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Preferred Citation:

Honorable Garrit Smith Broadside Letter to the Cuban Anti-Slavery Committee, 1873, Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library, College of William and Mary.

Scope and Contents

Printed broadside open letter from the Honorable Garrit Smith, Congressman from NY and staunch abolitionist dated February 14, 1873.  It is addressed to the Cuban Anti-Slavery Committee of New York.  In the letter, Smith addresses the requests of the committee to write a letter to the press in support of their cause.  Instead, Smith produced this open letter that condemned Spain for its barbaric treatment and continued enslavement of the Cuban people and also the United States government for not doing more for the Cuban People in to aid in their plight, "As I view it, our government should, long ago, have conceded belligerent rights to the Cubans struggling for freedom from the yoke of Spain and from the yoke of slavery.  Then, too, if this concession had not resulted in such freedom, our Government should have united with other governments to put an end to that infernal type of slavery which Spanish power holds in Cuba..."