Matthew Fontaine Maury - Attempted Eradication of All Slavery in The United States of America

Attempted Eradication of All Slavery in The United States of America

In 1851, Maury sent his cousin, Lieutenant William Lewis Herndon, and another former co-worker at the United States Naval Observatory, Lieutenant Lardner Gibbon, to explore the valley of the Amazon, while gathering as much information as possible for both trade and slavery in the area. Maury thought the Amazon might serve as a "safety valve" by allowing Southern slave owners to resettle or sell their slaves there. (Maury's plan was basically following the idea of northern slave traders and slave holders just as they sold their slaves to the southern states of the USA.) The expedition aimed to map the area for the day when slave owners would go "with their goods and chattels to settle and to trade goods from South American countries along the river highways of the Amazon valley." Brazil's slavery was extinguished after a slow process that began with the end of the international traffic in slaves in 1850 but did not end with complete abolition of slavery until 1888. Maury knew when he wrote in the News Journals of the day that Brazil was bringing in new slaves from Africa. Proposing moving those who were already slaves in the United States to Brazil, there would be less slavery or, in time, perhaps no slavery in as many areas of the United States as possible, while also hoping to stop the bringing of new slaves into Brazil which only increased slavery through the capture and enslavement of more Africans. "Imagine", Maury wrote to his cousin, "waking up some day and finding our country free of slavery!" (Source: s:Matthew Fontaine Maury/9 topic "African Slave Trade", the Letter to his cousin dated National Observatory, 24 December 1851

Maury started a campaign to force Brazilian Government to open up navigation in the Amazon river and to oblige it to receive the American colonizers and American Trade. But D. Pedro II's government deeply rejected the proposals. The Imperial Government had in mind US traditional process of territorial annexations in Latin America: immigration, provocation, conflict and annexation. So, Brazil acted diplomatically and through the press to avoid, by all means, the colonization proposed by Maury. By 1855, Maury´s project had certainly failed. Brazil authorized free navigation to all nations in the Amazon only in 1866 but only when it was at war against Paraguay and the free navigation in the area became necessary.