Debating the Morality of Slavery

BROTHER LUIS BRANDAON, Letter to Father Sandoval (1610)

In the early modern period, colonization and its effects on native populations increasingly became a topic of discussion and debate. In addition to atrocities perpetrated against native populations such as those described by Las Casas (Document 1-4), the growing trade in African slaves raised moral concerns for some. In this March 12, 1610, letter, Brother Luis Brandaon, a Jesuit in Angola, addresses the concerns of Father Sandoval, a Catholic priest serving in Brazil. Angola, on the west coast of Africa, was a Portuguese colony that supplied Africans for the slave trade.

[March 12, 1610.]

Your Reverence writes me that you would like to know whether the negroes who are sent to your parts have been legally captured. To this I reply that I think your Reverence should have no scruples on this point, because this is a matter which has been questioned by the Board of Conscience in Lisbon, and all its members are learned and conscientious men. Nor did the bishops who were in São Thomé, Cape Verde, and here in Loando — all learned and virtuous men — find fault with it. We have been here ourselves for forty years and there have been [among us] very learned Fathers; in the Province of Brazil as well, where there have always been Fathers of our order eminent in letters, never did they consider this trade as illicit. Therefore we and the fathers of Brazil buy these slaves for our service without any scruple. Furthermore, I declare that if any one could be excused from having scruples it is the inhabitants of those regions, for since the traders who bring those negroes bring them in good faith, those inhabitants can very well buy from such traders without any scruple, and the latter on their part can sell them, for it is a generally accepted opinion that the owner who owns anything in good faith can sell it and that it can be bought. Padre Sánchez thus expresses this point in his Book of Marriage, thus solving this doubt of your Reverence. Therefore, we here are the ones who could have greater scruple, for we buy these negroes from other negroes and from people who perhaps have stolen them; but the traders who take them away from here do not know of this fact, and so buy those negroes with a clear conscience and sell them out there with a clear conscience. Besides I found it true indeed that no negro will ever say he has been captured legally. Therefore your Reverence should not ask them whether they have been legally captured or not, because they will always say that they were stolen and captured illegally, in the hope that they will be given their liberty. I declare, moreover, that in the fairs where these negroes are bought there are always a few who have been captured illegally because they were stolen or because the rulers of the land order them to be sold for offenses so slight that they do not deserve captivity, but these are few in number and to seek among ten or twelve thousand who leave this port every year for a few who have been illegally captured is an impossibility, however careful investigation may be made. And to lose so many souls as sail from here — out of whom many are saved — because some, impossible to recognize, have been captured illegally does not seem to be doing much service to God, for these are few and those who find salvation are many and legally captured.

Documents Illustrative of the History of the Slave Trade to America, ed. Elizabeth Donnan (Washington, DC: Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1930), 123–124.

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