The Empire of Necessity: Slavery, Freedom, and Deception in the New World

by Grandin, Greg

  12. For Rufus Low on the Essex, see Library of Congress, “Sailing Master Rufus Low’s Journal,” Edward Preble Papers; George Henry Preble, The First Cruise of the United States Frigate Essex, Salem: Essex Institute, 1870, p. 43; Christopher McKee, Edward Preble: A Naval Biography, 1761–1807, Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1996, p. 81.

  21. DECEPTION

  1. Rogers, Cruising Voyage, p. 145.

  2. Ibid., p. 146.

  3. For Santa María Island, see ANC (Santiago), Capitanía General, vol. 772, no. 5 (1804); Capitanía General, vol. 522, no. 22 (1757); Real Audiencia, vol. 3000, no. 279 (1665); Real Audiencia, vol. 3030, no. 36 (1637). Also in AGI (Seville), in Chile 25 and 221, correspondencia, there are documents describing Spain’s fear, in 1804, of losing the island to British pirates and smugglers.

  4. Melville, Benito Cereno, p. 161.

  5. Scholars have celebrated the trickster tradition among African Americans, who kept alive oral fables about wily humans and crafty animals such as Brer Rabbit, who use their wits to outfox the powerful. The tales, told at night around the hearth, could be traced back to peasant and pastoralist communities in Africa and not only allowed slaves to laugh at their masters but to pass on survival strategies, how to use guile as a weapon, to the next generation. See Larry E. Hudson, Walking toward Freedom: Slave Society and Domestic Economy in the American South, Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 1994, pp. 150–52; Lawrence Levine, Black Culture and Black Consciousness: Afro-American Folk Thought from Slavery to Freedom, New York: Oxford University Press, 1978, p. 125. Sterling Stuckey explicitly links Benito Cereno’s Babo to Brer Rabbit: “The play of irony that informs Babo’s activities … is precisely that adopted by Brer Rabbit in his African American expression.… What is certain is that Babo is so much like Brer Rabbit that it is perfectly logical that he should have come from Senegal, a thriving center of tales of the African hare, Brer Rabbit’s ancestral model.” Both Brer Rabbit and Babo are “linked to a shared sense of moral righteousness, which leads them to become forces of retribution that unsentimentally punish the purveyors of greed and cruelty” (Going through the Storm: The Influence of African American Art in History, New York: Oxford University Press, 1994, pp. 165, 167). Babacar M’Baye, in The Trickster Comes West: Pan-African Influence in Early Black Diasporan Narratives, Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2009, examines the influence of Senegalese folklore, particularly that associated with the Wolof, on African American culture.

  6. For Islam and ideas of slavery and freedom, see William Gervase Clarence-Smith, Islam and the Abolition of Slavery, London: Hurst and Co., 1988, pp. 1–4, 19–25, 152–54, 223–29; Franz Rosenthal, The Muslim Concept of Freedom prior to the Nineteenth Century, Leiden: Brill, 1960, pp. 32, 110–12; Paul Lovejoy, “The Context of Enslavement in West Africa: Ahmad Baba and the Ethics of Slavery,” Slaves, Subjects, and Subversives, ed. Landers and Robinson, pp. 9–38.

  7. Delano, Narrative, pp. 324–25.

  22. RETRIBUTION

  1. Quotations for this chapter are found in Delano, Narrative, pp. 325–28. For the evolution of maritime insurance, see Jonathan Levy, Freaks of Fortune: The Emerging World of Capitalism and Risk in America, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2012. For the Zong, see Jane Webster, “The Zong, in the Context of the Eighteenth-Century Slave Trade,” and James Oldham, “Insurance Litigation Involving the Zong and Other British Slave Ships, 1780–1807,” both in Journal of Legal History 28 (December 2007): 285–98 and 299–318. See also Ian Baucom, Specters of the Atlantic: Finance Capital, Slavery, and the Philosophy of History, Durham: Duke University Press, 2005.

