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How Cuba burned with the ghosts of British slavery:
Race, abolition and the Escalera
Jonathan Curry-Machado
Published in ‘Slavery and Abolition’, 25:1 (April 2004), pp.71-93
In March 1844, one James Thompson made a statement to the Baron von Ketelhodt, a
leading abolitionist resident in the Parish of St Andrews, Jamaica. The Baron, and other
representatives of the Householders of St Andrews, sent a memorial to Queen Victoria,
pleading:
That the cause of humanity generally, and the interests of those
unfortunate persons, equally demand their immediate restoration to
the blessings of freedom, with the option of their coming to this
Island or of proceeding to any other of your Majesty’s possessions.1
The cause that they were referring to was that of ‘a great number of persons, born in the
Bahamas, and elsewhere in your Majesty’s dominions’, who, despite being British subjects,
were being ‘held in slavery, in the neighbouring Island of Cuba’.2 James Thompson was one
of these unfortunates. Illegitimate son of a planter from Nassau, he was taken into slavery
in Cuba by his father’s family when he was still little more than a boy. Finally, some thirty
years later, he managed to escape and eventually make his way to Jamaica, with the
assistance of the British Consul in Havana, David Turnbull.3
That same month saw the beginning of one of the most brutal periods of repression ever to
be inflicted upon the island of Cuba. Throughout the previous year, there had been
Letter from Joseph Gordon, Baron von Ketelhodt, and William Wemyss Anderson to Lord Elgin & Kincardine,
18 April 1844 (Public Record Office (PRO), CO 137/279).
2 Memorial to Queen Victoria from the Householders of the Parish of Saint Andrew, County of Surrey, Jamaica
(PRO, CO 137/279).
3 Statement of James Thomson, made before Max.Aug. Baron v.Ketelhodt, 22 March 1844 (PRO, CO 137/279).
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increasing instances of slave rebellion, and growing rumours of a widespread conspiracy for
a general uprising. The Governor of the island, Captain General Leopoldo O’Donnell
responded with rapid severity. From March 1844, investigations began in the province of
Matanzas, carried out by a special Military Commission. The result was the arrest and
punishment of a large proportion of the free coloured population, along with a number of
foreign workers implicated in the affair. It also saw the mass torture of many slaves, from
whom confessions and accusations were extorted using, amongst other methods, that which
gave the ephemeral uprising its name – the Escalera. The accused were:
… taken to a room which had been white-washed, and whose sides
were besmeared with blood and small pieces of flesh, from the
wretches who had preceded them.... There stood a bloody ladder
[escalera], where the accused were tied, with their heads downward,
and whether free or slave, if they would not avow what the fiscal
officer insinuated, were whipped to death.... They were scourged
with leather straps, having at the end a small destructive button,
made of fine wire…4
It is the purpose of this paper to show how these two circumstances – the taking of British
West Indians into slavery in Cuba and the repression of a supposed uprising – were in fact
closely connected. The Escalera, while not directly caused by the presence of these black
British subjects, was nevertheless partly the result of interrelated events that began with the
importation of the latter into Cuba by white British planters escaping the abolition of slavery
and the slave trade in the British colonies. With Cuba still firmly a slave society, they were
Letter from Richard Burleigh Kimball, Knickerbocker, July 1845, cited in Robert L. Paquette, Sugar is Made with
Blood : the Conspiracy of La Escalera and the Conflict between Empires over Slavery in Cuba (Middletown, Connecticut:
Wesleyan University Press, 1988).
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maintained in bondage, along with other black British West Indians who were kidnapped
from their home islands by unscrupulous traders, and sold to Cuban planters hungry for
labourers. Despite the presence in Havana of a Mixed Commission for the Suppression of
the Slave Trade, charged with ensuring that such breaches of the anti-slave trade treaties did
not go unchallenged, many British representatives in Cuba were themselves implicated in
the continuance of slavery, until the appointment in 1840 of the militant abolitionist David
Turnbull as British Consul and Superintendent of Liberated Africans. Turnbull forcefully
investigated and sought freedom for all those black British subjects who were being held in
slavery in the island. While the Spanish accusations made against him of conspiring for
revolution were probably false, his actions (combined with the presence in the island of
other abolition-minded British migrants, as well as that of the enslaved black British subjects
themselves) had a destabilising effect upon the Cuban slave system, acting as a catalyst for
the unsuccessful uprising of 1843/44, and the subsequent brutal repression.
British abolition and Cuban slavery
As the British anti-slavery campaign gathered pace in the 1820s, opposition and forebodings
for the future grew in the West Indies. Planters became very concerned about losing their
vested interests when emancipation occurred, and were unhappy about the reforms that
were being introduced to ameliorate the condition of the slaves.5 Just as had occurred
following the Haitian Revolution, with the large scale relocation of slaveholders and their
slaves from Hispaniola to other parts of the Greater Caribbean; many British West Indian
slave owners removed themselves and their workers to the Spanish Antillean colonies,
The British Parliament passed the Consolidated Slave Act in 1824, which included amongst its measures
protection against excessive punishment and the right for slaves to secure their freedom and to own property.
However, it took two years and much arm-twisting to force the measure through the Bahamas Assembly, and
even then in a somewhat weakened form. Gail Saunders, Slavery in the Bahamas, 1648-1838 (Nassau: Nassau
Guardian, 1985), p.172 & 175. A similar story of opposition from leading members of colonial society could be
seen throughout the West Indies.
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where it seemed their interests would be secure.6 From around 1821, at least 2,300 slaves
(about 20% of the total) were removed from the Bahamas alone, with many of these ending
up in Cuba; and a similar movement occurred from Jamaica.7 David Turnbull later
identified four routes by which this migration was effected. While many were forcibly
removed, ‘sometimes by violence, but more frequently by fraud’, others were persuaded to
sign up, upon their manumission, as indentured labourers ‘with their previous owners, by
which they bound themselves to serve, without wages’. Still others were removed as
servants, taking advantage of the loophole in the law that permitted a master to travel to a
foreign colony with two domestic slaves. Some were even ‘sold to Spanish dealers out of the
public prison’, having been condemned to ‘banishment from the colony’.8 As a result of such
a range of illicit methods, the number actually taken was almost certainly much higher than
the estimates would suggest.
For British West Indian planters, unhappy with the prospect of losing their captive
workforce, unwilling to attempt to make the necessary adjustment to free labour, or even to
simply improve the conditions of the slaves they had, Cuba offered the perfect escape. Here
they were able to continue pretty much as they had done before the tide turned against the
slave system on their home islands, out of sight, or so they thought and hoped, of British
abolitionism. The arm of British power might be long, but if there was anywhere that they
could hide from it, then the Cuban countryside, under Spanish rule, appeared to be the
place. Not only was such regional slave movement largely ignored by the British anti-slave
Joseph C. Dorsey, ‘Seamy Side of Abolition: Puerto Rico and the Cabotage Slave Trade to Cuba, 1848-73’,
Slavery and Abolition, 19/1 (April 1998), pp.106-128. Dorsey identifies 5 illicit movements of slaves around the
Caribbean in the first half of the nineteenth century: from Hispaniola following the Haitian Revolution; from
Jamaica and the Bahamas to Cuba, in response to abolitionism and eventually emancipation; from the Eastern
Caribbean islands to Puerto Rico at the time of British emancipation; Spanish-sponsored movement from the
French Antilles to Puerto Rico; and the sale of slaves from the French and Dutch Antilles to Puerto Rico at the
time of emancipation there. Many of the slaves who entered Puerto Rico were subsequently transferred to Cuba.
7 Michael Craton & Gail Saunders, Islands in the Stream: a History of the Bahamian people, Vol.1 (Athens & London:
University of Georgia Press, 1985), p.224.
8 Letter from David Turnbull to Lord Stanley, Nassau, 3 Sep. 1842 (PRO, CO 318/157).
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cruisers, which preferred to concentrate on the trans-Atlantic trade;9 but with most usable
land already under cultivation in the smaller British West Indian islands, Cuba was also
attractive for those who might want either to obtain land, or to extend their ownership.
