How U.S. Merchants Ran the Cuban Slave Trade

What's It Got to Do with the Monroe Doctrine?

If you remember your high school U.S. history (it’s ok if you don’t), you were likely taught that the United States abolished the trans-Atlantic slave trade in 1808. While this is technically true, it doesn’t mean that U.S. citizens stopped trading in the enslaved or that state power stopped being used to protect their profits. In fact, a full 25% of all enslaved Africans brought to the Americas arrived after the U.S. ban on the international slave trade.¹ Throughout the first half of the 19th century, bound humans remained an important commodity in the circuit of global trade, and the U.S. merchants who engaged in this grotesque commerce used their profits to invest in banks, insurance companies, and industry. This investment helped build the financial, commercial, and industrial infrastructure that opened the doors for U.S. expansion. And the two keys to unlocking this wealth were the ready supply of the enslaved and the Spanish island 90 miles off the coast of continental North America- Cuba.

While Cuba would eventually become the world’s largest sugar producer, at the beginning of the 19th century the island was most important to the Spanish as a military outpost and waystation for ships travelling between the Americas and Spain. Two vital commodities that frequently stopped in Havana’s harbor were gold and silver extracted from mines in Spain’s other American colonies. For example, after 1765 around 243 million pesos fuertes (Spanish silver dollars) were routed through Cuba.² This was important for U.S. merchants because in the early 19th century Spanish silver functioned as the de facto global currency accepted in most of Europe and, most importantly, accepted in the trade in Asia. With wetted lips U.S. merchants craved access to this river of riches running through Cuba. The key for siphoning off this wealth to the newly independent republic was the slave trade.

In the early years of the 19th century what emerged alongside this river of gold and silver was a plantation system devoted to the cultivation of sugar and coffee and built on the backs of enslaved workers transported from Africa. The brainchild of lawyer and sugar mill owner, Francisco Arango, Cuba’s plantation system greatly expanded due to a seismic political event in the Caribbean- the Haitian Revolution. When the Haitian Republic declared independence on January 1, 1804, Europeans lost the world’s largest producer of coffee and sugar as well as the most profitable colony on earth. The Spanish sought to supplant their losses in Hispaniola with investment in Cuba. This meant the proliferation of plantations, intensive cultivation of sugar and coffee, and, above all, the importation of thousands of the enslaved to do the work.³ With this, U.S. merchants saw their opportunity to join in on the exploitation and get their hands on some of that Spanish treasure.

The 19th century would be marked by an ever expanding trade between Cuba and the United States, which was facilitated by the slave trade and integration into global markets. Spanning markets from Europe to Asia, including commodities from human beings to flour, and depending on operators from smugglers to United States diplomats, this commercial circuit played an integral part in the emergence of early U.S. capitalism. To start in Cuba, there were three things U.S. merchants wanted: Spanish precious metals, sugar, and coffee. They wanted Spanish silver and gold because it could be exchanged globally and used to invest in U.S. industry or finance. They wanted sugar and coffee because these were in high demand in Europe and would give them access to European markets and centers of credit. The people in Cuban society best placed to provide them with these commodities were plantation owners. And these Cuban planters needed some things from U.S. merchants. They needed staple products like flour and consumer items like textiles, but, above all, they needed enslaved workers. Unlike the southern United States where a system of forced procreation expanded the enslaved population, it was more common for Caribbean sugar planters to work their enslaved laborers to death and replace them with fresh shipments from Africa.

This trade with Cuban planters helped open up the global market for U.S. merchants. Spanish silver acquired in Cuba could be used to purchase silks, teas, and spices from Asia; Cuban sugar and coffee were in constant demand in European markets; and all this could be accessed by the merchant willing to partake in the odious traffic of human flesh. Of course, this trade was not always conducted legally. This is where smugglers and United States diplomats came in.

The role of smugglers would appear self-explanatory. Experienced smugglers allowed U.S. merchants to avoid paying customs duties, evade Spanish trade restrictions, and continue the international slave trade even after its formal abolition. For their part, diplomats at the U.S. consulate in Havana essentially functioned as commercial agents and legal protectors for U.S. merchants and their interests. U.S. consuls like Vincent Gray used their elite connections, commercial savvyness, and legal expertise to assist U.S. merchants in skirting both Spanish and U.S. laws. If they didn’t know a way around the rules, they knew who to bribe or which powerful contacts to call on to make a problem go away. And if an issue actually made it to court, consuls could be hired to represent merchants. In 1803 Vincent Gray was handling over $300,000 in lawsuits for U.S. merchants over seized merchandise.⁴ Not one to miss out on the profits, in addition to his work at the consulate, Gray also worked as a slave trader for the wealthy Spanish merchant Antonio de Frias. With the right connections, Havana was a place where fortunes were made.