  23. CONVICTION

  1. Delano, Narrative, p. 328.

  2. Darwin, Journal of Researches, vol. 2, pp. 46–47.

  3. Guillermo I. Castillo-Feliú, Culture and Customs of Chile, Westport: Greenwood, 2000, p. 27; Sergio Villalobos, Tradición y reforma en 1810, Santiago: RIL Editores, 2006, p. 199; Diego Barros Arana, Historia general de Chile, Santiago: Editorial Universitaria, 2002, vol. 8, p. 15; “Observaciones sobre los serviles anarquistas de Córdova de la Plata,” Década Araucana, July 12, 1825, p. 5.

  4. AGP (Mendoza), Censo parroquial mes de setiembre de 1777, folder 28, document 2.

  5. Moulton, Concise Extract, p. 83. Rozas would later befriend another American, Procopio Pollock, a freemason from Philadelphia and ship surgeon on the Warren who spread republicanism through his clandestine Gazeta de Procopio, which translated revolutionary news and propaganda into Spanish.

  6. Here, “war” is translated from “hiceron armas contra los Americanos.”

  7. The most common crimes that would get a convict sent to Valdivia were desertion, theft, murder, and vagrancy, with the prison population split roughly between Spaniards and mestizos, with a few Indians. In early 1804, there were no Africans or African descendants among the population. See ANC (Santiago), Real Audiencia, vol. 2470 (“Relación que manifiesta los desterrados que se hallan en las obras de plaza, y presidio de Valdivia”).

  8. AGC (Santiago), Capitanía General, vol. 873 (“Expediente formado ante la Intendencia de Concepción relativo a la construcción de un tabladillo en el Cuartel de Dragones de Concepción”).

  9. Hernán San Martín, Nosotros los Chilenos, Santiago: Editora Austral, 1970, p. 251.

  10. Barros Arana, Historia general, vol. 8, p. 78, for Bostonés.

  11. ANC (Santiago), Contaduría Mayor, 1st ser., vol. 1634, ff. 334–335.

  INTERLUDE: THE MACHINERY OF CIVILIZATION

  1. Newton Arvin, Melville, New York: Sloane, 1950, p. 180, for “wild egoism.”

  2. Jeremy Harding, “Call Me Ahab,” London Review of Books, October 31, 2002.

  24. LIMA, OR THE LAW OF GENERAL AVERAGE

  1. For the descriptions of Callao, see George Peck, Melbourne, and the Chincha Islands, with Sketches of Lima, and a Voyage Round the World, New York: Scribner, 1854, pp. 142–145; Gilbert Farquhar Mathison, Narrative of a Visit to Brazil, Chile, Peru, and the Sandwich Islands, London: Bentley, 1825; Proctor, Narrative of a Journey, William Bennet Stevenson, Historical and Descriptive Narrative of Twenty Years’ Residence in South America, London: Longman, 1829.

  2. Charles Walker, Shaky Colonialism: The 1746 Earthquake-Tsunami in Lima, Peru, and Its Long Aftermath, Durham: Duke University Press, 2008, p. 10.

  3. Hugh Salvin, Journal Written on Board of His Majesty’s Ship Cambridge, from January, 1824, to May, 1827, Newcastle: Walker, 1829, p. 30. Salvin here perhaps mistakenly attributes the skeletons as belonging to recent victims of royalist forces during the war for independence, since what he describes is nearly identical to what Delano witnessed years before that war.

  4. Delano, Narrative, pp. 487–88.

  5. Peck, Melbourne, p. 150.

  6. Delano, Narrative, p. 494.

  7. Bernabé Cobo, Historia de la fundación de Lima, Lima: Imprenta Liberal, 1882, p. 56.

  8. Delano, Narrative, p. 494.

  9. AGN (Lima), Real Hacienda Caja Real, legajo 1931, cuaderno 1630, for the dress of los negros del rey.

  10. For months, Cerreño had been presumed dead and his ship lost; his creditors had filed papers to recover their investment through a sort of royal insurance policy. See AGN (Lima), signatura GO-BI 2, legajo 91, expediente 775.