Here there were huge tracts of largely unused and highly fertile land, in particular in the
central and eastern parts of the island, offering a great prospect for whomever had the
means to tame them.
Cuba also had the advantage of proximity, along with an extensive coastline, surrounded by
small islets, or keys, that made it quite easy for people in the neighbouring islands to find
their way in, without necessarily having to go through the principal ports, or coming under
the open gaze of the authorities. There had been a long history of this, with much of the
island’s economy dependent on contraband. Since the sixteenth century, bays and towns
around the East of Cuba had provided havens for a nationally mixed array of smugglers and
pirates, upon which the local population depended for survival, largely forgotten about by
the Spanish government.10 Just as was occurring throughout the region, small trading and
fishing boats would regularly ply their way across the narrow stretches of water that
separated Cuba from other islands in the Caribbean, between which there were long
standing ties of familiarity that undermined the official protectionist policies imperfectly
enforced by the colonial powers.11
Hugh Thomas, The Slave Trade: the history of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1440-1870 (London: Picador, 1997); José
Luciano Franco, Comercio clandestine de esclavos (Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1996).
10 José Luciano Franco, ‘Piratas, corsarios, filibusteros y contrabandistas’, in José Luciano Franco, Ensayos
Históricos (Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1974), pp.47-92.
11 Lauren Derby, ‘National Identity and the Idea of Value in the Dominican Republic’, in Nancy Priscilla Naro
(ed.), Blacks, Coloureds and National Identity in Nineteenth-Century Latin America (London: ILAS, 2003), p.17.
Roland Ely describes how it was this contraband trade between the British and Spanish colonies that provided
the important stimulus to Cuba’s economy, forcing the Spanish to liberalise its trade policies (Roland T. Ely,
Cuando reinaba su majestad el azúcar: Estudio histórico-sociológico de una tragedia latinoamericana: el monocultivo en
Cuba. Origen y evolución del proceso (Havana: Imagen Contemporánea, 2001), pp.47-54).
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However, the most attractive reason to draw British West Indian planters to Cuba was that
here the slave system was not merely firmly entrenched, but flourishing. As the British
West Indian colonies began to move towards emancipation, in Cuba the growing sugar
industry was generating a massive increase in the demand for labour, of which there was a
chronic shortage in the island.12 As a result of this, far from seeing a reduction in the slave
trade following the signing of the Treaty for the Suppression of the Slave Trade by Spain
and Britain in 1817, the period saw an extension of slave trading practices. The number of
slaves in Cuba swelled from 38,879 in 1774, to 286,942 in 1827, and 436,495 in 1841, by which
time they represented 43.3% of the total population.13 While there was an initial reduction in
the number of slaves imported in the years immediately following implementation of the
Treaty, with an accompanying increase in prices in the Cuban slave market,14 the British
naval cruisers attempting to prevent the transportation of slaves from Africa to Cuba seem
to have been largely unsuccessful. Between 1835 and 1865, a mere 20,000 of the almost
400,000 slaves imported into Cuba were captured in this way.15 Even though the cruisers
were a perennial inconvenience for the slave traders, so ineffectual was their presence that
far from continuing to force up the value of slaves in Cuba, their price was actually reduced
during the 1830s and 40s.16
See, Manuel Moreno Fraginals, El Ingenio, 3 vols (Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1978); Franklin
Knight, Slave Society in Cuba during the 19th Century (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1970); Ramiro
Guerra y Sánchez, Azúcar y población en las Antillas (Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1970).
13 Ramiro Guerra y Sánchez et al. (ed.), Historia de la nación cubana, vol.2 (Havana, 1952), p.78; and Resumen del
censo de la población de la isla de Cuba (Havana, 1842), p.19 – cited by Knight, Slave Society in Cuba, p.24.
14 Laird W. Bergad, Cuban Rural Society in the Nineteenth Century: the social and economic history of monoculture in
Matanzas (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990), pp.69-76; Laird W. Bergad, Fé Iglesias & María del
Carmen Barcia, The Cuban Slave Market (1790-1880) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
15 Knight, Slave Society in Cuba, p.53; Lloyd, The Navy and the Slave Trade, pp.275-6; Archivo Histórico Nacional,
Madrid (AHN), Ultramar, Esclavitud, Legs.3547, 3552, 3553. Slave trade reports sent by British representatives in
Cuba to the British government throughout the period are a litany of complaints of the blatant breaches of the
Treaty, and show that there was a constant stream of illicit slave landings which they were all but powerless to
prevent (PRO, FO 84).
16 A number of factors saw prices increasing greatly once again from the late 1840s: repeal of British sugar duties;
uncertainty about the future of the slave trade; an increase in international sugar prices leading to increased
production; inequality in mechanization between agricultural and industrial phases of sugar production. Laird
W. Bergad, ‘Slave Prices in Cuba, 1840-1875’, Hispano American Historical Review, 67/4 (November 1987), pp.631655; Bergad, Cuban Rural Society; Bergad et al., Cuban Slave Market.
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Slavery was a far from illicit practice in Cuba. Contemporary commentators noted how it
seemed that everyone was implicated in some way. In 1843, the British abolitionist Francis
Ross Cocking, who had been resident for some time in Havana and was a close associate of
David Turnbull, told the London Anti-Slavery Convention that:
... in a country such as Cuba, where the whole white population,
foreigners as well as natives, are all either slave-holders in deed, or
slave-holders in principle, no law or laws, whether for the
suppression of the slave-trade, or for the partial amelioration of the
condition of the slaves, can have any executive principle, inasmuch
as those whose duty it is to give effect to such laws are interested in
defeating them.17
It was a long held complaint of British representatives in Cuba that the very local authorities
charged with overseeing and enforcing the anti-slave trade laws were themselves benefiting
from that trade. Such corruption was seen to begin with the Captain General (or Governor)
himself, who could expect to receive from half to one ounce of gold for every slave
imported, and worked its way down to local officials, who would be expected to turn a
blind eye to what was going on.18 Even many of the very British officials charged with
combating the slave trade in the island, but who earned their keep through commerce (in
some cases amassing quite sizeable fortunes), were themselves implicated. Charles Tolmé
was relieved of his duties as Consul partly as a result of the accusations of slave trading
made against him;19 and Tolmé’s replacement as Consul, David Turnbull, entered into a
feud with James Kennedy, the British Commissary Judge on the Havana Mixed Court for the
Suppression of the Slave Trade who had provided evidence against Tolmé, as a result of
British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Reporter (BFASR), vol.4, no.13 (21 June 1843), p.107.
BFASR, vol.2, no.3 (10 Feb. 1841), pp.34-5.
19 Letter from Foreign Office to Charles Tolmé, London, 31 Aug. 1838 and letter from Tolmé to Viscount
Palmerston, Havana, 14 July 1838 (PRO, FO 72/513).
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Kennedy’s personal employment of slaves.20 All this, of course, helped the British West
Indian planters bringing slaves into Cuba to cover their tracks.
The attempt to suppress the slave trade had another effect that was contrary to the spirit of
the law. Many of the captured slave traders were escorted into Cuban ports by the naval
vessels (generally British) that had detained them. Here the slaves on board came under the
jurisdiction of the local authorities, while the local Mixed Commission (on which both
Britons and Spaniards sat) deliberated as to whether the human cargo was in breach of the
Anti-Slave Trade treaties or not. This could take a long time, and generally resulted in a
deadlock that left the nominally liberated slaves, known as emancipados, in an often
indefinitely extended limbo. Although no longer anybody’s property, having been
confiscated from the slave traders, they effectively became the property of the state, which
would hire them out to local employers under nominal terms of apprenticeship, or use them
themselves for public works. 21 They thus became a source both of revenue for the local
authorities, and cheap labour. One of the emancipados who came to the attention of the
British, Gabino, had been pronounced free in 1824, yet spent the following sixteen years
being transferred by the government from one patron to another, generating a total of thirty
six ounces of gold for the local authorities. Working as a water carrier, he was forced to
hand over his earnings ‘to the persons to whom he has been transferred, exactly as a
numerous class of slaves in this country are compelled to do to their owners’.22 As a result,
such ‘freed’ slaves found themselves in a situation that was, if anything, worse than slavery:
Nominally of free condition these unfortunate persons are even
Rhodes House Library (Oxford) (RH), British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society papers (BFASS), MSS Brit Emp
s.18, G77; PRO, FO 84/357 and FO 84/358.
