 | CHAPTER VIII
THE CLOSING OF THE AFRICAN SLAVE TRADE American negro slavery; |  |
CHAPTER VIII
THE CLOSING OF THE AFRICAN SLAVE TRADE
THE many attempts of the several colonies to restrict or
prohibit the importation of slaves were uniformly
thwarted, as we have seen, by the British government.
The desire for prohibition, however, had been far from constant
or universal.[1]
The first Continental Congress when declaring the
Association, on October 18, 1774, resolved: "We will neither
import, nor purchase any slave imported, after the first day of
December next; after which time we will wholly discontinue the
slave trade, and will neither be concerned in it ourselves nor will
we hire our vessels nor sell our commodities or manufactures to
those who are concerned in it."[2]
But even this was mainly a
political stroke against the British government; and the general
effect of the restraint lasted not more than two or three
years.[3]
The ensuing war, of course, hampered the trade, and the
legislatures of several Northern states, along with Delaware and
Virginia, took occasion to prohibit slave importations. The return
of peace, although followed by industrial depression, revived
the demand for slave labor. Nevertheless, Maryland prohibited
the import by an act of 1783; North Carolina laid
a prohibitive duty in 1787; and South Carolina in the spring
of that year enacted the first of a series of temporary laws which
maintained a continuous prohibition for sixteen years. Thus at
the time when the framers of the Federal Constitution were
stopping congressional action for twenty years, the trade was
legitimate only in a few of the Northern states, all of which soon
San Domingan cataclysm prompted the Georgia legislature in
an act of December 19, 1793, to forbid the importation of slaves
from the West Indies, the Bahamas and Florida, as well as to
require free negroes to procure magisterial certificates of industriousness
and probity.[4] The African trade was left open by
that state until 1798, when it was closed both by legislative enactment
and by constitutional provision.
The scale of the importation in the period when Georgia alone
permitted them appears to have been small. For the year 1796,
for example, the imports at Savannah were officially reported
at 2084, including some who had been brought coastwise from the
northward for sale.[5]
A foreign traveler who visited Savannah
in the period noted that the demand was light because of the
dearth of money and credit, that the prices were about three
hundred dollars per head, that the carriers were mainly from
New England, and that one third of each year's imports were
generally smuggled into South Carolina.[6]
In the impulse toward the prohibitory acts the humanitarian
motive was obvious but not isolated. At the North it was supplemented,
often in the same breasts, by the inhumane feeling
of personal repugnance toward negroes. The anti-slave-trade
agitation in England also had a contributing influence; and there
were no economic interests opposing the exclusion. At the South
racial repugnance was fainter, and humanitarianism though of
positive weight was but one of several factors. The distinctively
Southern considerations against the trade were that its continuance
would lower the prices of slaves already on hand, or at least
prevent those prices from rising; that it would so increase the
staple exports as to spoil the world's market for them; that it
would drain out money and keep the community in debt; that it
would retard the civilization of the negroes already on hand; and
that by raising the proportion of blacks in the population it would
had varying degrees of influence in the several areas. In
the older settlements where the planters had relaxed into easygoing
comfort, the fear of revolt was keenest; in the newer
districts the settlers were more confident in their own alertness.
Again, where prosperity was declining the planters were fairly
sure to favor anything calculated to raise the prices of slaves
which they might wish in future to sell, while on the other hand
the people in districts of rising industry were tempted by programmes
tending to cheapen the labor they needed.
The arguments used in South Carolina for and against exclusion
may be gathered from scattering reports in the newspapers.
In September, 1785, the lower house of the legislature upon receiving
a message from the governor on the distressing condition
of commerce and credit, appointed a committee of fifteen on the
state of the republic. In this committee there was a vigorous
debate on a motion by Ralph Izard to report a bill prohibiting
slave importations for three years. John Rutledge opposed it.
