The American Captives in Havana, Being Ferdinand Clark's Reply to Nicholas P. Trist, Consul at That Place

36 pp. Sabin 13277. A condemnation of Nicholas Philip Trist, his pro-slavery views, and fraud related to papers involving illegal slave trade. Trist was an American lawyer, diplomat, planter, and businessman, known for spearheading the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the Mexican-American War (1846-48). This work precedes that achievement, and discusses Trist's time as U.S. Consul in Havana, Cuba. According to members of a British commission sent to Cuba to investigate violations of the treaty ending the African slave trade, Trist became involved in the creation of false documents designed to mask illegal sales of Africans into bondage. For a time Trist also served as the consul in Cuba for Portugal, another country whose nationals were active in the illegal slave trade. In late 1838 or early 1839, the British commissioner Dr. Richard Robert Madden wrote U.S. abolitionists about Trist's misuse of his post to promote slavery and earn fees from the fraudulent document schemes. A pamphlet detailing Madden's charges was published shortly before the beginning of the sensational Amistad affair, when Africans sold into slavery in Cuba managed to seize control of the schooner in which they were being transported from Havana to provincial plantations. Madden traveled to the United States, where he gave expert testimony in the trial of the Amistad Africans, explaining how false documents were used to make it appear the Africans were Cuban-born slaves. This exposure of the activities of the U.S. Consul General, coupled with the complaints of ship captains, caused a Congressional investigation and eventual recall of Trist in 1840. Neither Trist nor Madden is depicted in the film Amistad directed by Steven Spielberg, although there are brief Cuba scenes that suggest how the illegal slave trade was carried on there.