clergy were excessively corrupt, I think there can be no doubt. Make
every allowance for theological bias, or for irreligious bias, in the
writers and tourists in Cuba, still, the testimony from Roman Catholics
themselves is irresistible. The details, it is not worth while to
contend about. It is said that a family of children, with a recognized
relation to its female head, which the rule of celibacy prevented ever
becoming a marriage, was general with the country priesthood. A priest
who was faithful to that relation, and kept from cockfighting and
gambling, was esteemed a respectable man by the common people. Cuba
became a kind of Botany Bay for the Romish clergy. There they seem to
have been concealed from the eye of discipline. With this state of
things, there existed, naturally enough, a vast amount of practical
infidelity among the people, and especially among the men, who, it is
said, scarcely recognized religious obligations at all.
No one can observe the state of Europe now, without seeing that the
rapidity of communication by steam and electricity has tended to add to
the efficiency of the central power of the Roman Catholic Church, and to
the efficacy and extent of its discipline. Cuba has begun to feel these
effects. Whether they have yet reached the interior, or the towns
generally, I do not know; but the concurrent testimony of all classes
satisfied me that a considerable change has been effected in Havana. The
instrumentalities which that church brings to bear in such cases, are in
operation: frequent preaching, and stricter discipline of confession and
communion. The most marked result is in the number of men, and men of
character and weight, who have become earnest in the use of these means.
Much of this must be attributed, no doubt, to the Jesuits; but how long
they will be permitted to remain here, and what will be the permanent
effects of the movement, I cannot, of course, conjecture.
I do not enter into the old field of contest. "We care not," says one
side, "which be cause and which effect;--whether the people are Papists,
because they are what they are, or are as they are because they are
Papists. It is enough that the two things coexist." The other side
replies that no Protestant institutions have ever yet been tried for any
length of time, and to any large extent, with southern races, in a
tropical climate; and the question--what would be their influence, and
what the effect of surrounding causes upon them, lies altogether in the
region of conjecture, or, at best, of faith.
Of the moral habits of the clergy, as of the people, at the present
time, I am entirely unable to judge. I saw very little that indicated
the existence of any vices whatever among the people. Five minutes of a
street view of London by night, exhibits more vice, to the casual
observer, than all Havana for a year. I do not mean to say that the
social morals of the Cubans are good, or are bad; I only mean to say
that I am not a judge of the question.
The most striking indication of the want of religious control is the
disregard of the Lord's Day. All business seems to go on as usual,
unless it be in the public offices. The chain-gang works in the streets,
under public officers. House-building and mechanic trades go on
uninterrupted; and the shops are more active than ever. The churches, to
be sure, are open and well filled in the morning; and I do not refer to
amusements and recreations; I speak of public, secular labor. The Church
must be held to some responsibility for this. Granted that Sunday is not
the Sabbath. Yet, it is a day which, by the rule of the Roman Church,
the English Church in England and America, the Greek Church and other
Oriental Churches--all claiming to rest the rule on Apostolic authority,
as well as by the usage of Protestants on the continent of
Europe--whether Lutherans or Calvinists--is a day of rest from secular
labor, and especially from enforced labor. Pressing this upon an
intelligent ecclesiastic, his reply to me was that the Church could not
enforce the observance--that it must be enforced by the civil
authorities; and the civil authorities fall in with the selfishness and
gratifications of the ruling classes. And he appealed to the change
lately wrought in Paris, in these respects, as evidence of the
consistency of his Church. This is an answer, so far as concerns the
Church's direct authority; but it is an admission either of feeble moral
power, or of neglect of duty in times past. An embarrassment in the way
of more strictness as to secular labor, arises from the fact that slaves
are entitled to their time on Sundays, beyond the necessary labor of
providing for the day; and this time they may use in working out their
freedom.
