ABSTRACT

The belief that there existed a sizable clandestine traffic in Negro slaves between the island of Cuba and Florida after 1808 has been a persistent one in the historiography of slavery in the United States. Perhaps most important is that the Atlantic slave trade to Cuba, despite its illegal nature after 1820, continued to grow in volume until the middle 1860s and even then slaves continued to be imported to the island until slavery itself was finally abolished in 1886. The capture, or for that matter the accidental grounding, of laden Spanish slaving vessels in Florida waters has also been pointed to as evidence of a Cuba-Florida slave trade. If there was a continual scarcity of slave labor in Cuba during the first six decades of the nineteenth century, it seems logical that the Cubans would have been less than eager to sell a portion of their slaves to North American planters.