21 David R. Murray, Odious Commerce: Britain, Spain and the abolition of the Cuban slave trade (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1980), pp.271-97.
22 Letter from David Turnbull to HM Commissioners for the Suppression of the Slave Trade, Havana, 4 th January
1841 (PRO, CO 318/153).
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deprived of that imperfect protection which the laws of the Spanish
monarchy extend to the slave.23
While the suppression of the African slave trade by Britain appeared to do little to limit the
importation of slaves into Cuba, it did force Cuban planters to begin to look towards
alternative sources of labour. Despite the large numbers of slaves still entering the island,
there were nevertheless fewer than were required by the rapid growth of the Cuban sugar
industry.24 Some amongst the white creole elite promoted the immigration of white
labourers as an alternative to slavery – not for especially humanitarian reasons, but rather
out of fear of the growing black population of the island.25 Others began to look towards the
neighbouring islands of the Caribbean as a source of slaves. Acquisition of slaves through
kidnapping, and other illicit means, was long-established in the Caribbean in response to
labour shortages, and there had always been a certain amount of movement of slaves
around the region.26 This became accentuated in the first half of the nineteenth century in
response to the gradual ending of slavery in the region,27 but attention only began to become
drawn to it once the British had turned their back on slavery, and were keen to force the
other colonies in the region to do likewise. The same conditions that made it relatively easy
for British West Indian planters to carry their slaves into Cuba, and maintain their
Letter from David Turnbull to Gerónimo Valdés, Havana, 8 March 1841 (PRO, FO 72/584).
See Moreno Fraginals, El Ingenio; Ely, Cuando reinaba su majestad el azúcar. By 1867, more than 40% of the
world’s cane sugar came from Cuba (Alan Dye, Cuban Sugar in the Age of Mass Production: Technology and the
Economics of the Sugar Central, 1899-1929 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998), p.27). The expansion
was not just in terms of the number of plantations cultivating sugar, but also resulted from the many
technological improvements that speeded up the grinding and refining processes. Since the labour-intensive
field work remained largely unmechanized, this accentuated the need for more labourers. See, for example,
Manuel Moreno Fraginals, ‘Plantations in the Caribbean: Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic in the
late Nineteenth Century’, in Manuel Moreno Fraginals, Frank Moya Pons & Stanley L. Engerman (eds), Between
Slavery and Free Labor: the Spanish-speaking Caribbean in the Nineteenth Century (Baltimore & London: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1985), pp.3-21.
25 José Antonio Saco was particularly prominent in the promotion of white immigration as both economically and
racially necessary (amongst many such writings, see José Antonio Saco, ‘Análisis de una obra sobre el Brasil’,
Papeles sobre Cuba, Vol.2 (Havana: Ministerio de Educación, 1960), pp.30-90).
26 Derby, ‘National Identity and the Idea of Value’, p.20.
27 Dorsey, ‘Seamy Sides of Abolition’.
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anonymity, also made it a simple task for unscrupulous ship captains to pick up slaves and,
after 1834, ex-slaves in Jamaica and elsewhere, and carry them to deserted parts of the
Cuban coast, where the slaves would be offloaded, taken to a local plantation, and from
there enter into the Cuban slave market.
In the late 1830s and 1840s, a number of prominent cases brought these kidnappings to light.
In 1835, Francis James kidnapped a number of young Jamaican men and boys and carried
them on his ship to a remote point in Eastern Cuba, near Manzanillo, where he sold them to
the ‘Guamá’ plantation. Over the coming years, a number of them were discovered and
eventually released. One of them, referred to by the British Consul David Turnbull as ‘the
unfortunate Wellington’, became the subject of much argument between the British and
Spanish authorities, as the former attempted to locate his whereabouts, and eventually his
release. This was seven years after his original capture, and by this time he had passed
through several different owners, making it very difficult not just to trace him, but to also
establish his identity. In the end, two of the other Jamaicans who had been captured with
him, and later released, were brought back to Cuba to help in this investigation.28
It was very easy to hide such kidnapped slaves in Cuba at this time. Many of those
discovered had been given Hispanic slave names, to prevent their identification as British
subjects. One such was William Jones, also kidnapped from Jamaica in the 1830s, who was
renamed by his Cuban owners as ‘Julián Carabalí No.42’.29 Even when identity was
definitely proved, obstacles would still be placed in the way of achieving their release.
When the British Consul attempted to secure the release of the kidnapped Caribbean, Henry
Shirley, it was the Lieutenant Governor of the province where he was discovered who
28
29
Archivo Nacional de Cuba (ANC), Fondo Gobierno Superior Civil (FGSC), 844/28360.
ANC, FGSC, 843/28293.
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asserted that he would be delighted to release Shirley, if it was not for the fact that he was
dead.30 Subsequent enquiries revealed that this was a complete lie. Not only was Shirley
alive, but he also had a wife and daughter likewise held in slavery, for whom, upon his
release, he attempted to secure freedom.31
It was partly thanks to the investigations being pursued by such British officials as David
Turnbull into the presence of kidnapped British subjects in slavery in Cuba, that the
presence of so many black British subjects brought into the island by British West Indian
planters from, in particular, the Bahamas was discovered. Although elsewhere it has been
suggested that there were as few as 200 such people in Cuba,32 the investigation carried out
by David Turnbull suggests that there were in fact far more. By the time his enquiries were
cut short in 1842, he had already reached a tally of 431 of slaves, held by 28 different British
subjects from the Bahamas, who had been ‘fraudulently exported from the Bahamas in
contemplation of a general measure of emancipation, and are now, or their descendents,
deprived of their freedom’.33 Although there were cases uncovered in other districts (in
particular around Cárdenas), many of these were concentrated in the district of Candelaria,
near Holguin, in the East of the island. Such was the extent of their presence here that
contemporaries commented on how the only language that could be heard in that district
was English.
However, the total was almost certainly higher than that reported by Turnbull, given the
ease with which such black British subjects could be made to disappear into the general
Cuban slave milieu. The story of James Thompson, with whom we began, is particularly
ANC, FGSC, 844/28360.
ANC, FGSC, 844/28351.
32 Craton & Saunders, Islands in the Stream, p.225.
33 PRO, CO 318/157.
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illustrative – in part, because he was one of the very few victims of this traffic who
subsequently left detailed testimony of their experience. Thompson was the son of a black
slave, and an Irishman engaged in salt works on Ragged Island. Prior to his death, the latter
manumitted both Thompson and his mother, giving them at the same time a plot of land for
their support. In 1820, while still a child, the husband of his half-sister, an American called
John Norris, kidnapped Thompson. He ‘enticed me away, giving me some cake, and asking
me if I would go on a frolic with him.’ This ‘frolic’ involved taking him on a boat to Gibara
in Cuba, where the family had already decamped with many of their slaves. When
Thompson’s sister discovered what her husband had done, she insisted that he return him to
his mother. This occasioned a violent argument, prompting the sister to leave her husband,
but at the same time leaving Thompson in Norris’s clutches. To avoid his discovery, Norris
sold Thompson to another planter in Holguin. Although an investigation carried out by the
Governor of Holguin revealed the guilt of Norris, and resulted in the confiscation of his
property in Cuba, Thompson was not released, and was sold on first to a French baker in
Puerto Príncipe, and finally to a Cuban coffee planter near Havana. Here he remained in
slavery for many years, with his name changed to Santiago Ignacio Vilá, suffering greatly
under the tyranny of his master’s wife – who, herself mulatta, appears to have felt
particularly threatened by the mulatto Thompson, whose presence no doubt provided her
with an unwelcome reminder of her own slave roots.34
Although Thompson was a house slave, working as cook and coachman, his experience
reveals how even such a privileged slave would be subject to the arbitrary whims and
cruelty of their masters. When Thompson and another slave expressed their wish to get
married, they were cruelly punished:
34
ANC, FGSC, 845/28390.