Another of the difficulties the church has to contend with, arises out
of Negro slavery. The Church recognizes the unity of all races, and
allows marriage between them. The civil law of Cuba, under the
interpretations in force here, prohibits marriage between whites and
persons who have any tinge of the black blood. In consequence of this
rule, concubinage prevails, to a great extent, between whites and
mulattoes or quadroons, often with recognition of the children. If
either party to this arrangement comes under the influence of the
Church's discipline, the relation must terminate. The Church would allow
and advise marriage; but the law prohibits it--and if there should be a
separation, there may be no provision for the children. This state of
things creates no small obstacle to the influence of the Church over the
domestic relations.
SLAVERY
It is difficult to come to a satisfactory conclusion as to the number of
slaves in Cuba. The census of 1857 puts it at 375,000; but neither this
census nor that of 1853 is to be relied upon, on this point. The Cubans
are taxed for their slaves, and the government find it difficult, as I
have said, to get correct returns. No person of intelligence in Cuba,
however desirous to put the number at the lowest, has stated it to me at
less than 500,000. Many set it at 700,000. I am inclined to think that
600,000 is the nearest to the truth.
The census makes the free blacks, in 1857, 125,000. It is thought to be
200,000, by the best authorities. The whites are about 700,000. The only
point in which the census seems to agree with public opinion, is in the
proportion. Both make the proportion of blacks to be about one free
black to three slaves; and make the whites not quite equal to the entire
number of blacks, free and slave together.
To ascertain the condition of slaves in Cuba, two things are to be
considered: first, the laws, and secondly, the execution of the laws.
The written laws, there is no great difficulty in ascertaining. As to
their execution, there is room for opinion. At this point, one general
remark should be made, which I deem to be of considerable importance.
The laws relating to slavery do not emanate from the slave-holding mind;
nor are they interpreted or executed by the slave-holding class. The
slave benefits by the division of power and property between the two
rival and even hostile races of whites, the Creoles and the Spaniards.
Spain is not slave-holding, at home; and so long as the laws are made in
Spain, and the civil offices are held by Spaniards only, the slave has
at least the advantage of a conflict of interests and principles,
between the two classes that are concerned in his bondage.
The fact that one Negro in every four is free, indicates that the laws
favor emancipation. They do both favor emancipation, and favor the free
blacks after emancipation. The stranger visiting Havana will see a
regiment of one thousand free black volunteers, parading with the troops
of the line and the white volunteers, and keeping guard in the Obra Pia.
When it is remembered that the bearing arms and performing military duty
as volunteers is esteemed an honor and privilege, and is not allowed to
the whites of Creole birth, except to a few who are favored by the
government, the significance of this fact may be appreciated. The Cuban
slave-holders are more impatient under this favoring of the free blacks
than under almost any other act of the government. They see in it an
attempt, on the part of the authorities, to secure the sympathy and
coöperation of the free blacks, in case of a revolutionary movement--to
set race against race, and to make the free blacks familiar with
military duty, while the whites are growing up in ignorance of it. In
point of civil privileges, the free blacks are the equals of the whites.
In courts of law, as witnesses or parties, no difference is known; and
they have the same rights as to the holding of lands and other
property. As to their social position, I have not the means of speaking.
I should think it quite as good as it is in New England, if not better.
So far as to the position of the blacks, when free. The laws also
directly favor emancipation. Every slave has a right to go to a
magistrate and have himself valued, and on paying the valuation, to
receive his free papers. The valuation is made by three assessors, of
whom the master nominates one and the magistrate the other two. The
slave is not obliged to pay the entire valuation at once; but may pay it
in installments, of not less than fifty dollars each. These payments are
not made as mere advances of money, on the security of the master's
receipt, but are part purchases. Each payment makes the slave an owner
of such a portion of himself, _pro parte indivisa_, or as the common law
would say, in tenancy-in-common, with his master. If the valuation be
one thousand dollars, and he pays one hundred dollars, he is owned,
one-tenth by himself and nine-tenths by his master. It has been said, in
nearly all the American books on Cuba, that, on paying a share, he
becomes entitled to a corresponding share of his time and labor; but,
from the best information I can get, I think this is a mistake. The
payment affects the proprietary title, but not the usufruct. Until all
is paid, the master's dominion over the slave is not reduced, as
respects either discipline, or labor, or right of transfer; but if the
slave is sold, or goes by operation of law to heirs or legatees or
creditors, they take only the interest not paid for, subject to the
right of future payment under the valuation.