Since the peace with Great Britain, said he, not more than seven
thousand slaves had been imported, which at £50 each would be
trifling as a cause of the existing stringency; and the closing
of the ports would therefore fail to relieve the distress[7]
Thomas
Pinckney supported Rutledge with an argument that the exclusion
of the trade from Charleston would at once drive commerce
in general to the ports of Georgia and North Carolina, and that
the advantage of low prices, which he said had fallen from a level
of £90 in 1783, would be lost to the planters. Judge Pendleton,
on the other hand, stressed the need of retrenchment. Planters,
he said, no longer enjoyed the long loans which in colonial times
had protected them from distress; and the short credits now
alone available put borrowers in peril of bankruptcy from a single
season of short crops and low prices.[8]
The committee reported
Izard's bill; but it was defeated in the House by a vote of 47 to
51, and an act was passed instead for an emission of bills of
credit by the state. The advocacy of the trade by Thomas Pinckney
against it.
When two years later the stringency persisted, the radicals in
the legislature demanded a law to stay the execution of debts,
while the now unified conservatives proposed again the stoppage
of the slave trade. In the course of the debate David Ramsay
"made a jocose remark that every man who went to church
last Sunday and said his prayers was bound by a spiritual obligation
to refuse the importation of slaves. They had devoutly
prayed not to be led into temptation, and negroes were a temptation
too great to be resisted."[9]
The issue was at length adjusted
by combining the two projects of a stay-law and a prohibition
of slave importations for three years in a single bill.
This was approved on March 28, 1787; and a further act of the
same day added a penalty of fine to that of forfeiture for the
illegal introduction of slaves. The exclusion applied to slaves
from every source, except those whose masters should bring them
when entering the state as residents.[10]
Early in the next year an attempt was made to repeal the
prohibition. Its leading advocate was Alexander Gillon, a populistic
Charleston merchant who had been made a commodore by
the State of South Carolina but had never sailed a ship. The
opposition was voiced so vigorously by Edward Rutledge, Charles
Pinckney, Chancellor Matthews, Dr. Ramsay, Mr. Lowndes, and
others that the project was crushed by 93 votes to 40. The
strongest weapon in the hands of its opponents appears to have
been a threat of repealing the stay-law in retaliation.[11]
At the
end of the year the prohibitory act had its life prolonged until the
beginning of 1793; and continuation acts adopted every two or
three years thereafter extended the régime until the end of 1803.
The constitutionality of the prohibition was tested before the
judiciary of the state in January, 1802, when the five assembled
judges unanimously pronounced it valid.[12]
But at last the advocates of the open trade had their innings.
The governor in a message of November 24, 1803, recited that
his best exertions to enforce the law had been of no avail. Inhabitants
of the coast and the frontier, said he, were smuggling
in slaves abundantly, while the people of the central districts were
suffering an unfair competition in having to pay high prices for
their labor. He mentioned a recently enacted law of Congress
reinforcing the prohibitory acts of the several states only to
pronounce it already nullified by the absence of public sanction;
and he dismissed any thought of providing the emancipation of
smuggled slaves as "a remedy more mischievous than their introduction
in servitude."[13]
Having thus described the problem as
insoluble by prohibitions, he left the solution to the legislature.
In spite of the governor's assertion, supported soon afterward
by a statement of William Lowndes in Congress,[14]
there is reason
to believe that violations of the law had not been committed on
a great scale. Slave prices could not have become nearly doubled,
as they did during the period of legal prohibition, if African
imports had been at all freely made. The governor may quite
possibly have exaggerated the facts with a view to bringing the
system of exclusion to an end.
However this may have been, a bill was promptly introduced in
the Senate to repeal all acts against importations. Mr. Barnwell
opposed this on the ground that the immense influx of slaves
which might be expected in consequence would cut in half the
value of slave property, and that the increase in the cotton output
would lower the already falling prices of cotton to disastrous
levels. The resumption of the great war in Europe, said he, had
already diminished the supply of manufactured goods and raised
their prices. "Was it under these circumstances that we ought to
lay out the savings of our industry, the funds accumulated in
many years of prosperity and peace, to increase that produce
whose value had already fallen so much? He thought not. The
permission given by the bill would lead to ruinous speculations.
Everyone would purchase negroes. It was well known that those
Our citizens would purchase at all hazards and trust to fortunate
crops and favorable markets for making their payments; and it
would be found that South Carolina would in a few years, if this
trade continued open, be in the same situation of debt, and subject
to all misfortunes which that situation had produced, as at
the close of the Revolutionary war." The newspaper closed
its report of the speech by a concealment of its further burden:
"The Hon. member adduced in support of his opinion various
other arguments, still more cogent and impressive, which from
reasons very obvious we decline making public."[15] It may be
surmised that the suppressed remarks dealt with the danger of
slave revolts. In the further course of the debate, "Mr. Smith
said he would agree to put a stop to the importation of slaves,
but he believed it impossible. For this reason he would vote
for the bill." The measure soon passed the Senate.
