repartimiento, which was similar to feudal France's Corvée "unfree labour."
Priests like Bartolomé de las Casas, Franciscan Friars, and Papal Bulls ended the enslavement of Indians.
Those wanting slave labor replaced them with Africans purchased from Muslim slave markets.
A
notorious trade triangle developed with Havana, Cuba, at its center:
SLAVES from Africa to SUGAR from the Caribbean to RUM in England.
In
North America, Christian missionaries and movements, especially
Quakers, Moravians, and Methodists, were a voice of conscience against
slavery.
Many poor Europeans sold themselves as 'indentured
servants', a temporary slavery for seven years in exchange for
transportation to America.
King
James II, followed by Charles I and Oliver Cromwell, sold over 500,000
Irish Catholics into slavery throughout the 1600's onto plantations in
the West Indies Islands of Antigua, Montserrat, Jamaica, Barbados, as
well as Virginia and New England.
Some North American Indians were sold into slavery in the West Indies.
The first African slaves were brought to North America on a Dutch ship to Virginia in 1619.
Importation of slaves to the United States ended in 1807, but in 1839, an international incident occurred.
A Portuguese ship from Sierra Leone sold 53 slaves to Spanish Planters on the Cuban ship
Amistad.
On July 1, 1839, the Africans seized the ship and demanded to be sailed back to Africa.
Instead, the captain misdirected the ship to Long Island, NY, where the slaves were arrested.
The
Amistad case went to the Supreme Court, with 74-year-old former President, John Quincy Adams, defending the Africans.
Adams stated, "By the blessing of God, I will argue the case before the Supreme Court," and wrote in his journal, October 1840:
"I
implore the mercy of God to control my temper, to enlighten my soul,
and to give me utterance, that I may prove myself in every respect equal
to the task."
Francis Scott Key offered Adams legal advice.
Adams shook hands with Africans Cinque and Grabeau, saying: "God willing, we will make you free."
Wining the case, John Quincy Adams, known as "Old Man Eloquent," had argued:
"The
moment you come to the Declaration of Independence, that every man has a
right to life and liberty, an inalienable right, this case is decided. I
ask nothing more in behalf of these unfortunate men than this
Declaration."
President James Buchanan wrote December 19, 1859:
"When
a market for African slaves shall no longer be furnished in Cuba...
Christianity and civilization may gradually penetrate the existing
gloom."
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In 1868, a revolt began in Cuba by a Creole farmer crying out for racial equality, freedom of speech and freedom of association.
Spain killed thousands putting down the revolt in the Ten Years War.
A Spanish Royal decree finally ended slavery in Cuba in 1886.
In 1895, another rebellion began in Cuba and Spain sent 200,000 soldiers to put it down.
Tens of thousands were put into concentration camps where they suffered from starvation, disease and exposure.
Yellow Press journalism excited the American public, who demanded President William McKinley intervene.
The
U.S.S. Maine was sent to Havana, and on FEBRUARY 15, 1898, it blew up
in the harbor under suspicious conditions, beginning the
Spanish-American War.
President McKinley approved the Resolution of Congress:
"Whereas
the abhorrent conditions which have existed for more than three years
in the island of Cuba, so near our own borders, have shocked the moral
sense of the people of the United States, have been a disgrace to
Christian civilization,
culminating, as they have, in the
destruction of a United States battle ship, with 266 of its officers and
crew, while on a friendly visit in the harbor of Havana, and cannot
longer be endured...
Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives...that the people of the island of Cuba are and of right ought to be free."
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