CHAPTER XXVIII. CUBA AND PORTO RICO.
Cuba, the stronghold of Spain, in the western world, has labored under the disadvantages of slavery for more than three hundred years. The Lisbon merchants cared more for the great profits made from the slave-trade, than for the development of the rich resources of this, one of the most beautiful of the West India Islands, and therefore, they invested largely in that nefarious traffic. The increase of slaves, the demand for sugar and the products of the tropics, and the inducement which a race for wealth creates in the mind of man, rapidly built up the city of Havana, the capital of the Island. The colored population of Cuba, like the whites, have made but little impression on the world outside of their own southern home. There is, however, one exception in favor of the blacks. In the year 1830, there appeared in Havana a young colored man, whose mother had recently been brought from Africa. His name was Placido, and his blood was unmixed. Being with a comparatively kind master, he found time to learn to read, and began developing the genius which at a later period showed itself.
The young slave took an interest in poetry, and often wrote poems which were set to music and sung in the drawing-rooms of the most refined assemblies in the city. His young master, paying his addresses to a rich heiress, the slave was ordered to write a poem embodying the master’s passion for the young lady. Placido acquitted himself to the entire satisfaction of the lover, who copied the epistle in his own hand, and sent it on its mission. The slave’s compositions were so much admired that they found their way into the newspapers; but no one knew the negro as their author.
In 1838, these poems, together with a number which had never appeared in print, were entrusted to a white man, who sent them to England, where they were published and much praised for the talent and scholarly attainment which they evinced. A number of young whites, who were well acquainted with Placido, and appreciated his genius, resolved to purchase him, and present him his freedom, which was done in 1842.
But a new field had opened itself to the freed black, and he began to tread in its paths. Freedom for himself was only the beginning; he sighed to make others free.
The imaginative brain of the poet produced verses which the slaves sung in their own rude way, and which kindled in their hearts a more intense desire for liberty. Placido planned an insurrection of the slaves, in which he was to be their leader and deliverer; but the scheme failed.
After a hasty trial, he was convicted and sentenced to death. The fatal day came, he walked to the place of execution with as much calmness as if it had been to an ordinary resort of pleasure. His manly and heroic bearing excited the sympathy and admiration of all who saw him. As he arrived at the fatal spot, he began reciting the hymn, which he had written in his cell the previous night.
“Almighty God; whose goodness knows no bound,