Agreement facilitating illegal trade of enslaved Africans

Source catalog description

This description refers to material held by Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. Visual details below describe the original material.

An single-page agreement, handwritten in black ink on off-white paper, planning for the illegal import of enslaved Africans from Cape Coast Castle in West Africa to Havana, Cuba. Parties to the agreement are Christopher Deey, merchant; John Spooner and Benning Pickering, owners of the schooner Commerce; and Joseph B. Stephens, master of the Commerce. Deey's agents are to meet the ship at Cape Coast Castle and load the enslaved persons themselves. Agreement stipulates that enslaved persons are to be provided "good and sufficient accommodations, provisions and medicines," and to that effect, the owners and master of the ship are to receive $45 for every enslaved African who survives the journey and $20 for each who does not. In the event of war between the United States and Spain or a blockade of Havana, the ship is to dock in Charleston, South Carolina.

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