13
... we were both seized ... and held by four men, we received 250
lashes each.... Our little stock of goods was burnt before our eyes,
and our poultry and stock taken from us. After the flogging, a
mixture of rum and cayenne pepper was poured upon the wounds,
and we were then sent to the hospital, where we were confined three
months. After this, we had irons placed on our feet, with a chain
connecting them suspended from the waist. A collar with three
hooks was placed round our necks and a coupling chain secured to
each collar. Thus linked together, we worked in the field for two
years and a half, being every night and during the hours of rest on
the Sundays and festivals, confined in the stocks. Throughout the
whole of this period, the collars and irons were never once removed.
Eventually Thompson managed to escape. After a dramatic journey, in which he narrowly
avoided capture on a number of occasions, he finally reached Havana, and the protection of
the British Consul, David Turnbull. Thanks to the latter’s intervention Thompson was
eventually enabled to return first to Nassau, then to England and finally Jamaica to testify as
to his experiences as a free British subject who spent twenty-one years in slavery in Cuba.35
Turnbull and the Escalera
Three years later, when the Military Commission of Matanzas made its final report on their
investigations into the alleged conspiracy for an uprising, now known as the Escalera, a
serious diplomatic situation was provoked by the explicit naming of this same, now exBritish Consul, David Turnbull, as having been ‘the prime mover and focus from which
35
BFASR, Vol.4, no.9 (3 May 1843); ANC, FGSC, 845/28390; PRO, CO 137/279.
14
emanated’ the plot, and others like it to bring about the ‘dislocation’ of Cuba from Spain.36
Throughout the investigation, his name had continually cropped up in the interrogations of
those who were arrested. The accusations made against him had ranged from the simple
promotion of slave emancipation, through the promising of weapons for an armed
uprising37, to bizarre suggestions, such as that he intended to intervene militarily in such an
uprising, so as to crown himself King of Cuba.38
It has been much questioned whether there ever was any plot for which Turnbull could be
made responsible. Just ten years after the event, a subsequent Governor of the Island, José
Gutiérrez de la Concha, commented that:
The findings of the military commission produced the execution,
confiscation of property, and expulsion from the island of a great
many persons of colour, but it did not find arms, munitions,
documents, or any other incriminating object which proved that
there was such a conspiracy, much less on such a vast scale.39
At the time of the 1844 trials, one of the British representatives in the island, James Kennedy,
was just as certain ‘that no such conspiracy ever existed’, suggesting that the authorities had
exaggerated the threat in their own interests.40 While some historians have picked up on
such doubts, questioning whether the conspiracy ever really existed or at least downplaying
it in favour of stressing the Spanish exaggeration of the threat;41 others have defended the
AHN, Estado, Legajo 8057/1, No.1.
AHN, Estado, 8057/1 No.2.
38 AHN, Estado, 8057/1 No.5.
39 José Gutiérrez de la Concha y de Irigoyen, Marqués de la Habana, Memorias sobre el estado político, gobierno y
administración de la isla de Cuba (Madrid, 1853), p.15.
40 Letter from Kennedy to Earl of Aberdeen, Havana, 8th July 1844 (PRO, FO 84/509).
41 Vidal Morales y Morales, Inicadores y primeros mártires de la revolución cubana (Havana, 1901), pp.129-177;
Francisco González del Valle, La Conspiración de la Escalera. I. José de la Luz y Caballero, Havana, 1925; Pedro
Deschamps Chapeaux, El negro en la economía habanera del siglo XIX, Havana, 1971; Knight, Slave Society in Cuba.
36
37
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idea that there was indeed an attempted revolution of slaves and free men at that time.42
However, although research suggests that the British, headed by Turnbull and his
associates, were heavily involved in the events of 1843 and 1844;43 the most compelling
interpretation has come from Robert Paquette, who identifies a number of overlapping,
racially-defined conspiracies, partly inspired (whether directly or indirectly) by British
abolitionism. The Spanish authorities, and Cuban white elite, perceived ‘the resultant unrest
as a single conspiracy and as a real threat to the existing social and imperial arrangements.’44
Although the full and true extent of Turnbull’s involvement, and that of other agents of
British abolition, continues to be debated, there is no doubt about Turnbull’s sincere
commitment to the cause of abolition of the slave trade, and slave emancipation – and it is
his militant activity in promoting these, and in particular that of the kidnapped black British
subjects, that led the finger of suspicion to be pointed in his direction. During 1838 and
1839, Turnbull made an extensive voyage around the Caribbean, including extensive visits
to the Spanish colonies, and in particular Cuba, where, as a guest of the then British
Superintendent of Liberated Africans, Dr Richard Robert Madden, he made a detailed study
of the operation of the slave system in the island.45 Turnbull published the results of this
investigation and journey the following year, and this brought him to the immediate notice
of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society in London, which, exploiting their close ties
José de J. Márquez, ‘Plácido y los conspiradores de 1844’, in Revista Cubana, 20, 1894; Fernando Ortiz, Hampa
afro-cubana; los negros esclavos; estudio sociológico y de derecho público (Havana, 1916); José Manuel de Ximeno, ‘Un
pobre histrión (Plácido),’ in Primer Congreso Nacional de Historia, Vol.2 (Havana, 1943), pp.371-377; also idem,
‘Apuntes para la historia constitucional de Cuba. Los complicados con Plácido,’, Libertad nacional, 4th May 1944;
Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, Social Control in Slave Plantation Societies: A Comparison of St Domingue and Cuba
(Baltimore, 1971); Jonathan Curry-Machado, ‘Catalysts in the Crucible: kidnapped Caribbeans, free black British
subjects and migrant British machinists in the failed Cuban revolution of 1843,’ in Naro (ed.), Blacks, Coloureds
and National Identity, pp.123-42.
43 Mario Hernández y Sánchez-Barba, ‘David Turnbull y el problema de la esclavitud en Cuba,’ Anuario de
estudios americanos, 14 (1957); Daisy Cué Fernández, ‘Plácido y la conspiración de la Escalera’, Santiago, no.42
(June 1981), pp.145-206; Rodolfo Sarracino, Inglaterra: sus dos caras en la lucha cubana por la abolición (Havana:
Editorial Letras Cubanas, 1989).
44 Paquette, Sugar is Made with Blood, pp.263-4.
45 PRO, FO 72/584.
42
16
to Marlborough’s Whig government, pushed both the Colonial Secretary (Lord John Russell)
and the Foreign Secretary (Viscount Palmerston) to appoint him, respectively, as
Superintendent of Liberated Africans and British Consul at Havana.46 Turnbull
enthusiastically accepted both positions, and arrived once again in Cuba in November
1840.47
He began to write almost daily letters of complaint to the Captain General of Cuba about the
treatment of British subjects. Not a professional diplomat, in these letters he made little
attempt to hide his contempt for all those in any way implicated in slavery. As a result,
despite having initially been greeted amicably by the Spanish authorities, Turnbull rapidly
managed to annoy them to such an extent that high-level calls began to be sent to London to
have him removed.48 Although the British Government continued to protect him for a
while, reprimands were sent to him complaining that:
You write with so much bitterness of feeling; with so much of sneer
and irony, that you excite a suspicion that you are actuated by some
personal or vindictive motives as much as by a sense of duty....
Moreover, you constantly exaggerate things, which require no
exaggeration, and thus you defeat your own purpose...49
But while his manner of pursuing his goals was objected to, it was the goals themselves that
were most onerous to the Spanish authorities in Cuba. Turnbull had been instructed by the
Foreign Office to ‘take all steps which may be necessary for finding out all British subjects in
David Turnbull, Travels in the West: Cuba; with notices of Porto Rico, and the Slave Trade (London, 1840).
PRO, FO 72/559.
48 Letter from Luis de Florez (Encargado de Negocios en Londres) to Earl of Aberdeen, London 22 Sep. 1841
(AHN, Estado 8054/1).