There is another provision, which, at first sight, may not appear very
important, but which is, I am inclined to think, the best practical
protection the slave has against ill-treatment by his master: that is,
the right to a compulsory sale. A slave may, on the same process of
valuation compel his master to transfer him to any person who will pay
the money. For this purpose, he need establish no cause of complaint. It
is enough if he desires to be transferred, and some one is willing to
buy him. This operates as a check upon the master, and an inducement to
him to remove special causes of dissatisfaction; and it enables the
better class of slave-holders in a neighborhood, if cases of ill-usage
are known, to relieve the slave, without contention or pecuniary loss.
In making the valuation, whether for emancipation or compulsory
transfer, the slave is to be estimated at his value as a common laborer,
according to his strength, age, and health. If he knows an art or trade,
however much that may add to his value, only one hundred dollars can be
added to the estimate for this trade or art. Thus the skill, industry
and character of the slave, do not furnish an obstacle to his
emancipation or transfer. On the contrary, all that his trade or art
adds to his value, above one hundred dollars, is, in fact, a capital for
his benefit.
There are other provisions for the relief of the slave, which, although
they may make even a better show on paper, are of less practical value.
On complaint and proof of cruel treatment, the law will dissolve the
relation between master and slave. No slave can be flogged with more
than twenty-five lashes, by the master's authority. If his offence is
thought greater than that punishment will suffice for, the public
authorities must be called in. A slave mother may buy the freedom of her
infant, for twenty-five dollars. If slaves have been married by the
Church, they cannot be separated against their will; and the mother has
the right to keep her nursing child. Each slave is entitled to his time
on Sundays and all other holidays, beyond two hours allowed for
necessary labor, except on sugar estates during the grinding season.
Every slave born on the island is to be baptized and instructed in the
Catholic faith, and to receive Christian burial. Formerly, there were
provisions requiring religious services and instruction on each
plantation, according to its size; but I believe these are either
repealed, or become a dead letter. There are also provisions respecting
the food, clothing and treatment of slaves in other respects, and the
providing of a sick room and medicines, &c.; and the government has
appointed magistrates, styled síndicos, numerous enough, and living in
all localities, whose duty it is to attend to the petitions and
complaints of slaves, and to the measures relating to their sale,
transfer or emancipation.
As to the enforcement of these laws, I have little or no personal
knowledge to offer; but some things, I think, I may treat as reasonably
sure, from my own observation, and from the concurrent testimony of
books, and of persons of all classes with whom I have conversed.
The rule respecting religion is so far observed as this, that infants
are baptized, and all receive Christian burial. But there is no
enforcement of the obligation to give the slaves religious instruction,
or to allow them to attend public religious service. Most of those in
the rural districts see no church and no priest, from baptism to burial.
If they do receive religious instruction, or have religious services
provided for them, it is the free gift of the master.
Marriage by the Church is seldom celebrated. As in the Roman Church
marriage is a sacrament and indissoluble, it entails great inconvenience
upon the master, as regards sales or mortgages, and is a restraint on
the Negroes themselves, to which it is not always easy to reconcile
them. Consequently, marriages are usually performed by the master only,
and of course, carry with them no legal rights or duties. Even this
imperfect and dissoluble connection has been but little attended to.
While the slave-trade was allowed, the planters supplied their stock
with bozales (native Africans) and paid little attention, even on
economic principles, to the improvement, or, speaking after the fashion
of cattle-farms, to the increase of stock on the plantation. Now that
importation is more difficult, and labor is in demand, their attention
is more turned to their own stock, and they are beginning to learn, in
the physiology of increase, that canon which the Everlasting has fixed
against promiscuous intercourse.
