Note 1017 — Chapter V

There is an extended Note on Las Casas in Appendix XXVIII. of Irving’s Columbus. That author most effectively vindicates Las Casas from having first advised and been instrumental in the introduction of African slavery in the New World, giving the dates and the advisers and agents connected with that wrong previous to any word on the subject from Las Casas. The devoted missionary had been brought to acquiesce in the measure on the plausible plea stated in the text, acting from the purest spirit of benevolence, though under an erroneous judgment. Cardinal Ximenes had from the first opposed the project.