Meanwhile the lower house had resolved on December 8, in
committee of the whole, "that the laws prohibiting the importation
of negroes and other persons of colour in this state can
be so amended as to prevent their introduction amongst us," and
had recommended that a select committee be appointed to draft a
bill accordingly.[16]
Within the following week, however, the
sentiment of the House was swung to the policy of repeal, and
the Senate bill was passed. On the test vote the ayes were 55
and the noes 46.[17]
The act continued the exclusion of West
Indian negroes, and provided that slaves brought in from sister
states of the Union must have official certificates of good character;
but as to the African trade it removed all restrictions. In
1805 a bill to prohibit imports again was introduced into the
legislature, but after debate it was defeated.[18]
The local effect of the repeal is indicated in the experience of
E. S. Thomas, a Charleston bookseller of the time who in high
prosperity had just opened a new importation of fifty thousand
had reopened the slave trade "had not been five hours in the
city, before two large British Guineamen, that had been lying
on and off the port for several days expecting it, came up to
town; and from that day my business began to decline. . . . A
great change at once took place in everything. Vessels were
fitted out in numbers for the coast of Africa, and as fast as they
returned their cargoes were bought up with avidity, not only
consuming the large funds that had been accumulating, but all
that could be procured, and finally exhausting credit and mortgaging
the slaves for payment. . . . For myself, I was upwards
of five years disposing of my large stock, at a sacrifice of more
than a half, in all the principal towns from Augusta in Georgia
to Boston."[19]
As reported at the end of the period, the importations amounted
to 5386 slaves in 1804; 6790 in 1805; 11,458 in 1806; and 15,676
in 1807.[20]
Senator William Smith of South Carolina upon examining
the records at a later time placed the total at 39,310, and
analysed the statistics as follows: slaves brought by British vessels,
19,449; by French vessels, 1078; by American vessels, operated
mostly for the account of Rhode Islanders and foreigners,
18,048.[21]
If an influx no greater than this could produce the
effect which Thomas described, notwithstanding that many of
the slaves were immediately reshipped to New Orleans and many
more were almost as promptly sold into the distant interior, the
scale of the preceding illicit trade must have been far less than
the official statements and the apologies in Congress would
indicate.
South Carolina's opening of the trade promptly spread dismay
in other states. The North Carolina legislature, by a vote afterwards
described as virtually unanimous in both houses, adopted
resolutions in December, 1804, instructing the Senators from
North Carolina and requesting her Congressmen to use their
utmost exertions at the earliest possible time to procure an
once to prohibit the further importation of slaves and other
persons of color from Africa and the West Indies. Copies were
ordered sent not only to the state's delegation in Congress but
to the governors of the other states for transmission to the legislatures
with a view to their concurrence.[22] In the next year
similar resolutions were adopted by the legislatures of New
Hampshire, Vermont, Maryland and Tennessee;[23] but the approach
of the time when Congress would acquire the authority
without a change of the Constitution caused a shifting of popular
concern from the scheme of amendment to the expected legislation
of Congress. Meanwhile, a bill for the temporary government
of the Louisiana purchase raised the question of African
importations there which occasioned a debate in the Senate at
the beginning of 1804[24] nearly as vigorous as those to come on
the general question three years afterward.
In the winter of 1804–1805 bills were introduced in both
Senate and House to prohibit slave importations at large; but
the one was postponed for a year and the other was rejected,[25]
doubtless because the time was not near enough when
they could take effect. At last the matter was formally presented
by President Jefferson. "I congratulate you, fellow-citizens," he
said in his annual message of December 2, 1806, "on the approach
of the period at which you may interpose your authority constitutionally
to withdraw the citizens of the United States from
all further participation in those violations of human rights
which have been so long continued on the unoffending inhabitants
of Africa, and which the morality, the reputation, and the best
interests of our country have long been eager to proscribe.