49 Letter from Palmerston to Turnbull, 2 Aug. 1841 (PRO, FO 84/358).
46
47
17
Cuba who are illegally detained in Bondage’.50 On his arrival in Havana, he inherited a
number of such cases from the previous Consul, Charles Tolmé, including the previously
mentioned cases of Wellington and Henry Shirley.51 Unlike either Tolmé or the British
Commissary Judge of the Mixed Court for the Suppression of the Slave Trade in Havana,
James Kennedy, Turnbull set out vigorously to pursue not just these, but all cases that came
to his attention relating to the plight of any British subject in the island, but above all of
those who had been kidnapped or otherwise brought into slavery in Cuba. Such concern on
his part also led him into confrontations with other resident British representatives, who felt
that he was overstepping his authority. Not only did Turnbull attack James Kennedy, the
Judge on the Mixed Court, for being implicated in the slave system he was supposed to
combat, but Kennedy in turn objected bitterly to Turnbull meddling in what was rightfully
his jurisdiction. 52
The Spanish authorities became especially displeased when Turnbull, not content to remain
in Havana waiting for cases to be brought to him, set out in search of evidence. One of the
first instances to be brought to his attention of British West Indian planters from the
Bahamas continuing their slave practices in Cuba, was that of William Henry Forbes, who
had established a coffee plantation near Cárdenas.53 In November 1841, Turnbull travelled
to Matanzas with the intention of investigating the claims that rightfully free black British
subjects had been kept in slavery by Forbes. From his room in the Hotel de Comercio, he
summoned into his presence a number of such people, so as to provide him with statements
as to their condition and history.54 This immediately came to the attention of the local
Letter from Palmerston to Turnbull, 26 Aug. 1841 (PRO, FO 84/358).
Letter from Tolmé to Turnbull, 9 Nov. 1840 (PRO, FO 72/559).
52 The result was a vitriolic exchange of letters between both men and the British government. The latter
eventually had to verbally knock their heads together, since the conflict was in danger of becoming a serious
embarrassment to the British state (PRO, FO 84/357 & 358).
53 Letter from Turnbull to Lord Stanley, 22 Dec. 1842 (PRO, CO 318/157).
54 ANC, Comisión Militar (CM), 51/1, pp.566-567.
50
51
18
authorities who, suspecting him to be engaged in more nefarious anti-slavery agitations,
refused him permission to continue to Cárdenas, and he was instructed to return at once to
his post in Havana.55
The campaign against Turnbull was eventually successful in securing his removal from the
office of British Consul.56 With the arrival of his replacement, Joseph Crawford, in June
1842,57 Turnbull (still nominally holding the office of Superintendent of Liberated Africans, a
position to which there was much moral, but very little real power attached) felt it to be too
dangerous for him to continue on shore, due to the mounting threats against his life by proslavery elements, and he sought refuge on board the British hulk, HMS Romney, that was
stationed in Havana harbour to house freed slaves prior to their removal from the island.58
He did not pass his confinement on board the Romney in idleness, and continued to send
long missives back to the British government not just concerning the plight of the
emancipados and kidnapped British West Indians, but on all manner of pet projects, from
details of the developing conspiracy on the island, to the education and habits of the black
soldiers stationed on the ship and proposals for the establishment of a colony of freed slaves
in Africa.59 However, frustrated at his inability to effectively pursue his objectives, and
pleading the ill health of his wife Eleanor, he set off for England August 1842, by way of
Nassau.
Finding himself in the Bahamas, Turnbull began to make enquiries into the full extent of this
illicit trade, with the full cooperation of the local functionaries and community.60 In Cuba he
ANC, FGSC, 843/28310, 844/28329 and AHN, Estado, 8054/1.
Aberdeen to Turnbull, 10 Feb. 1842 (PRO, FO 72/608).
57 Crawford to Aberdeen, 24 June 1842 (PRO, FO 72/609).
58 Turnbull to Aberdeen, 14 June 1842 (PRO, FO 72/608); Turnbull to Lord Stanley, 14 June 1842 (PRO, CO
318/157).
59 PRO, CO 318/157.
60 Various letters from Turnbull to Lord Stanley from Nassau, Sept. & Oct. 1842 (PRO, CO 318/157).
55
56
19
had succeeded in ascertaining the presence of ‘several hundreds of …British born subjects
illegally removed from this Colony’, and in Nassau ‘not a single day has elapsed …without
bringing me fresh accessions to my List of Candidates for Freedom.’ His presence seems to
have caused something of a stir, prompting many people to come forward with news of
relatives who had been taken into slavery in Cuba. After travelling to the Out Islands, ‘from
which it is known that abductions have taken place’, he chartered a boat, and returned to
Cuba.61 Although he was arrested upon his arrival, he managed to trick the Spanish officer
accompanying him into allowing him to visit one of the plantations containing a number of
the Bahamian slaves. Before his captor realised what was taking place, he was able to tell
them that they were entitled to their freedom, before being finally taken, under much closer
custody, to Havana. After a trial from which he was lucky to escape with his life, he was
expelled from the island, with the warning that if he ever dared to return, not just to Cuba
but to any Spanish colony, he would be summarily dealt with.62
The months that followed saw an increase in slave rebellion in Cuba. Already slave
resistance of both an active and passive kind had weakened the control of the Creole elite
and the Spanish authorities in the countryside; and the white population was becoming
increasingly hysterical about the blacks, the British, and the possibility of an uprising.63 Just
such an uprising broke out on 26 March 1843, on the Alcancía plantation, near Bemba (now
Jovellanos): one of the largest sugar estates in one of the principal sugar producing districts.
The revolt began with the killing of the mill engineer and two other white employees, and
much destruction of property. They then progressed to a neighbouring estate, and
‘destroyed the place leaving only untouched the sugar house’, before moving on to the Luisa
Letter from Turnbull to Lord Stanley, Nassau, 3rd September 1842 (PRO, CO 318/157).
Extracts of statements sent by Captain General Valdés to First Secretary of State in Madrid, 5 Nov. 1842 (AHN,
Estado, 8054/2); Crawford to John Bidwell, 6 Nov. 1842 (PRO, FO 72/609); Turnbull to the Lieutenant Governor
of the Bahamas, 22 Oct. 1842 (PRO, CO 23/113); H Leapern to Secretary of the British & Foreign Anti-Slavery
Society, Nassau, 5 Nov. 1842 (RH, BFASS, MSS Brit Emp s.18, C14/141).
63 Paquette, Sugar is Made with Blood, pp.78 & 180.
61
62
20
plantation, which suffered the same fate. In all, insurrection occurred that night on five of
the estates in the district, three of which were set fire to. 64
Fearing that the slaves working on the railways would join the revolt, the owners of the
Cárdenas – Júcaro line took two hundred of their slaves to Cárdenas, where they ‘were shut
up in a wooden building and on the night they managed to scape [sic] & went to join the
Mutineers.’ By the time they had covered the distance of about twenty kilometres that
separated Bemba from Cárdenas, the number of insurgents had reached almost one
thousand. Since damage was also caused to the railway that night, there was some
suspicion that they received assistance from some of the white carters and muleteers, whose
business was threatened by the new trains. Troops were quickly mobilised from Matanzas,
and, combined with the efforts of the local white population, the rebellious slaves were
driven into the hills. It was later reported that while only five whites were killed that night,
‘more than half the 950 engaged in the outbreak have perished, chiefly by their own hands,
the woods being filled with hanging victims.’ 65
Throughout 1843, even where open rebellion didn’t take place, generally higher levels of
slave insubordination were reported, even amongst the normally trustworthy house slaves.
The maroon leader, José Dolores, became something of a legend amongst plantation slaves
throughout Western Cuba, leading guerilla-style raids on plantations, and seeking to free
the slaves imprisoned following the Alcancía uprising. In April, rumours abounded in
Havana of other insurrectionary attempts, both near Güines and Cárdenas, although ‘it is
said they did not get to be of very serious moment.’ In May, the slaves rebelled on the Santa
Letter from J M Morales to Henry A Coit, Havana, 1 April 1843 (Biblioteca Nacional ‘José Martí’, Havana
(BNJM), C.M.Lobo 113, No.1, File 2; Paquette, Sugar is Made with Blood, p.177; Letter from Crawford to Aberdeen,
18 April 1843 (PRO, FO 72/634).
65 Morales to Coit, 1 April 1843 (BNJM, Lobo 113/1/2); Crawford to Aberdeen, 18 April 1843 (PRO, FO 72/634);
Paquette, Sugar is Made with Blood, p.210.
