Matthew Calbraith Perry: A Typical American Naval OfficerGriffis, William Elliot
History
Matthew Calbraith Perry: A Typical American Naval Officer
Griffis, William Elliot
Perry, Matthew Calbraith, 1794-1858
“In this predatory warfare the most flagitious acts of cruelty are
committed. The ties of nature are entirely cut asunder for it is not
infrequent that parents dispose of their own children.”
The cargoes which the slavers carried to use in barter for human flesh
consisted of New England rum, Virginia tobacco, with European gunpowder,
paint, muskets, caps, hats, umbrellas and hardware. Most of the wearing
apparel was the unsalable or damaged stock of European shops. The Guinea
coast was the Elysium of old clothes men and makers of slop work. Long
out of fashion at home, these garments sufficed to deck gorgeously the
naked body of a black slave-peddler, while the rum corroded his interior
organs. The _Caroline_, a French ship overhauled by Perry, had made ten
voyages to Africa. The vessel, cargo and outfit cost $8,000, the value
of the cargo of one hundred and fifty-three slaves at $250 each, was
$38,250, a profit of nearly $30,000 for a single voyage. The sixty men,
ten women, and sixty-three children stowed in the hold were each fed
daily with one bottle of water and one pound of rice. The ships found
off Old Calabar and Cape Mount—now seats of active Christian and
civilizing labors—having no one on board who could speak English, were
completely fitted for carrying slaves. Those sailing below the equator,
and under their national flags, could not be molested. No Congress of
nations had yet outlawed slave-trading on all the seas as piracy. The
commander of the British squadron reported: “No Americans are engaged in
the [slave] trade. They would have no inducement to conceal their real
character from the officers of a British cruiser, for these have no
authority to molest them. All slaves are now under foreign flags.”
In this villainous work, the Portuguese from first to last have held
undisputed pre-eminence. Perry, after his three African cruises, was
confirmed in his opinion formed at first, and which all students of
Africa so unanimously hold. Mr. Robert Grant Watson, who has minutely
studied the national disgrace in many parts of the world thus formulates
this judgment.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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