Although no law you can pass can take effect until the day of
the year one thousand eight hundred and eight, yet the intervening
which cannot be completed before that day."[26] Next day
Senator Bradley of Vermont gave notice of a bill which was
shortly afterward introduced and which, after an unreported
discussion, was passed by the Senate on January 27. Its conspicuous
provisions were that after the close of the year 1807 the
importation of slaves was to be a felony punishable with death,
and that the interstate coasting trade in slaves should be illegal.
The report of proceedings in the House was now full, now
scant. The paragraph of the President's message was referred
on December 3 to a committee of seven with Peter Early of
Georgia as chairman and three other Southerners in the membership.
The committee's bill reported on December 15, proposed
to prohibit slave importations, to penalize the fitting out
of vessels for the trade by fine and forfeiture, to lay fines and
forfeitures likewise upon the owners and masters found within
the jurisdictional waters of the United States with slaves from
abroad on board, and empowered the President to use armed
vessels in enforcement. It further provided that if slaves illegally
introduced should be found within the United States they
should be forfeited, and any person wittingly concerned in buying
or selling them should be fined; it laid the burden of proof
upon defendants when charged on reasonable grounds of presumption
with having violated the act; and it prescribed that
the slaves forfeited should, like other goods in the same status,
be sold at public outcry by the proper federal functionaries.[27]
Mr. Sloan of New Jersey instantly moved to amend by providing
that the forfeited slaves be entitled to freedom. Mr.
Early replied that this would rob the bill of all effect by depriving
it of public sanction in the districts whither slaves were likely
to be brought. Those communities, he said, would never tolerate
the enforcement of a law which would set fresh Africans at
large in their midst. Mr. Smilie, voicing the sentiment and indicating
the dilemma of most of his fellow Pennsylvanians, declared
his unconquerable aversion to any measure which would
that he had no programme of his own. Nathaniel Macon, the
Speaker, saying that he thought the desire to enact an effective
law was universal, agreed with Early that Sloan's amendment
would defeat the purpose. Early himself waxed vehement,
prophesying the prompt extermination of any smuggled slaves
emancipated in the Southern states. The amendment was defeated
by a heavy majority.
Next day, however, Mr. Bidwell of Massachusetts renewed
Sloan's attack by moving to strike out the provision for the
forfeiture of the slaves; but his colleague Josiah Quincy, supported
by the equally sagacious Timothy Pitkin of Connecticut,
insisted upon the necessity of forfeiture; and Early contended
that this was particularly essential to prevent the smuggling of
slaves across the Florida border where the ships which had
brought them would keep beyond the reach of congressional laws.
The House finding itself in an impasse referred the bill back
to the same committee, which soon reported it in a new form
declaring the illegal importation of slaves a felony punishable
with death. Upon Early's motion this provision was promptly
stricken out in committee of the whole by a vote of 60 to 41;
whereupon Bidwell renewed his proposal to strike out the forfeiture
of slaves. He was numerously supported in speeches
whose main burden was that the United States government must
not become the receiver of stolen goods. The speeches in reply
stressed afresh the pivotal quality of forfeiture in an effective
law; and Bidwell when pressed for an alternative plan could
only say that he might if necessary be willing to leave them to
the disposal of the several states, but was at any rate "opposed
to disgracing our statute book with a recognition of the principle
of slavery." Quincy replied that he wished Bidwell and his
fellows "would descend from their high abstract ground to the
level of things in their own state—such as have, do and will
exist after your laws, and in spite of them." The Southern
members, said he, were anxious for nothing so much as a total
prohibition, and for that reason were insistent upon forfeiture.
For the sake of enforcing the law, and for the sake of controlling
Such a provision would not necessarily admit that the
importers had had a title in the slaves before capture, but it and
it alone would effectively divest them of any color of title to
which they might pretend. The amendment was defeated by a
vote of 36 to 63.