64
21
Rosa and Majagua plantations near Sabanilla, both owned by Domingo Aldama, one of the
wealthiest and most influential of the Creole landowners. In July, another such uprising
occurred on the Arratía estate, near Corral Falso.66
On 5th November there occurred what has been described as ‘the biggest rebellion ever seen
in the island.’67 Slaves on the Triumvirato sugar estate rose up and went to the neighbouring
Acana plantation, where there were still slaves being kept in shackles following an earlier
rebellion. Here they killed six whites, and wounded several others, before the troops from
Matanzas could arrive to drive them off. Far from being put down, the rebellion continued
to spread to other plantations in the vicinity. A small slave army of some three hundred was
ambushed by the troops on the San Rafael estate, and the rebels fled after a battle that lasted
several hours.68
What might have been dismissed as a spontaneous uprising took on a more sinister meaning
when one of the slave women of the Santísima Trinidad estate, not far from the Triumvirato
and Acana, denounced the existence of a conspiracy amongst the slaves to bring about a
general uprising. Her evidence, with which she obtained her own freedom, led to the
immediate arrest of hundreds of slaves from the plantations in the area, sixteen of whom
were executed.69 In January 1844, a conspiracy was allegedly discovered on the Andrea
estate, near Macurijes – very close to where the March 1843 uprising had broken out. It now
seemed that the plot, which was becoming increasingly generalised and exaggerated in the
popular mind, had involved not just slaves, but also free people of colour. The following
month, rumours were circulating that a deposit of arms and munitions had been discovered
Paquette, Sugar is Made with Blood, pp.178 & 210; Crawford to Aberdeen, 18 April 1843 (PRO, FO 72/634).
Manuel Barcia Paz, ‘Entre amenazas y quejas: un acercamiento al papel jugado por los diplomáticos ingleses en
Cuba durante la conspiración de la Escalera, 1844’, Colonial Latin America Historical Review , 10/1 (Winter 2001),
pp.1-25 – my translation.
68 Paquette, Sugar is Made with Blood, pp.209-10.
69 María del Carmen Barcia & Manuel Barcia Paz, ‘La Conspiración de la Escalera: el precio de una traición’,
Catauro: revista cubana de antropología, No.3 (2001), pp.199-204; Paquette, Sugar is Made with Blood, p.215.
66
67
22
near Güines; and a visiting North American commented that the slaves had become very
restive, and that conditions were ‘not very pleasant.’ White racial paranoia now began to
run out of control, with rumours of attempts to poison them spreading panic.70 Over the
coming months, the Military Commission in Matanzas uncovered what they claimed to have
been a highly organised conspiracy of free blacks and slaves, instigated by British
abolitionists. It was said that a government in waiting had even been established, with
agents spread throughout the island.71
From the start Turnbull was considered to be profoundly implicated in these occurrences,
and a sentence was passed against him en absentia by the Military Commission, claiming that
he was the ‘author and prime mover of the conspiracy’.72 Although Turnbull strenuously
denied not just any knowledge of the plot, but of having even the slightest contact with
inhabitants of the island since his expulsion almost two years previously,73 there is some
evidence that his activities had gone beyond just representing the interests of British
subjects. In March or April 1843, his replacement as Consul, Joseph Crawford, was called
upon by Juan Rodríguez, a leading member of the committee of free blacks that had been
established to coordinate the planned uprising. He told Crawford that they now required
the arms and munitions that Turnbull had promised them the year before.74 A few years
later such active involvement in conspiracy was confirmed by evidence given by Francis
Ross Cocking, who had served as Turnbull’s aide while the latter was in Cuba. Cocking
gave a detailed account of how, partly at the behest of Turnbull, he had acted as something
of an intermediary between the two racially divided committees that were organising the
Letter from José del Castillo to John Scoble, Havana, 14 Feb. 1844 (RH, BFASS, MSS Brit Emp s.18, C 15/10);
William Norwood Diary, 18 Feb. 1844 (Virginia Historical Society); Paquette, Sugar is Made with Blood, pp.217 &
222-3.
71 Sentence (12a) pronounced by Military Commission, Matanzas (AHN, Estado, 8057/1, No.1).
72 ANC, CM, 51/1, pp.591-2.
73 Turnbull to Aberdeen, 21 Aug. 1844 (PRO, FO 84/516); and Turnbull to Earl of Elgin, 21 Aug. 1844 (PRO, CO
137/280).
74 Crawford to Aberdeen, 18 April 1843 (PRO, FO 72/634).
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23
uprising; and had also travelled to Jamaica with the express purpose of building support
there for the rebellion.75 Turnbull himself boasted of his intimate relationship with Cuban
supporters of independence and abolition, claiming that ‘no other Englishman in the Island
enjoys equal opportunities with myself of arriving at correct information, as to the wishes,
intentions, and movements of the creole party.’76 The case against him appeared to become
all the more compelling with the discovery that one of Cuba’s leading opponents of the slave
trade, and influential member of the growing Cuban nationalist movement, Domingo del
Monte, had maintained an extensive correspondence with the North American diplomat,
Alexander Everett. In his letters, Del Monte denounced the existence of a conspiracy, and
the prominent role played by Turnbull, and through him the British.77
Catalysts
Nevertheless, it is unlikely that Turnbull was really guilty of being the chief instigator of the
planned uprising. Although there is no doubt that he was in close contact with many of
those allegedly involved, it is hard to sustain the suggestion that the conspiracy was the
direct result of his efforts, at the behest of the British government and the British and
Foreign Anti-Slavery Society.78 Not only is it questionable that there ever was a concerted
attempt to organise a rebellion, beyond the optimistic projections of a few and the paranoid
fantasies of the Spanish authorities and Cuban planters; but nothing has been found in the
correspondence between Turnbull and the British government and Anti-Slavery Society that
provides proof that he was acting under orders from either. In fact, quite the contrary, since
he always went to great pains to reassure the government that such charges made against
him were quite groundless;79 and the minutes of the Anti-Slavery Society, despite being kept
PRO, FO 72/709.
Turnbull to Lord Stanley, 31 July 1842 (PRO, CO 318/157).
77 Sarracino, Inglaterra.
78 Sarracino, Inglaterra, pp.132-5.
79 See, for example, Turnbull to Aberdeen, Havana, 30 Oct. 1841 (PRO, FO 84/358).
75
76
24
informed of events in Cuba by both Turnbull and Cocking, show a total absence of
awareness, let alone involvement, in any conspiracy.80 Of course, he may have been acting
on his own initiative, as Cocking’s ‘confession’ would appear to suggest.81 However, in his
letters from the Romney, while he revealed the extent to which he was personally familiar
with, and sympathetic to, the discontented elements on the island and urged the British
government to declare its support for any separatist attempt, his principal concern
continued to be full realization of the suppression of the slave trade.82 In fact, if it was not
for the subsequent uprisings and conspiracy trials, all Turnbull’s concrete movements and
actions in Cuba can readily be accounted for purely in terms of his pursuit of freedom for
black British subjects in slavery. The belief by some conspirators that he had promised a
supply of weapons can also be seen in such a light, and may easily have stemmed from
Turnbull too readily reassuring them that, in the event of a rebellion, the British state was
sure to come to their assistance. Thus resulted the misunderstanding that Turnbull spoke in
all matters with the full authority of the British state, rather than his own personal opinion
as to what that British state should do.
