Poems By a Slave In The Island of Cuba, Recently Liberated: Translated from the Spanish, by R. R. Madden, M.D. With the History of the Early Life of ... Slavery and the Slave-Traffic, by R. R. M

A COLLECTION of Poems written by a slave recently liberated in the Island of Cuba, was presented to me in the year 1838, by a gentleman at Havana, a Creole, highly distinguished, not only in Cuba, but in Spain, for his literary attainments. Some of these pieces had fortunately found their way to the Havana, and attracted the attention of the literary people there, while the poor author was in slavery in the neighbourhood of Matanzas. The gentleman to whom I have alluded, with the assistance of a few friends, of pursuits similar to his own--(for literature, even at the Havana, has its humanizing influence,) redeemed this poor fellow from slavery, and enabled him to publish such of his Poems, as were of a publishable kind in a country like Cuba, where slavery is under the especial protection, and knowledge under the ban of the censors of the press. A few of those pieces which were unpublished or unpublishable in Cuba, I have endeavoured to put into English verse; and to the best of my ability, have tried to render, so as to give the sense of the writer (sometimes purposely obscured in the original) as plainly as the spirit of the latter, and the circumstances under which these pieces were written, would admit of. I am sensible I have not done justice to these Poems, but I trust I have done enough to vindicate in some degree the character of negro intellect, at least the attempt affords me an opportunity of recording my conviction, that the blessings of education and good government are only wanting to make the natives of Africa, intellectually and morally, equal to the people of any nation on the surface of the globe.