  11. For claims made on Aranda’s cargo by his father-in-law, Isidro Maza, and his wife, Carmen Maza, see AGP (Mendoza), notary records, José de Porto y Mariño, no. 152, ff. 46–47 (“Transcripción del poder de don Isidro Sainz de la Maza”), and ff. 91v–92v (“Transcripción del poder del 27 de julio de 1805 de doña María del Carmen Maza”). For Nonell, see AGN (Buenos Aires), notary records, Inocencio Agrelo, no. 6, ff. 387–88 (“Poder de Don Juan de Nonell a favor de Don Antonio de Estapar”); AGN (Lima), notary records, José Escudero de Sicilia, no. 214, ff. 660–63, 715v–719, 1177v, 1182. For Cerreño’s debt, see AGN (Lima), notary records, José Escudero de Sicilia, no. 214, ff. 660–63, 715v–719, 1048r–1949r, 1177v; AGN (Lima) TC-GO 2, legajo 13, ex
pediente 612 (“José Escudero de Sicilia, escribano mayor del Real Tribunal del Consulado de Lima solicita la cancelación de cantidad de pesos por las costas obradas en los autos de la avería gruesa que sufrió la fragata Trial, por la sublevación de una partida de negros”); and AGN (Lima), TC-JU, legajo 182, expediente 519 (“Ante el Real Tribunal del Consulado de Lima”).

  12. Michael Lobban, “Slavery, Insurance, and the Law,” Journal of Legal History 28 (December 2007): 320–22; Tim Armstrong, “Slavery, Insurance, and Sacrifice in the Black Atlantic,” in Sea Changes: Historicizing the Ocean, ed. Bernhard Klein and Gesa Mackenthun, New York: Routledge, 2004.

  13. AGN (Lima), Real Hacienda, legajo 1033, cuarderno 1632 1805.

  14. Orlando Patterson, Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982, pp. 5, 331. Many of these sales are in AGN (Lima), notary records, Manuel Malarin, no. 390. See especially ff. 555, 571, 574, 620, 667, 673. See also AGN (Lima), Cabildo-Causas Civiles (CA-JO 1), legajo 158, expediente 2994; legajo 153, expediente 280; and legajo 154, expediente 2848.

  25. THE LUCKY ONE

  1. AGN (Lima), TC-JU 1, legajo 182, expediente 519 (“Autos seguidos por Miguel de Monrreal, capitán y ex maestre de la fragata ‘Trial’”) September 25, 1806; AGN (Lima), Real Hacienda, legajo 1036, expediente 1635.

  2. AGN (Lima), Real Audiencia, Tierras y Haciendas, legajo 21, cuaderno 133, f. 44 (“Testimonio del Inventario de la Hacienda de Humaya”), and AGN (Lima), signatura C-13, legajo 25, expediente 31 (“La Administración e Intendencia de Temporalidades con Benito Cerreño”). See also AA (Lima), Parroquia del Sagrario (Catedral): Libros de Matrimonios, no. 11 (1785–1846) f. 125; AA (Lima), Parroquia del Sagrario, Indice de Pliegos Matrimoniales, no. 4 (1791–1814), April 21, 1805, f. 1v.

  3. In 1823, the Senate of an independent Chile voted unanimously to immediately abolish slavery, with no apprenticeship period or compensation paid to slaveholders. The move, writes Robin Blackburn, was “more radical” than the gradual, court-brokered abolition that had by then taken place in the states north of the Mason-Dixon Line in the United States (Blackburn, The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery, 1776–1848, London: Verso, 1988, p. 358). Chattel slavery in Chile was not as deeply rooted an institution as it was in Peru, Brazil, or even Argentina, where it took longer to abolish. There were between ten and twelve thousand Africans or people of African descent in Chile around this time, about half of whom were slaves; most lived in and around Santiago or farther north. In a southern city like Concepción, it was Indians who tended to be enslaved. See Simon Collier and William F. Slater, A History of Chile, 1808–2002, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004, p. 42. For Rozas’s importance as a jurist, see Fernando Campos Harriet, “Don Juan Martínez de Rozas, jurista de los finales del periodo indiano,” VII Congreso del Instituto Internacional de Historia del Derecho Indiano, Buenos Aires, 1 al 6 de agosto de 1983, Buenos Aires: Pontifica Universidad Católica, 1984.