The Spanish charges against Turnbull were clearly exaggerated, and simply an example of
their scapegoating of external agents rather than facing up to the very real internal forces
that were pushing towards an explosion over emancipation and independence. To suggest
that he might have been the principal organiser and promoter of rebellion is to denigrate the
capabilities of the Cubans themselves to formulate and seek to put into practice their own
struggles. Turnbull himself had no illusions in this respect, stating that ‘those who would be
BFASS Minute Book No.2 (RH, MSS Brit Emp s.20, E 2/7).
PRO, FO 72/709. Although Cocking goes into great detail as to the workings of the committees organising the
uprising, and the plans they had, it is highly probable that he exaggerated the significance both of these, and of
his own and Turnbull’s involvement. At the time of writing his confessional letters, he was almost destitute in
Caracas, and was desperately seeking through his letters to curry favour with the British government. They
were none too impressed with his heroic claims, however, and clearly felt that there were no grounds on which
to reward him.
82 Turnbull to Lord Stanley, HMS Romney, 31 July 1842 (PRO, CO 318/157).
80
81
25
free themselves must strike the blow.’83 However, he may well have remained informed of
developments in the island, despite his protestations to the contrary. He was based in
Jamaica from 1843, and throughout that year there were widespread rumours in Cuba that
an expedition was planned against Cuba from Jamaica, in support of both the slaves and
independence forces.84 There had been a long-held fear in Cuba of the influence of
abolitionists in the island, and of the abolition campaign coming out of Jamaica.85 Evidence
was given in the course of the investigation into the Escalera that journeys had been made by
conspirators to Jamaica to receive training, make contact with co-conspirators, and to bring
back arms for their struggle.86 Given his previous tenacity, it seems unlikely that Turnbull
would have just given up all interest when the situation in Cuba was coming to such a head.
But it is questionable that there ever really was such a direct threat from Jamaica. In 1843, in
response to the rumours, the Captain General of Cuba, Gerónimo Valdés, sent agents to the
neighbouring island to investigate the claims. Their report unequivocally stated that ‘there
is not the least indication that here they are conspiring, or have recently conspired, against
the tranquillity’ of Cuba.87 Valdés reported to the Spanish government that such evidence:
… makes me suspect that the suggested revolution is no more than
the efforts of the slave traders poorly reconciled to the dispositions of
the Superior Government and to my decision to comply with these
and with the applicable treaties.88
The failure of Valdés to accept at face value the rumours of a conspiracy and impending
rebellion, which were being spread by those implicated in the slave trade, and his insistence
Turnbull to Lord Stanley, HMS Romney, 31 July 1842 (PRO, CO 318/157).
Charles Clarke to Aberdeen, 2 June 1843 (PRO, FO 72/634); also PRO, CO 137/275.
85 AHN, Estado, 8038/3.
86 AHN, Estado, 8057/1.
87 ANC, Asuntos Políticos (AP), 41/52 – my translation.
88 ANC, AP, 41/51 – my translation.
83
84
26
in trying to put into full effect the Anti-Slave Trade treaties, led to pressure being placed on
the Spanish government to replace him. Thus in October 1843, he lost his job as Governor to
Leopoldo O’Donnell, who arrived predisposed to take seriously the conspiratorial stories,
and who put into effect the extreme repression of the following year.89 This puts the
otherwise condemning disclosures of Del Monte in an entirely different light. It would seem
that he, and other abolitionist-minded members of the white Creole elite, were themselves
terrified by the rumours of impending social upheaval. Del Monte was a member of one of
the wealthiest, and most powerful, Cuban planter families: the Aldamas, who owned
plantations directly affected by the slave uprisings of 1843. For all that he was opposed to
the slave trade, this was for largely economic reasons; and neither he nor other liberallyminded whites were prepared to continue to support a bid for independence if this would
entail Cuba becoming another Haiti.90 Del Monte’s communications with Everett formed an
important part of the renewed negotiations between the Cuban elite and the United States
for possible annexation of the island.91 However, by tarring Turnbull and the British with
the brush of black rebellion, they simply succeeded in providing Spain with an excuse for
the reassertion of their dominion over Cuba.
Instead of seeking to prove or disprove Turnbull’s guilt, it would be more appropriate to
take a rather more subtle approach to the question of his involvement in the events of the
Escalera. Opposition in Cuba to the slave trade, slavery and Spanish dominion predated,
and was in no way reliant upon his presence in the island. However, the ardently
abolitionist activities of Turnbull can be seen to have acted as a catalyst in the development
José Luciano Franco, ‘La conjura de los negreros’, in Franco, Ensayos Históricos, pp.193-200.
See Sarracino, Inglaterra, pp.135-6.
91 Clarke to Russell, 20 Nov. 1840 (PRO, CO 318/149); Turnbull to Stanley, 31 July 1842 (PRO, CO 318/157);
Turnbull to Palmerston, 15 Dec. 1840 (PRO, FO 72/559); Turnbull to Palmerston, 27 Jan. 1841 (PRO, FO 72/584);
Crawford to Aberdeen, 12 Aug. 1842 (PRO, FO 72/609). For a full history of the imperial machinations of the
United States in Cuba, and the rivalry with Britain, see Luis Martínez-Fernández, Torn between Empires: economy,
society and patterns of political thought in the Hispanic Caribbean, 1840-1878 (Athens & London: University of
Georgia Press, 1994).
89
90
27
of not just Cuban abolitionism, but also of slave uprisings. By daring to speak the
unspeakable, he not only gave courage to opponents of slavery; but also planted the idea in
the heads of slaves, and not just those with some claim to British subject-hood, that they
were entitled to freedom, and that the British would come to their defence. Turnbull, and
his associate Cocking, may also have played an important part not so much in the
instigation of a conspiracy, either amongst white Creoles or their black counterparts, but in
the recognition that if the conspirators were to be at all successful then they would need to
overcome their racial differences. Since they had the ear of both sides, they were able to
form a communication bridge between the two, racially-defined insurrectionary committees.
However, as Del Monte’s correspondence with Everett reveals, Cuba was still not ready for
such a cross-racial harmony of interests, and such a project was doomed to failure.92
Turnbull may have helped plant the seed of such unity, but it was entirely beyond his power
to bring about its growth. Ironically, the very words and actions that helped stimulate slave
uprisings, also led to exposure of the ‘conspiracy’, and the repression that followed.
Although there is no evidence that kidnapped Caribbeans played an active part in the slave
uprisings, or in the conspiracy,93 and they were relatively few in number, their mere
presence on the island would have been provocative, and might have likewise had a
catalytic effect. They contributed to an increasingly generalised atmosphere of subversion of
Race continued to be the principal stumbling block for a successful Cuban national project throughout the
nineteenth century. Racial differences played a large part in the failure of the first war of independence (the Ten
Years War, 1868-78); and largely defined the limits of support for Maceo’s continued rebellion (1878-79). It was
not until José Martí succeeded in building a cross-race, cross-class national coalition of forces in the 1890s that
Cuba finally succeeded in ridding itself of Spanish control. However, racial differences continued to be at the
heart of contested visions of what the Cuban nation should be well into the twentieth century. See Aline Helg,
Our Rightful Share: the Afro-Cuban Struggle for Equality, 1886-1912 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 1995); Alejandro de la Fuente, Race, Inequality, and Politics in Twentieth-Century Cuba (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 2001); Pedro Pérez Sarduy & Jean Stubbs (eds), AfroCuba: An anthology of
writing on race, politics and culture (Melbourne: Ocean Press, 1993).
93 While no kidnapped Caribbeans were directly accused of complicity in the plot, some black British subjects
were arrested. Amongst them was Joseph Kelly, a freeborn native of the Bahamas. He arrived in Cuba in 1823,
working as a carpenter in the vicinity of Matanzas. Although he was not the only British worker to be caught up
in the trials, unlike the white workers who were all eventually released, he was found guilty and sentenced to ten
years of hard labour in the Ceuta penal colony (PRO, FO 72/664; PRO, CO 23/118; PRO, FO 84/520). Six years
later diplomatic pressures were continuing in an attempt to secure his release (PRO, FO 72/771).
