From 1838 to 1853 the importations, according to records laid before the British House of Commons, were as follows:
| 1838 | 10,495 | 1846 | 419 | |
| 1839 | 10,995 | 1847 | 1,450 | |
| 1840 | 10,104 | 1848 | 1,500 | |
| 1841 | 8,893 | 1849 | 8,700 | |
| 1842 | 3,630 | 1850 | 3,500 | |
| 1843 | 8,000 | 1851 | 5,000 | |
| 1844 | 10,000 | 1852 | 7,924 | |
| 1845 | 1,300 | 1st half | 1853 | 7,329 |
| 99,239 | ||||
During the early years of the slave trade, the Spanish masters treated their slaves not so well as they treated their work animals. But gradually they began to realize that after all it was cheaper to keep the slaves that they had in good physical condition than to be continually buying new ones, especially when the trade had fallen off because of legal restrictions.
A greater number of colored women were imported; the moral condition of the negroes, especially as to marriage, became a subject of greater interest to the plantation owners; the negroes were encouraged to marry, and wives were recruited from among the mulattoes as well as those of pure black blood. Some efforts were made for better sanitary conditions toward the middle of the century, and persons were employed on the estates whose business it was to look after the sick slaves and nurse them. In the last analysis, however, the conditions under which the slaves lived on each plantation rested entirely—as it did in the United States—on the kind of overseers under whom they were employed.
There are many touching stories of the devotion of the slaves to their master. This was quite as great as among the old southern families in the United States. The Cuban was naturally a kind master—we wish the Spanish-born planter might always be as well spoken of—and he inspired in his slaves a feeling of real affection. This often developed into a single hearted devotion so great that the slave grew to count his master's enemies as his own.
This is not extraordinary when we consider that the African, torn from his own home and family ties and transported to a strange country, among a strange people, took the name of his master and became a part of the big household, identified not only with the working life but also with the social life of the little community represented by the plantation. Fierce as he may have been in his native surroundings, he was naturally affectionate and clung eagerly to the one who, holding the slave's whole destiny in his hand, yet was kind to him. The women slaves, especially those of mixed blood, were bound to their masters often by ties of consanguinity. They attended the master's wife when her children were born, nursed the babies at their own breasts, and served and waited upon the second generation as foster mothers. They were like grown up children. The places where they lived, the food that they ate and the clothing that they wore were all under the control of the one whom they served. When he fell ill, they were devoted nurses, and when he died, they buried him, and manifested their grief in their own primitive fashion.
The slave owner who treated his slaves well, until other factors began to enter the situation, had little to fear from them. But masters were not always kindly. There were as many different varieties of human disposition in those days as in these. The negro can hate as fiercely as he can love, and gradually, as he acquired more knowledge and understanding, on the estates where kindness was not the law, there grew up mutterings of discontent and hatred, and hints of possible uprisings.
It was the excessive mortality among the black population which first, perhaps, influenced their owners to favor better laws and more natural and healthful conditions for them. Curiously enough, up to the opening of the nineteenth century there were "religious scruples" against the introduction of female slaves on the plantations, although the colored women were much less expensive to purchase than the men. The colored men were condemned to celibacy, as Baron Humboldt told us, "under the pretext that vicious habits were thus avoided." They were worked in the day time, and locked in at night to avoid their having any chance for female companionship. And yet, in spite of the fact that these "scruples" were "religious," we find the paradoxical situation that the Jesuit and Bethlehemite friars were the only planters who encouraged the importation of women slaves.
Don Francisco de Arango, being a clear sighted man, endeavored to bring about the imposition of a tax upon such plantations as did not have at least one third as many women as men among their slaves. He also tried to have a duty of $6 levied upon every male negro imported from Africa. In both of these efforts he was defeated, but they had the excellent effect of stirring public opinion. While the juntas were opposed, as always, to enacting any such drastic measures, yet there began to be a disposition to encourage the mating of the slaves, to increase the number of marriages, to give each negro a little cabin of his own that he might call home, and, when children came, to see that they were properly cared for. Then, too, efforts were made to insure lighter work for the women during pregnancy, with a total relief as the time for the birth of the coming child grew nearer.
How much of this came about because the slave owners were forced to see that a continuation of the early conditions would compass their own ruin, and how much because they were naturally inclined to be humane when their duty was brought home to them, it is difficult to determine; but judging from the Cuban's naturally kindly disposition, we are inclined to believe that in many instances the master was glad to treat his slaves as well as he could, when he began to realize that after all they were not merely property—cheap labor—but human beings with emotions and longings very much like his own. Under these bettered conditions the rate of negro mortality fell as low as from eight to six per cent. on the best plantations.