U.S. consuls in Europe served a similar function. When the future president John Quincy Adams arrived as consul in St. Petersburg in 1809, he traveled aboard the Horace, a ship carrying sugar and coffee owned by New England merchant William Gray.⁵ This relationship would prove beneficial for both men as it boosted Gray’s profits while promoting Adams’s political career. European history buffs may remember that this was the time of Napoleon’s “continental system” which sought to blockade trade from Great Britain and the colonies. While the blockade was notoriously porous, it did have an effect on coffee and sugar prices. This meant well-placed merchants could profit at huge margins with the right information and protection. In William Gray’s case, his ship the Horace served as a courier for Adams carrying his official messages while also transporting Gray’s cargoes to and from Russia. In turn, Adams gave Gray insider information on European markets and protected his merchandise from confiscation by Russian officials. Between 1810 and 1811, Adams managed to secure the release of all of Gray’s ships that were seized in the Baltic for breaking trade restrictions. So, while merchants without these connections faced confiscation in Baltic ports, those with the inside tip from Adams profited handsomely. Meanwhile, Adams was rewarded with a $30,000 line of credit from Gray.⁶

Portrait of New England merchant and lieutenant governor of Massachusetts from 1810-1812 William Gray by Gilbert Stuart

Seeing the type of profits one could make with public influence, some U.S. merchants decided to cut out the middle man and leveraged their wealth into a political career. One of the most notorious slave traders of the time, Rhode Island merchant James D’Wolf, was one of these men. D’Wolf was active in Rhode Island state politics from the time he was first elected to the state House of Representatives in 1798, but he would seek national office when his interests in the slave trade were threatened by the appointment of his antislavery nemesis, Barnabas Bates, as the port collector of Bristol. D’Wolf sought and gained election to the U.S. Senate in 1820 and all it cost him was a fancy dinner for the Rhode Island legislature- a small price for possibly one of the richest men in the country at the time. (Reminder: U.S. senators were appointed by state legislatures until the passage of the 17th amendment in 1913 which began elections by popular vote.) By 1824, D’Wolf had succeeded in having Bates and threats to his illicit commerce removed.⁷

Men like D’Wolf also used their influence to shape politics beyond New England ports. Their trade was international, so they were naturally deeply invested in U.S. foreign policy. And the slave trade at this time did have potent enemies. While Great Britain would not abolish slavery until the 1830s, its growing abolitionist movement had succeeded in abolishing the slave trade in 1807, and the royal navy was becoming evermore proactive in enforcing the ban. They had even pressured the Spanish themselves to abolish the slave trade, which supposedly went into effect in 1820 but was virtually never enforced. And of course, there was the black republic of Haiti which sought to spread abolitionism in the Caribbean and beyond. Meanwhile, Spanish rule in the Americas was becoming increasingly tenuous as South and Central American colonies began declaring independence. By the 1820s, piracy off the coast of Cuba had proliferated and threatened the property of U.S. merchants which often included the enslaved. Spanish difficulties with pirates and rebellions caused many of those invested in slavery in Cuba to worry that England would seek to acquire the island and suppress piracy and the slave trade.⁸

What were Cuban planters and U.S. merchants to do? Some of the Creole elite in Cuba appealed to the U.S. government to annex the island. A couple men in James Monroe’s cabinet like South Carolina slaveholder and Secretary of War John C. Calhoun wanted to acquiesce, but they also knew this would likely guarantee war with Spain or Britain or both. However, others like John Quincy Adams, who had risen to become James Monroe’s Secretary of State, understood the game and knew that it depended on the maintenance of the status quo. Another war so soon after the War of 1812 was impractical and a growing abolitionist movement in the U.S. could disrupt the slave trade if the U.S. took direct control of Cuba. A Spanish government government willing to ignore the slave trade and allow growing U.S. influence and investment was ideal.⁹ Anyway, Adams was sure that over time Spanish control over the island would erode and it would naturally join its northern neighbor. In a letter to the U.S. minister of Spain in 1823, Adams wrote, “There are laws of political as well as of physical gravitation; and if an apple, severed by the tempest from its native tree, cannot choose but fall to the ground, Cuba, forcibly disjoined from its own unnatural connexion with Spain, and incapable of self-support, can gravitate only towards the North American Union, which, by the same law of nature, cannot cast her off from its bosom.”¹⁰