92
28
the slave system, ranging from everyday acts of resistance and assertions of freedom, to
open rebellion.94 Having come from recently emancipated islands, they made liberty a
reality for the Cuban slaves. Ephemeral as freedom had proved to be for them as
individuals, their experience may have galvanised the latter in their own struggle, revealing
by example just how precarious the boundary between slavery and freedom was.95
Certainly the kidnapped Caribbeans did not create the conditions that led to an open
challenge being made by slaves to the system that had enslaved them. Those conditions
were already present in abundance; and their numbers were probably not sufficient in
themselves to cause an uprising. Nevertheless, they can be seen to have played an
important part in the igniting of the Cuban slaves in the events of 1843. The Spanish
authorities were clearly aware of this. Despite their annoyance at the investigations of
Turnbull, once it was definitively proved that a slave was in fact a British subject, they
generally acted quite quickly to not just free the individual, but to make sure they were
promptly removed from the island. This unwillingness to have in their midst free black
British subjects was illustrated in the months following the uncovering of the Escalera
conspiracy, when all such were summarily deported.96
Conclusion
In 1812, events occurred that were remarkably similar to those of the Escalera, albeit on a
somewhat smaller scale. Then too, a series of slave uprisings culminated in the uncovering
of a conspiracy to bring about a general rebellion. As in the Escalera, it was alleged that the
leader of the plot – the free, black carpenter, José Antonio Aponte – had promised his
See Rebecca J Scott, Slave Emancipation in Cuba: the Transition to Free Labour, 1860-1895 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1985).
95 Curry-Machado, ‘Catalysts in the Crucible’.
96 PRO, FO 72/664. Free blacks in general were seen as a threat to the established white order in Cuba
throughout the nineteenth century (see Jean Stubbs, ‘Race, Gender and National Identity in Nineteenth Century
Cuba: Mariana Grajales and the Revolutionary Free Browns of Cuba,’ in Naro (ed.), Blacks, Coloureds and National
Identity, pp.95-122). It was they who bore the brunt of the repression that followed the Escalera.
94
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followers external military assistance: not from Britain, in this case, but from the newly
independent black republic of Haiti.97 Poorly guarded words and rumour of impending
emancipation played a crucial part in fuelling unrest, and Aponte and his co-conspirators
were arrested and executed to set a brutal example.98
The Haitian Revolution had long-lasting effects upon the entire Caribbean region.99
Towards the end of the nineteenth century, Frederick Douglass recognised that despite the
positive role played by the North American and British abolitionists, ‘we owe incomparably
more to Haiti than to them all’. Haiti was ‘the original pioneer emancipator of the
nineteenth century’;100 and along with the Aponte conspiracy it continued to provide an
inspiration, both positive and negative, in the period of the Escalera. While free blacks and
slaves could take heart from the example of the neighbouring island, as they could from that
of the recent emancipation in the British West Indies, the white Cuban elite was able to use
the same example to warn the Spanish of the effects of any concession on either slavery or
the slave trade.101 In a striking parallel with the Aponte conspiracy, in 1844 the Military
Commission investigating the Escalera conspiracy took very seriously the rumours that
Haitian agents were operating in Cuba alongside the British, and were preparing an armed
intervention.102
Matt D. Childs, ‘The Aponte Rebellion of 1812 and the Transformation of Cuban Society: race, slavery and
freedom in the Atlantic World’, PhD diss., University of Texas at Austin, 2001; Matt D. Childs, ‘”A Black French
General arrived to conquer the Island”: images of the Haitian Revolution in Cuba’s 1812 Aponte Rebellion’, in
David Geggus (ed.), The Impact of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World (Columbia, SC: University of South
Carolina Press, 2001), pp.135-56; José Luciano Franco, ‘La Conspiración de Aponte, 1812’, in Franco, Ensayos
Históricos, pp.127-90.
98 Rumours that emancipation had been decreed in Spain, but denied by local authorities in Cuba, fuelled slave
uprisings at the time both of the Aponte and Escalera conspiracies. See David Murray, ‘The Slave Trade, Slavery
and Cuban Independence’, Slavery & Abolition, 20/3 (Dec. 1999), pp.112-13. Similar events occurred in Jamaica in
1831, sparking unrest there (see Michael Craton, Testing the Chains: Resistance to slavery in the British West Indies
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982), pp.291-321).
99 David Barry Gaspar & David Patrick Geggus (eds), A Turbulent Time: the French Revolution and the Greater
Caribbean (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997); Geggus, Impact of the Haitian Revolution.
100 Frederick Douglass, ‘Lecture on Haiti’, in Philip S. Foner (ed.), The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass (New
York: International Publishers, 1950-75), Vol.4, pp.484-6.
101 Murray, ‘Slave Trade, Slavery and Cuban Independence’, p.113.
102 ANC, CM, 51/1.
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Such a suspicion was almost certainly as spurious as that which painted Turnbull as the
chief instigator of the planned rebellion; yet it is every bit as illustrative both of the catalytic
effect that such events and individuals can have, and of the importance played in the history
of Cuba by the informal networks of communication that underlay the official politics of the
island. News of the Haitian Revolution had been rapidly spread about the Caribbean,
without respect for geographical, national, linguistic or ethnic boundaries, disseminated
along unofficial trade routes by a motley crew of sailors, privateers, refugees, migrant labour
and slaves.103 Likewise, Cuban slaves could not be kept ignorant of the progress of
emancipation in the region, and would have been fully apprised of the emancipation of
British slaves in the 1830s.
For all that the Spanish sought to assert the isolation of their prized sugar colony, and the
Cubans gradually developed a sense of distinct nationhood, Cuban society and politics
existed and developed in the interstices of such trans-national networks.104 That Turnbull,
as British Consul, was suspected of spreading dissent was not far-fetched at a time when
most European and North American Consuls acted as agents for the penetration of their
countries’ imperial interests.105 This was compounded by the knowledge that Turnbull was
not just an active abolitionist, but also had close links with the Baptist, and other Protestant
missionary networks that were not simply seeking to extend their religious influence in the
region, but had played a significant part in the abolition and emancipation campaigns
Julius S Scott III, ‘The Common Wind: Currents of Afro-American communication in the era of the Haitian
Revolution’, PhD dissertation (Duke University, 1986).
104 Jonathan Curry-Machado, ‘Beneath and Beyond the Nation: Cuba at the interstices of nineteenth century
trans-national networks’, Paper given at Workshop ‘Beyond the Nation: new directions in the study of
nineteenth century Latin America’, Institute of Latin American Studies, London, 13 June 2003.
105 Philip D. Curtin, Cross Cultural Trade in World History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), p.246.
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(including uprisings) in the British West Indies.106 All this occurred alongside the ongoing
migration around the Caribbean of individuals, both free and enslaved, whose example
ensured that the ending of slavery in one location would have repercussions throughout the
region.
Thus the process by which slavery came to an end in the British colonies, while it continued
in Cuba, led to the surreptitious importation of black British Caribbeans, both brought by
their white British Caribbean owners and kidnapped by slave traders to feed the hungry
Cuban labour market. In many cases they remained hidden in Cuba for many years,
phantasmagoric reminders of British slavery and catalysts in the growing discontent in
Cuba. Their presence stimulated British abolitionist agitation, which in turn helped provoke
the uprisings and conspiracy, while at the same time helping to weaken the revolutionary
attempt by permitting the Spanish authorities to label it as the result of foreign intervention,
so leading to the repression that followed being all the more fierce.
Hence it was not really such a coincidence that James Thompson made his declarations
about his kidnapping into slavery in Cuba at the same time that Cuba was burning under
the extremities of the repression provoked by the reality of a year of slave uprisings, and the
rumour of a far reaching conspiracy to end slavery and Spanish dominion in the island. The
two events were closely linked. The very presence in Cuba of such ghosts of British slavery,
their discovery and the campaigns to secure their release, contributed to the conditions that
ignited the powder keg that Cuba had become.
Mary Turner, Slaves and Missionaries: the disintegration of Jamaican slave society, 1787-1834 (Urbana: University of
Illinois Press, 1982); Catherine Hall, Civilising Subjects: metropole and colony in the English Imagination, 1830-1867
(Cambridge: Polity Press, 2002).
106