"[53] Minister Proffit stated, in 1844,
that the "slave-trade is almost entirely carried on under our flag, in
American-built vessels."[54] So, too, in Cuba: the British commissioners
affirm that American citizens were openly engaged in the traffic;
vessels arrived undisguised at Havana from the United States, and
cleared for Africa as slavers after an alleged sale.[55] The American
consul, Trist, was proven to have consciously or unconsciously aided
this trade by the issuance of blank clearance papers.[56]
The presence of American capital in these enterprises, and the
connivance of the authorities, were proven in many cases and known in
scores. In 1837 the English government informed the United States that
from the papers of a captured slaver it appeared that the notorious
slave-trading firm, Blanco and Carballo of Havana, who owned the vessel,
had correspondents in the United States: "at Baltimore, Messrs. Peter
Harmony and Co., in New York, Robert Barry, Esq."[57] The slaver
"Martha" of New York, captured by the "Perry," contained among her
papers curious revelations of the guilt of persons in America who were
little suspected.[58] The slaver "Prova," which was allowed to lie in
the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina, and refit, was afterwards
captured with two hundred and twenty-five slaves on board.[59] The real
reason that prevented many belligerent Congressmen from pressing certain
search claims against England lay in the fact that the unjustifiable
detentions had unfortunately revealed so much American guilt that it was
deemed wiser to let the matter end in talk.
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