Based on diverse sources from numerous archives and an extensive bibliography, The Deepest South sheds light on US involvement in the transatlantic slave trade after the importation of slaves to the USA was made illegal in 1808. Seeking profits from a massive slave trade to Brazil and Cuba, US capitalists responded. Shipyards from Maine to Baltimore built ships specifically adapted for this odious commerce. The business attracted thousands of persons, including ship captains, ship crews, tree cutters, carpenters, sail makers, coopers, merchants, farmers and distillers. A good example of a ‘hidden history’ of the Atlantic World of the nineteenth century, US involvement in this trade generated huge wealth from the 1810s to 1860s. Major beneficiaries included families, companies and universities (Brown, Yale and many others).
British suppression efforts to halt the transatlantic slave trade to Brazil angered US southerners. The US Secretary of State John C. Calhoun from South Carolina viewed the interests of US slaveholders as ‘inextricably linked’ to the slave regimes of Brazil and Cuba. He argued that English success in undermining slavery in Brazil and Cuba would force emancipation in the USA. Calhoun considered British captures of slave vessels as part of a plot to expand British imperial interests. Undeterred by British actions, US merchants flourished. Between 1840 and 1845, the number of US ships sold in Rio de Janeiro increased sixteen-fold and many of these were subsequently used in the slave trade.
Into this volatile milieu stepped Henry A. Wise, future Governor of Virginia best known as the man who allowed the execution of John Brown in 1859. An outspoken racist who defended slavery, Wise was appointed Minister to Brazil from May 1844 to October 1847. After observing the desperate conditions of recently-arrived African slaves in the city of Rio de Janeiro, Wise became an opponent of the slave trade. He feared the ‘Africanisation’ of Brazil would cause a second Haitian Revolution (1791–1804). Wise also saw history repeating itself. In the same way that entrepreneurs in the US north had transported slaves to Virginia, thus responsible for causing so many problems for the slave south (such as slave revolts and the presence of unwanted blacks), so they now continued to do the same in Brazil. Calhoun and high-ranking Brazilian officials reacted negatively to Wise's activities. Feeling the pressure, Wise resigned. His ‘rhetorical crusade’ did little to halt the arrival of thousands of Africans to Brazilian shores on US-built ships.
Brazil loomed large in US domestic politics from the middle of the nineteenth century. Several thousand US citizens from the eastern seaboard seeking gold in California disembarked in the city of Rio de Janeiro in 1849 during a stopover on their journey west by sea. The largest slave city in history, Rio made a marked impression on these adventurers. For some, it hardened their anti-black prejudice. For many others, it strengthened abolitionist sentiments.
The Amazon became another locale that inspired heated debate. The Virginian Matthew Fontaine Murray devised a plan to send slaves from the US south to settle in the Amazon Basin. Influenced by the ideas of his compatriot Henry Wise, Murray suggested that selling US slaves to Brazil would help to end the transatlantic slave from Africa. In his eyes, everyone would benefit. Professor Horne astutely writes that ‘it was the logic of a Virginia slave breeder; a cleansing of the US South of Africans would serve to, at least, reduce slavery – and the number of Negroes – in that nation, just as it would increase it in Brazil’ (p. 108). Discussions on this topic continued through the Civil War. In the end, the scheme came to naught, undermined by domestic labour demands in the USA and anti-black prejudice in Brazil. An estimated 5,000 former Confederates did emigrate to Brazil, their number dwindling to some 750 by 1876. The author provides insights into the biases and legacy of this group of settlers.
Brazil often seems far away for US citizens in the twenty-first century. Yet, in the nineteenth century, it was as close as Mexico and Cuba in the minds of many North Americans.
This book is a good example of Atlantic World history. The author depicts through rich description and numerous examples the many tentacles of the transatlantic slave trade in the nineteenth century. The carpenters and merchants of Salem, Massachusetts and Portland, Maine, had much to do with the capture and transport of Africans to Brazil. The Deepest South demonstrates the close connections of slavery and emancipation in the Americas.
