Note 488 — Catholics and the Negro

In treating of an early period of Spanish American history, undue importance seems to be given by some writers and historians, such as Bancroft, Robertson and Blyden, to the fact that Bartholomew de Las Casas, Bishop of Chiapa, when before the Court of Charles V of Spain, in 1517, counseled that Negro slaves take the place of Indians, as he considered the Negroes a hardier race. Other reliable authorities, such as Fiske and MacNutt, claim that Las Casas merely tolerated for a time, what already existed and what he could not prevent. All agree that Las Casas in later life bitterly regretted having approved of slavery under any form or condition whatever. John Fiske, in his "The Discovery of America," Vol. II, p. 458, says, "that the life work of Las Casas did much to diminish the volume of Negro slavery and the spiritual corruption attendant upon it." This non-Catholic writer furthermore declares that "when the work of Las Casas is deeply considered, we cannot make him anything else but an antagonist of human slavery in all its forms, and the mightiest and most effective antagonist, withal, that has ever lived." F. A. MacNutt in his work "Bartholomew De Las Casas," page 98, speaks of him in like manner. In connection with Negro slavery in the West Indies it should be said that the famous Cardinal Ximenes, of Spain, had protested already in 1516 against the recruiting of Negro slaves in Africa as then carried on for the West Indies.