Untitled - African American History

CXXXV1 HISTORICAL SKETCH OF SLAVERY.
The success of the first expeditions encouraged the
Portuguese, and they sent out, in successive years,
numerous expeditions, each with instructions " to convert
the natives to the faith." This, and discovery, were
the paramount objects with the early Portuguese expe-
ditions. The slaves obtained by them, were in exchange
for merchandise with slave-dealers, who brought them
and until the discovery and coloniza-
from the interior ;
tion of America,
there was no market for the slaves
sufficient to excite the covetousness and other evil pas-
sions of men. 1
The discovery of America in 1492 was an event, the
effect of which upon the civilized world can never be
calculated, and perhaps is seldom fully apprehended.
Upon the subject we are now considering, it was both
the forcing-bed, and yet the broad field. It stimulated
enterprise and discovery. It furnished a receptacle for
the innumerable slaves which the African petty kings
offered in exchange for the manufacture and gaudy trin-
kets of Europe. The demand necessarily increased the
supply, and of course gave stimulus to the petty wars
and marauding expeditions by which that supply was
effected; and thus we might travel from cause to effect
almost ad infinitum.
The same religious fervor which governed and con-
trolled the action of the Portuguese, in their early con-
duct towards the negro slaves, seems to have been the
ruling passion with the Spaniards in thei'r discoveries in
the New World. Hence, we find the pious Herrera
chronicling the death of the first baptized Indian, as the
pioneer of that nation in his entry into heaven. 2 The
1 Ibid. 37 to 75. Expedition of Ca da Mosta, Astley's Voyages, i, 574.
He places the exportation at seven to eight hundred per annum. But
this was evidently more than the truth.
2 Dec. I, Lib. II, cap. 5. The proclamation made by the voyagers to
the Indians, is a curious picture of the notions of those times. After
telling them of the creation of the world, it traced title thereto to