When the bill with amendments was reported to the House by
the committee of the whole, on December 31, there was vigorous
debate upon the question of substituting imprisonment of from
five to ten years in place of the death penalty. Mr. Talmadge
of Connecticut supported the provision of death with a biblical
citation; and Mr. Smilie said he considered it the very marrow
of the bill. Mr. Lloyd of Maryland thought the death penalty
would be out of proportion to the crime, and considered the
extract from Exodus inapplicable since few of the negroes imported
had been stolen in Africa. But Mr. Olin of Vermont
announced that the man-stealing argument had persuaded him
in favor of the extreme penalty. Early now became furious, and
in his fury, frank. In a preceding speech he had pronounced
slavery "an evil regretted by every man in the country."[28]
He
now said: "A large majority of the people in the Southern
states do not . . . believe it immoral to hold human flesh in
bondage. Many deprecate slavery as an evil; as a political evil;
but not as a crime. Reflecting men apprehend, at some future
day, evils, incalculable evils, from it; but it is a fact that few,
very few, consider it as a crime. It is best to be candid on this
subject. . . . I will tell the truth. A large majority of people
in the Southern states do not consider slavery as an evil. Let
the gentleman go and travel in that quarter of the Union; let
him go from neighborhood to neighborhood, and he will find
that this is the fact. Some gentlemen appear to legislate for the
sake of appearances. . . . I should like to know what honor you
will derive from a law that will be broken every day of your
lives."[29]
Mr. Stanton said with an air of deprecation on behalf
of his state of Rhode Island: "I wish the law made so strong
ought to be hung for only stealing a negro. Those who buy
them are as bad as those who import them, and deserve hanging
quite as much." The yeas and nays recorded at the end of the
exhausting day showed 63 in favor and 53 against the substitution
of imprisonment. The North was divided, 29 to 37, with
the nays coming mostly from Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and
Connecticut; the South, although South Carolina as well as
Kentucky was evenly divided, cast 34 yeas to 16 nays. Virginia
and Maryland, which might have been expected to be doubtful,
virtually settled the question by casting 17 yeas against 6 nays.
When the consideration of the bill was resumed on January 7,
Mr. Bidwell renewed his original attack by moving to strike out
the confiscation of slaves; and when this was defeated by 39 to
77, he attempted to reach the same end by a proviso "That no
person shall be sold as a slave by virtue of this act." This was
defeated only by the casting vote of the Speaker. Those voting
aye were all from Northern states, except Archer of Maryland,
Broom of Delaware, Bedinger of Kentucky and Williams of
North Carolina. The noes were all from the South except one
from New Hampshire, ten from New York, and one from
Pennsylvania. The outcome was evidently unsatisfactory to the
bulk of the members, for on the next day a motion to recommit the
bill to a new committee of seventeen prevailed by a vote of 76
to 46. Among the members who shifted their position over night
were six of the ten from New York, four from Maryland, three
from Virginia, and two from North Carolina. In the new committee
Bedinger of Kentucky, who was regularly on the Northern
side, was chairman, and Early was not included.
This committee reported in February a bill providing, as a
compromise, that forfeited negroes should be carried to some
place in the United States where slavery was either not permitted
or was in course of gradual extinction, and there be indentured
or otherwise employed as the President might deem best
for them and the country. Early moved that for this there be
substituted a provision that the slaves be delivered to the several
states in which the captures were made, to be disposed of at
indenture provision with their lives. This reckless assertion suggests
that Early was either set against the framing of an effective
law, or that he spoke in mere blind rage.
Before further progress was made the House laid aside its
bill in favor of the one which the Senate had now passed. An
amendment to this, striking out the death penalty, was adopted
on February 12 by a vote of 67 to 48. The North gave 31 ayes
and 36 noes, quite evenly distributed among the states. The
South cast 37 ayes to 11 noes, five of the latter coming from
Virginia, two from North Carolina, and one each from Delaware,
Maryland, Kentucky and South Carolina. A considerable shifting
of votes appeared since the ballot on the same question six
weeks before. Knight of Rhode Island, Sailly and Williams of
New York, Helms of New Jersey and Wynns of North Carolina
changed in favor of the extreme penalty; but they were
more than offset by the opposite change of Bidwell of Massachusetts,
Van Cortlandt of New York, Lambert of New Jersey,
Clay and Gray of Virginia and McFarland of North Carolina.