The laws respecting valuation, the purchase of freedom at once or by
instalments, and the compulsory transfer, I know to be in active
operation in the towns, and on plantations affording easy access to
towns or magistrates. I heard frequent complaints from slave-holders and
those who sympathized with them, as to the operation of these
provisions. A lady in Havana had a slave who was an excellent cook; and
she had been offered $1700 for him, and refused it. He applied for
valuation for the purpose of transfer, and was valued at $1000 as a
laborer, which, with the $100 for his trade, made a loss to the owner of
$600, and, as no slave can be subsequently sold for a larger sum than
his valuation, this provision gave the slave a capital of $600. Another
instance was of a planter near Matanzas, who had a slave taught as a
carpenter; but after learning his trade, the slave got himself
transferred to a master in the city, for the opportunity of working out
his freedom, on holidays and in extra hours. So general is the
enforcement of these provisions that it is said to have resulted in a
refusal of many masters to teach their slaves any art or trade, and in
the hiring of the labor of artisans of all sorts, and the confining of
the slaves to mere manual labor. I heard of complaints of the conduct of
individuals who were charged with attempting to influence the credulous
and too ready slaves to agree to be transferred to them, either to
gratify some ill-will against the owner, or for some supposed selfish
interest. From the frequency of this tone of complaint and anecdote, as
well as from positive assertions on good authority, I believe these
provisions to have considerable efficacy.
As to the practical advantage the slaves can get from these provisions
in remote places; and as to the amount of protection they get anywhere
from the special provisions respecting punishment, food, clothing, and
treatment generally, almost everything lies in the region of opinion.
There is no end to statement and anecdote on each side. If one cannot
get a full and lengthened personal experience, not only as the guest of
the slave-holder, but as the companion of the local magistrates, of the
lower officers on the plantation, of slave-dealers and slave-hunters,
and of the emancipated slaves, I advise him to shut his ears to mere
anecdotes and general statements, and to trust to reasonable deductions
from established facts. The established facts are, that one race, having
all power in its hands, holds an inferior race in slavery; that this
bondage exists in cities, in populous neighborhoods, and in remote
districts; that the owners are human beings, of tropical races, and the
slaves are human beings just emerging from barbarism, and that no small
part of this power is exercised by a low-lived and low-minded class of
intermediate agents. What is likely to be the effect on all the parties
to this system, judging from all we know of human nature?
If persons coming from the North are credulous enough to suppose that
they will see chains and stripes and tracks of blood; and if, taking
letters to the best class of slave-holders, seeing their way of life,
and hearing their dinner-table anecdotes, and the breakfast-table talk
of the ladies, they find no outward signs of violence or corruption,
they will probably, also, be credulous enough to suppose they have seen
the whole of slavery. They do not know that that large plantation, with
its smoking chimneys, about which they hear nothing, and which their
host does not visit, has passed to the creditors of the late owner, who
is a bankrupt, and is in charge of a manager, who is to get all he can
from it in the shortest time, and to sell off the slaves as he can,
having no interest, moral or pecuniary, in their future. They do not
know that that other plantation, belonging to the young man who spends
half his time in Havana, is an abode of licentiousness and cruelty.
Neither do they know that the tall hounds chained at the kennel of the
house they are visiting are Cuban bloodhounds, trained to track and to
seize. They do not know that the barking last night was a pursuit and
capture, in which all the white men on the place took part; and that,
for the week past, the men of the plantation have been a committee of
detective and protective police. They do not know that the ill-looking
man who was there yesterday, and whom the ladies did not like, and all
treated with ill-disguised aversion, is a professed hunter of slaves.
They have never seen or heard of the Sierra del Cristal, the
mountain-range at the eastern end of Cuba, inhabited by runaways, where
white men hardly dare to go. Nor do they know that those young ladies,
when little children, were taken to the city in the time of the
insurrection in the Vuelta de Arriba. They have not heard the story of
that downcast-looking girl, the now incorrigibly malignant Negro, and
the lying mayoral. In the cities, they are amused by the flashy dresses,
indolence and good-humor of the slaves, and pleased with the
respectfulness of their manners, and hear anecdotes of their attachment
to their masters, and how they so dote upon slavery that nothing but bad
advice can entice them into freedom; and are told, too, of the worse
condition of the free blacks. They have not visited the slave-jails, or
the whipping-posts in the house outside the walls, where low whites do
the flogging of the city house-servants, men and women, at so many reals
a head.