  4. Peter Blanchard, Under the Flag of Freedom: Slave Soldiers and the Wars of Independence in Spanish South America, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2008, pp. 92–97, 103.

  5. Diego Barros Arana, Historia general de Chile, vol. 9, Santiago: Editorial Universitaria, 2002, pp. 85–88; Memorias, Diarios y Crónicas, vol. 2, ed. Felix Denegri Luna, Lima: Comisión nacional del sesquicentenario de la Independencia del Peru, 1975, p. 589. “James Paroissien, anotaciones para un diario” (August 18, 1820–March 19, 1821), Colección de obras y documentos para la historia argentina: Guerra de la independencia, vol. 17, part 1, Buenos Aires: Senado de la Nación, 1963, p. 32.

  6. Basil Hall, Extracts from a Journal Written on the Coasts of Chili, Peru, and Mexico, in the Years 1820, 1821, 1822, vol. 1, London: Constable and Co., 1824, p. 90.

  7. Hall, Extracts, pp. 219–20.

  8. Centro de Estudios Militares del Perú, Sección Archivos y Catálogos, tomo 1: 1821–23, legajo 2, document 6; legajo 17, document 274; Gaceta de Gobierno de Lima, January 22, 1817.

  9. Robert Maclean y Estenós, Sociologia Peruana, Lima: Librería Gil, 1942, p. 154; AGN (Lima), notary records, Pedro Seminario, no. 776, f. 181 (April 17, 1852).

  10. William Edward Gardner, The Coffin Saga: Nantucket’s Story, from Settlement to Summer Visitors, Cambridge: Riverside Press, 1949, p. 168.

  26. UNDISTRIBUTED

  1. Houghton Library, Harvard University, “Perseverance (Ship). Logbook, 27 Jan–24 Jul 1807” (MS Am 465.5).

  2. Notice of the commendation was reprinted in newspapers throughout the Northeast. See, for example, the Portsmouth Oracle, August 22, 1807, and the United States Gazette, August 21, 1807.

  3. Records in the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in MA (Boston) show that Delano began defaulting on his debt in 1797. He owed at least $500 to three men. See Turner V. Delano, Supreme Judicial Court for Plymouth Counter, May term 1799, Record Book Summary. See also DRHS, Delano Papers, series 3, box 2, folder 2, “Summons for Amasa Delano to appear in Plymouth Court of Common Pleas,” February 9, 1799; “Summons for Amasa Delano to appear in Plymouth Court of Common Pleas,” July 7, 1799; “Martin Bicker and Others Recover Damages from Amasa Delano, April 3, 1798; “Bond of Arbitration between Amasa Delano and Timothy Parsons to Settle Dispute,” February 25, 1798. One debt suit involved Sally Rutter, a woman whom he had never met who claimed to be the rightful executrix of a will of James Blake, who had sailed on the Perseverance’s second voyage. Blake died before returning to the United States but Rutter said she had in her possession a receipt Delano had given him in Canton for the amount of $1,608. Blake and his bosom mate, Phineas Trowbridge, had been exceptionally troublesome to the Delano brothers. They were “ever plotting,” according to testimony given by Delano’s first mate. Left on Más Afuera to hunt seals, they lived “only them two together” and conspired to rob Delano out of thousands of dollars’ worth of skins. Rutter also alleged that, before sailing, Delano had borrowed from Blake $1,400 as seed money for the voyage, promising a return of $28,000 upon completion of the trip. The Court of Common Pleas ordered Delano to pay Rutter $2,198.05, plus court fees of $32.60, and the decision was upheld by the Supreme Court on appeal. There is no evidence that Delano satisfied the judgment; that he failed to appear at the final hearing meant he was likely arrested. See MA (Boston), Judicial Archives, “Supreme Judicial Court for Suffolk County, Amaso Delano, in Review v. John & Sally Rutter, Executors of the Estate of James Blake,” file papers, docket no. 348. For debt in Boston, see Port Society of Boston and Its Vicinity, Report of the Managers of the Port Society of the City of Boston and Its Vicinity, Boston: H. Eastburn, 1836, p. 13; Charles Sellers, The Market Revolution, New York: Oxford University Press, 1992, p. 87.

