Abolition, Emancipation and War: The United States in Spanish Political Culture and the Abolition of Slavery in Cuba

Abstract

This chapter examines a particular facet of the ‘model republic’ provided by the USA: the abolition of slavery. During the sexenio democratico (1868–1874/75) the question of colonial reform, including the abolition of slavery in Cuba and Puerto Rico, became a hot political topic. The growing abolitionist movement in Spain looked to the process of abolition and emancipation undertaken recently in the USA and advocated a similar process of immediate, unindemnified abolition in Spain’s colonies. Connections were made between the Civil War context of Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation and the ongoing independence war in Cuba (1868–78) and the experiences of black Americans, including segregation and the practice of lynching, in the post-bellum USA were deployed as a means to better understand how to manage the aftermath of abolition in Spain’s colonies. However, opponents of colonial reform seized on the Civil War context of US abolition to argue that immediate, unidemnified abolition would be disastrous for Spanish colonial interests in Cuba and Puerto Rico.