But the reflecting mind soon tires of the anecdotes of injustice,
cruelty and licentiousness on the one hand, and of justice, kindness and
mutual attachment, on the other. You know that all coexist; but in what
proportion you can only conjecture. You know what slavery must be, in
its effect on both the parties to it. You seek to grapple with the
problem itself. And, stating it fairly, it is this--Shall the industry
of Cuba go on, or shall the island be abandoned to a state of nature? If
the former, and if the whites cannot do the hard labor in that climate,
and the blacks can, will the seven hundred thousand whites, who own all
the land and improvements, surrender them to the blacks and leave the
island, or will they remain? If they must be expected to remain, what is
to be the relation of the two races? The blacks must do the hard work,
or it will not be done. Shall it be the enforced labor of slavery, or
shall the experiment of free labor be tried? Will the government try the
experiment, and if so, on what terms and in what manner? If something is
not done by the government, slavery will continue; for a successful
insurrection of slaves in Cuba is impossible, and manumissions do not
gain upon the births and importations.
MATERIAL RESOURCES AND EDUCATION
Cuba contains more good harbors than does any part of the United States
south of Norfolk. Its soil is very rich, and there are no large wastes
of sand, either by the sea or in the interior. The coral rocks bound the
sea, and the grass and trees come down to the coral rocks. The surface
of the country is diversified by mountains, hills and undulating lands,
and is very well wooded, and tolerably well watered. It is interesting
and picturesque to the eye, and abounds in flowers, trees of all
varieties, and birds of rich plumage, though not of rich notes. It has
mines of copper, and probably of iron, and is not cursed with gold or
silver ore. There is no anthracite, but probably a large amount of a
very soft, bituminous coal, which can be used for manufactures. It has
also marble, and other kinds of stone; and the hard woods, as mahogany,
cedar, ebony, iron-wood, lignum vitæ, &c., are in abundance. Mineral
salt is to be found, and probably in sufficient quantities for the use
of the island. It is the boast of the Cubans that the island has no wild
beasts or venomous reptiles. This has been so often repeated by tourists
and historians that I suppose it must be admitted to be true, with the
qualification that they have the scorpion, and tarantula, and nigua; but
they say that the bite of the scorpion and tarantula, though painful, is
not dangerous to life. The nigua, (sometimes called chigua, and by the
English corrupted into jigger,) is troublesome. With these exceptions,
the claim to freedom from wild or venomous animals may be admitted.
Their snakes are harmless, and the mosquitoes no worse than those of New
England.
As to the climate, I have no doubt that in the interior, especially on
the red earth, it is healthy and delightful, in summer as well as in
winter; but on the river borders, in the low lands of black earth, and
on the savannas, intermittent fever and fever-and-ague prevail. The
cities have the scourge of yellow fever and, of late years, also the
cholera. In the cities, I suppose, the year may be divided, as to
sickness, into three equal portions: four months of winter, when they
are safe; four of summer, when they are unsafe; and four of spring and
autumn, when they are passing from one state to the other. There are,
indeed, a few cases of vómito in the course of the winter, but they are
little regarded, and must be the result of extreme imprudence. It is
estimated that twenty-five per cent of the soldiers die of yellow fever
the first years of their acclimation; and during the year of the
cholera, sixty per cent of the newly-arrived soldiers died. The mean
temperature in winter is 70 degrees, and in summer 83 degrees,
Fahrenheit. The island has suffered severely from hurricanes, although
they are not so frequent as in others of the West India islands. They
have violent thunderstorms in summer, and have suffered from droughts in
winter, though usually the heavy dews keep vegetation green through the
dry season.