  4. Harvard Law Library, Small Manuscript Collection, Judge Story Papers.

  5. Information on this phase of Delano’s life comes from various sources: 1810 Census, Boston, Ward 11, Suffolk, p. 107, line 33; National Archives micropublications, M 252, roll 21; The Boston Directory; Containing the Names of the Inhabitants, Boston: Edward Cotton, 1809, p. 47 (also see 1810 ed., p. 63). Delano’s father died in 1814, leaving his house, land, and livestock, along with two meetinghouse pews, to the younger William, who was then starting a family. Childless Amasa inherited $200 but it immediately went to his creditors. Samuel received $500 and each of the three Delano sisters, Irene, Abigail, and Elizabeth, inherited $100. Information from Probate no. 6321, Estate of Samuel Delano, d. 6 Nov. 1814, and from Plymouth County Registry of Deeds, book 70, p. 148, summarized in notes available at the DRHS. See also DRHS, Delano Papers, box 8, folders 17 and 18 for Delano’s “accounts” with Weston.

  6. Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library, Hyde Park, New York, Frederic Delano Papers, exchange of letters between Amasa Delano and Secretary of State John Quincy Adams, December 1817.

  7. For “most trifling purpose,” see Perry Miller, Errand into the Wilderness, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984, pp. 66–67.

  8. Sellers, Market Revolutio
n, p. 87; Bruce Mann, Republic of Debtors: Bankruptcy in the Age of American Independence, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009. The progress of Delano’s life, as he tells it in A Narrative, reads much like Melville’s Israel Potter, published just before Benito Cereno, which tells the story of a life that starts out “gloriously” but leads “nowhere,” that of a Revolutionary War veteran who “proves to have little flexibility, little resilience (after a series of defeats), but an almost infinite capacity for suffering and enduring.” The story begins with Potter leaving his farm to fight at the Battle of Bunker Hill, a battle Melville describes in ignoble terms: Potter is bewildered by the battlefield’s “dense crowd and confusion” and begins to swing his rifle butt wildly, like the way “seal-hunters on the beach” swing their clubs. He looks down and thinks he sees a sword being thrust up at him. But the weapon is in a hand attached to a severed arm. After the battle, Potter is catapulted into the world of high politics. He conspires with Benjamin Franklin in France, fights at the side of John Paul Jones, tries to help Ethan Allen escape from jail, and even meets King George. But he is as lost in the mazes of history as Amasa was in Lima’s royal palace. Melville ends his story by bringing Potter, after half a century of exile, back to Bunker Hill on July 4, 1826, where a crowd has gathered to view the now completed monument. But instead of being recognized as a Son of Liberty, Potter is nearly run down by a “patriotic triumphal car” flying a gilt-embroidered banner celebrating veterans of the battle. He returns to his father’s homestead, but no one recognizes him there either. Unable to convince the government to give him a pension, he dies broke; “his scars proved his only medal.” For the descriptions of Israel Potter, see Andrew Delbanco, Herman Melville: His World and Work, New York: Knopf, 2005, p. 226; Parker, Herman Melville: A Biography, vol. 2, p. 224.