Adams’s line of thinking won the day and was integral to the decisions of U.S. policymakers to expand the navy and issue one of the nation’s most consequential declarations- the Monroe Doctrine. Merchant statesmen like James D’Wolf naturally wanted to expand the navy so it could protect their property. By the end of 1822, the U.S. navy had nine vessels deployed off the coast of Cuba to suppress piracy. By comparison, the U.S. navy only had one vessel patrolling the coast of Africa to capture slave traders. In December 1822, Congress authorized another $160,000 to the navy at the behest of president Monroe.¹¹ U.S. priorities were clear. Enforcing its own ban on the slave trade was of little concern, while protecting the profits of wealthy merchants required prompt military action.

This naval expansion not only served to protect U.S. profits from piracy, but also backed up Monroe’s assertion of U.S. dominion over the Americas. And the fate of Cuba was at least partly on Monroe’s mind when he stated the American continents were “henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers.”¹² While on its face this line might seem like a condemnation of European colonization in the Americas, Monroe was not advocating for independence for all colonies just to forestall any further European expansion or interference in the western hemisphere. Specifically, Monroe wanted to limit the penetration of British influence into what the U.S. saw as its back yard. In the case of the Spanish colonies, Monroe took pains to proclaim his government’s neutrality between the newly independent governments of the Americas and their Spanish overlords. Importantly, he did this “in hope that other powers will pursue the same course.”¹³ Everyone understood he was talking to the British.

These policies and practices established the contours of U.S. involvement in the slave trade for at least the next couple decades. While U.S. merchants continued to ship the enslaved from Africa to Cuba, the U.S. navy protected their cargoes from pirates and the British. Through this public-private partnership, U.S. merchants dominated the slave trade in Cuba. By the time it ended in the 1860s, U.S. ships were responsible for an estimated 63% of all enslaved persons brought to Cuba.¹⁴ Significantly, this slavemongering was not a monopoly of the South. Northern merchants played an active role in the slave trade in Cuba and even went on to invest in their own plantations there. James D’Wolf, a New Englander himself, owned three plantations in Cuba.¹⁵ The “Cuba trade” turned out to be very lucrative, and the money accumulated by U.S. merchants was then used to fuel U.S. financial and industrial development. For example, Moses Taylor, a New York sugar broker, made his fortune from Cuba, and used it to invest in banking and industry. By 1855 he was the president of the National City Bank of New York, which later became Citibank.¹⁶

Through this commerce Cuba played a significant role in the development of the United States, something that would make it a place of interest for U.S. policymakers to the present day. U.S. investment and influence in Cuba would only grow as the years went on and so would the wealth extracted from the island. It was the change in this relationship that was the greatest impact of the 1959 Cuban Revolution. But that’s a story for another day.

Works Cited

Chambers, Stephen. No God But Gain: The Untold Story of Cuban Slavery, the Monroe

Doctrine, & the Making of the United States. Verso, 2015.

Ferrer, Ada. Cuba: An American History. Scribner, 2021.

Monroe, James. “Seventh Annual Message to Congress, December 2, 1823.” In the Annals of

Congress, (Senate), 18th Congress, 1st Session, pages 14, 22–23. Accessed:

https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/monroe-doctrine

Pérez Jr., Louis A. Cuba in the American Imagination: Metaphor and the Imperial Ethos.

University of North Carolina Press, 2008.

1. Chambers, No God But Gain, 10.

2. Chambers, No God But Gain, 21.

3. Ferrer, Cuba, 67-69.

4. Chambers, No God But Gain, 33-35.

5. Chambers, No God But Gain, 49.

6. Chambers, No God But Gain, 54.

7. Chambers, No God But Gain, 106.

8. Chambers, No God But Gain, 108.

9. Chambers, No God But Gain, 113-114.

10. Quoted in Louis A. Pérez Jr., Cuba, 30.

11. Chambers, No God But Gain, 111.

12. James Monroe, “Seventh Annual Message.”

13. James Monroe, “Seventh Annual Message.”

14. Ferrer, Cuba, 92.

15. Ferrer, Cuba, 93.

16. Ferrer, Cuba, 93.