Slave Trade in Cuba
January 19, 1844
A correspondent of the New York Journal of Commerce writes from Havana with a deplorable account of the slave traffic: “There is no hope, at present, that the slave trade will cease.”
Texas is Ours! And Cuba Must Follow
Sept 26, 1845
Citizens of St. Clair County, Illinois, pass a resolution, unanimously adopted, urging the President to purchase Cuba, “with the consent of the white people thereof”. “The slaveholders have only to claim that England has designs on Cuba, and the Northern Democracy will vote away fifty millions to obtain it. How many slave states would Cuba make? It would hardly be safe to get up a revolution there and annex it to the United States.” Item from the Kennebec Journal
Slave trade in Cuba
June 24, 1853
A brief item indicates that “notwithstanding all the precautionary measures of the English and American government to suppress the slave trade, about thee thousand slaves from the coast of African were landed near Havana, between the 27th of May and the 7th of June…”
Slave Trade
January 1, 1858
Several articles tell of a continuing slave trade, focusing especially on Cuba, and also on the French trade.
Jefferson Davis, on Cuba
September 9, 1859
Under the Refuge of Oppression column, here are extracts of a speech by Davis, before the Democratic State Convention, in Mississippi, July 1859. The speech is statement of the positive good and necessity of slavery, and includes a favoring of the acquisition of Cuba. “That the presence of slaves in the island made it more desirable to me, I will not deny.” He favors acquisition by purchase from Spain, “but if all peaceful means should prove unavailing, then, whenever her island is about to become, in the hand of an enemy, dangerous to the United States, or whenever just cause for war shall be given by Spain, I say we should take possession of Cuba……” His speech also includes a fear that the nation is approaching a time when a decision must be made about the Union. He makes reference to a recent speech by Seward, and indicates if a President is elected on a platform such as in that speech, then “let the Union be dissolved”.