Numerous members from all quarters who voted on one of these
roll-calls were silent at the other, and this variation also had a
net result against the infliction of death. The House then filled
the blank it had made in the bill by defining the offense as a high
misdemeanor and providing a penalty of imprisonment of not
less than five nor more than ten years. John Randolph opposed
even this as excessive, but found himself unsupported. The
House then struck out the prohibition of the coasting trade in
slaves, and returned the bill as amended to the Senate. The
latter concurred in all the changes except that as to the coastwise
trade, and sent the bill back to the House.
John Randolph now led in the insistence that the House stand
firm. If the bill should pass without the amendment, said he,
the Southern people would set the law at defiance, and he himself
would begin the violation of so unconstitutional an infringement
of the rights of property. The House voted to insist upon
its amendment, and sent the bill to conference where in compromise
the prohibition as to the coastwise carriage of slaves for
burthen. The Senate agreed to this. In the House Mr. Early
opposed it as improper in law and so easy of evasion that it
would be perfectly futile for the prevention of smuggling from
Florida. John Randolph said: "The provision of the bill
touched the right of private property. He feared lest at a future
period it might be made the pretext of universal emancipation.
He had rather lose the bill, he had rather lose all the bills of the
session, he had rather lose every bill passed since the establishment
of the government, than agree to the provision contained in this
slave bill. It went to blow up the Constitution in ruins."[30] Concurrence
was carried, nevertheless, by a vote of 63 to 49, in which
the North cast 51 ayes to 12 noes, and the South 12 ayes to
37 noes. The Southern ayes were four from Maryland, four
from North Carolina, two from Tennessee, and one each from
Virginia and Kentucky. The Northern noes were five from
New York, two each from New Hampshire and Vermont, and
one each from Massachusetts, Connecticut and Pennsylvania.
The bill then passed the House. Its variance from the original
House bill was considerable, for it made the importation of slaves
from abroad a high misdemeanor punishable with imprisonment;
it prohibited the coastwise trade by sea in vessels of less than forty
tons, and required the masters of larger vessels transporting
negroes coastwise to deliver to the port officials classified manifests
of the negroes and certificates that to the best of their knowledge
and belief the slaves had not been imported since the beginning
of 1808; and instead of forfeiture to the United States
it provided that all smuggled slaves seized under the act should
be subject to such disposal as the laws of the state or territory
in which the seizure might be made should prescribe.[31] Randolph,
still unreconciled, offered an explanatory act, February
27, that nothing in the preceding act should be construed to affect
in any manner the absolute property right of masters in their
slaves not imported contrary to the law, and that such masters
should not be liable to any penalty for the coastwise transportation
force this measure through, he said that if it did not pass the
House at once he hoped the Virginia delegation would wait on the
President and remonstrate against his approving the act which
had passed.[32] By a vote of 60 to 49 this bill was made the order
for the next day; but its further consideration was crowded
out by the rush of business at the session's close. The President
signed the prohibitory bill on March 2, without having received
the threatened Virginia visitation.
Among the votes in the House on which the yeas and nays were
recorded in the course of these complex proceedings, six may be
taken as tests. They were on striking out the death penalty, December
31; on striking out the forfeiture of slaves, January 7;
on the proviso that no person should be sold by virtue of the act,
January 7; on referring the bill to a new committee, January
8; on striking out the death penalty from the Senate bill, February
12; and on the prohibition of the coasting trade in slaves
in vessels of under forty tons, February 26. In each case a
majority of the Northern members voted on one side of the
question, and a yet larger majority of Southerners voted on the
other. Twenty-two members voted in every case on the side
which the North tended to adopt. These comprised seven from
Massachusetts, six from Pennsylvania, three from Connecticut,
and one or two from each of the other Northern states except
Rhode Island and Ohio. They comprised also Broom of Delaware,
Bedinger of Kentucky, and Morrow of Virginia; while
Williams of North Carolina was almost equally constant in
opposing the policies advocated by the bulk of his fellow Southerners.
On the other hand the regulars on the Southern side
comprised not only ten Virginians, all of the six South Carolinians,
except three of their number on the punishment questions,
all of the four Georgians, three North Carolinians, two
Marylanders and one Kentuckian, but in addition Tenney of
New Hampshire, Schuneman, Van Rensselaer and Verplanck
of New York on all but the punishment questions.
On the whole, sectional divergence was fairly pronounced, but
a common desire to make the prohibition of importations effective
were probably sincere without material exception. As regards
the Virginia group of states, their economic interest in high prices
for slaves vouches for the genuine purpose of their representatives,
while that of the Georgians and South Carolinians
may at the most be doubted and not disproved. The South in
general wished to prevent any action which might by implication
stigmatize the slaveholding régime, and was on guard also against
precedents tending to infringe state rights. The North, on the
other hand, was largely divided between a resolve to stop the
sanction of slavery and a desire to enact an effective law in the
premises directly at issue. The outcome was a law which might
be evaded with relative ease wherever public sanction was weak,
but which nevertheless proved fairly effective in operation.
When slave prices rose to high levels after the war of 1812
systematic smuggling began to prevail from Amelia Island on the
Florida border, and on a smaller scale on the bayous of the Barataria
district below New Orleans; but these operations were
checked upon the passage of a congressional act in 1818 increasing
the rewards to informers. Another act in the following year
directed the President to employ armed vessels for police in both
African and American waters, and incidentally made provisions
contemplating the return of captured slaves to Africa. Finally
Congress by an act of 1820 declared the maritime slave trade
to be piracy.[33]
Smuggling thereafter diminished though it never
completely ceased.
As to the dimensions of the illicit importations between 1808
and 1860, conjectures have placed the gross as high as two hundred
and seventy thousand.[34]
Most of the documents in the
premises, however, bear palpable marks of unreliability. It may
suffice to say that these importations were never great enough
to affect the labor supply in appreciable degree. So far as the
was effectually closed in 1808.
At that time, however, there were already in the United States
about one million slaves to serve as a stock from which other
millions were to be born to replenish the plantations in the east
and to aid in the peopling of the west. These were ample to
maintain a chronic racial problem, and had no man invented a
cotton gin their natural increase might well have glutted the
marked for plantation labor. Had the African source been kept
freely open, the bringing of great numbers to meet the demand
in prosperous times would quite possibly have so burdened the
country with surplus slaves in subsequent periods of severe depression
that slave prices would have fallen virtually to
zero, and the slaveholding community would have been driven to
emancipate them wholesale as a means of relieving the masters
from the burden of the slaves' support. The foes of slavery had
long reckoned that the abolition of the foreign trade would be a
fatal blow to slavery itself. The event exposed their fallacy.
Thomas Clarkson expressed the disappointment of the English
abolitionists in a letter of 1830: "We certainly have been deceived
in our first expectations relative to the fruit of our exertions.
We supposed that when by the abolition of the slave
trade the planters could get no more slaves, they would not only
treat better those whom they then had in their power, but that
they would gradually find it to their advantage to emancipate
them. A part of our expectations have been realized; . . . but,
alas! where the heart has been desperately wicked, we have found
no change. We did not sufficiently take into account the effect
of unlimited power on the human mind. No man likes to part
with power, and the more unbounded it is, the less he likes to part
with it. Neither die we sufficiently take into account the ignominy
attached to a black skin as the badge of slavery, and how
difficult it would be to make men look with a favourable eye
upon what they had looked [upon] formerly as a disgrace. Neither
did we take sufficiently into account the belief which every planter
has, that such an unnatural state as that of slavery can be kept up
only by a system of rigour, and how difficult therefore it would
estate."[35]
If such was the failure in the British West Indies, the change
in conditions in the United States was even greater; for the
rise of the cotton industry concurred with the prohibition of the
African trade to enhance immensely the preciousness of slaves
and to increase in similar degree the financial obstacle to a sweeping
abolition.
The slave trade enactments by the colonies, the states and the federal
government are listed and summarized in W. E. B. DuBois, The Suppression
of the African Slave Trade to the United States, 1638–1870 (New
York, 1904), appendices.
The text of the act, which appears never to have been printed, is in the
Georgia archives. For a transcript I am indebted to the Hon. Philip Cook,
Secretary of State of Georgia.
Broadside copy of the resolution, accompanied by a letter of Governor
James Turner of North Carolina to the governor of Connecticut, in the
possession of the Pennsylvania Historical Society.
H. V. Ames, Proposed _ Amendments to the Constitution, in the
American Historical Association Report for 1896, pp. 208, 209.
| CHAPTER VIII
THE CLOSING OF THE AFRICAN SLAVE TRADE American negro slavery; | |