American Negro Slavery by Ulrich Bonnell Phillips

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[Footnote 22: A.C. McLaughlin, _The Confederation and the Constitution_
(New York [1905]), chap. 7; B.A. Hinsdale, _The Old Northwest_ (New York,
1888), chap. 15.]

By this time radicalism in general had spent much of its force. The
excessive stress which the Revolution had laid upon the liberty of
individuals had threatened for a time to break the community's grasp upon
the essentials of order and self-restraint. Social conventions of many
sorts were flouted; local factions resorted to terrorism against their
opponents; legislatures abused their power by confiscating loyalist
property and enacting laws for the dishonest promotion of debtor-class
interests, and the central government, made pitiably weak by the prevailing
jealousy of control, was kept wholly incompetent through the shirking
of burdens by states pledged to its financial support. But populism and
particularism brought their own cure. The paralysis of government now
enabled sober statesmen to point the prospect of ruin through chaos and
get a hearing in their advocacy of sound system. Exalted theorising on the
principles of liberty had merely destroyed the old regime: matter-of-fact
reckoning on principles of law and responsibility must build the new. The
plan of organization, furthermore, must be enough in keeping with the
popular will to procure a general ratification.

Negro slavery in the colonial period had been of continental extent but
under local control. At the close of the Revolution, as we have seen,
its area began to be sectionally confined while the jurisdiction over it
continued to lie in the several state governments. The great convention
at Philadelphia in 1787 might conceivably have undertaken the transfer of
authority over the whole matter to the central government; but on the one
hand the beginnings of sectional jealousy made the subject a delicate
one, and on the other hand the members were glad enough to lay aside all
problems not regarded as essential in their main task. Conscious ignorance
by even the best informed delegates from one section as to affairs in
another was a dissuasion from the centralizing of doubtful issues; and the
secrecy of the convention's proceedings exempted it from any pressure of
anti-slavery sentiment from outside.

On the whole the permanence of any critical problem in the premises was
discredited. Roger Sherman of Connecticut "observed that the abolition of
slavery seemed to be going on in the United States, and that the good sense
of the people of the several states would by degrees compleat it." His
colleague Oliver Ellsworth said, "The morality or wisdom of slavery are
considerations belonging to the states themselves"; and again, "Let us not
intermeddle. As population increases poor laborers will be so plenty as to
render slaves useless. Slavery in time will not be a speck in our country."
And Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts "thought we had nothing to do with the
conduct of states as to slaves, but ought to be careful not to give any
sanction to it." The agreement was general that the convention keep its
hands off so far as might be; but positive action was required upon
incidental phases which involved some degree of sanction for the
institution itself. These issues concerned the apportionment of
representation, the regulation of the African trade, and the rendition of
fugitives. This last was readily adjusted by the unanimous adoption of a
clause introduced by Pierce Butler of South Carolina and afterward changed
in its phrasing to read: "No person held to service or labour in one state
under the laws thereof escaping into another shall in consequence of any
law or regulation therein be discharged from such service or labour, but
shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labour
may be due." After some jockeying, the other two questions were settled by
compromise. Representation in the lower house of Congress was apportioned
among the states "according to their several members, which shall be
determined by adding to the whole number of free persons ... three fifths
of all other persons." As to the foreign slave trade, Congress was
forbidden to prohibit it prior to the year 1808, and was merely permitted
meanwhile to levy an import duty upon slaves at a rate of not more than ten
dollars each. [23]

[Footnote 23: Max Farrand ed., _The Records of the Federal Convention_ (New
Haven, 1911), _passim_]

In the state conventions to which the Constitution was referred for
ratification the debates bore out a remark of Madison's at Philadelphia
that the real difference of interests lay not between the large and small
states but between those within and without the slaveholding influence. The
opponents of the Constitution at the North censured it as a pro-slavery
instrument, while its advocates apologized for its pertinent clauses on the
ground that nothing more hostile to the institution could have been carried
and that if the Constitution were rejected there would be no prospect of
a federal stoppage of importations at any time. But at the South the
opposition, except in Maryland and Virginia where the continuance of the
African trade was deprecated, declared the slavery concessions inadequate,
while the champions of the Constitution maintained that the utmost
practicable advantages for their sectional interest had been achieved.
Among the many amendments to the Constitution proposed by the ratifying
conventions the only one dealing with any phase of slavery was offered,
strange to say, by Rhode Island, whose inhabitants had been and still
were so active in the African trade. It reads: "As a traffic tending to
establish and continue the slavery of the human species is disgraceful to
the cause of liberty and humanity, Congress shall as soon as may be promote
and establish such laws as may effectually prevent the importation of
slaves of every description."[24] The proposal seems to have received no
further attention at the time.

[Footnote 24: This was dated May 29, 1790. H.V. Ames, "Proposed Amendment
to the Constitution of the United States," in the American Historical
Association _Report_ for 1896, p. 208]

In the early sessions of Congress under the new Constitution most of the
few debates on slavery topics arose incidentally and ended without positive
action. The taxation of slave imports was proposed in 1789, but was never
enacted: sundry petitions of anti-slavery tenor, presented mostly by
Quakers, were given brief consideration in 1790 and again at the close
of the century but with no favorable results; and when, in 1797, a more
concrete issue was raised by memorials asking intervention on behalf of
some negroes whom Quakers had manumitted in North Carolina in disregard of
legal restraints and who had again been reduced to slavery, a committee
reported that the matter fell within the scope of judicial cognizance
alone, and the House dismissed the subject. For more than a decade, indeed,
the only legislation enacted by Congress concerned at all with slavery was
the act of 1793 empowering the master of an interstate fugitive to seize
him wherever found, carry him before any federal or state magistrate in the
vicinage, and procure a certificate warranting his removal to the state
from which he had fled. Proposals to supplement this rendition act on the
one hand by safeguarding free negroes from being kidnapped under fraudulent
claims and on the other hand by requiring employers of strange negroes to
publish descriptions of them and thus facilitate the recovery of runaways,
were each defeated in the House.

On the whole the glamor of revolutionary doctrines was passing, and self
interest was regaining its wonted supremacy. While the rising cotton
industry was giving the blacks in the South new value as slaves, Northern
spokesmen were frankly stating an antipathy of their people toward negroes
in any capacity whatever.[25] The succession of disasters in San Domingo,
meanwhile, gave warning against the upsetting of racial adjustments in the
black belts, and the Gabriel revolt of 1800 in Virginia drove the lesson
home. On slavery questions for a period of several decades the policy
of each of the two sections was merely to prevent itself from being
overreached. The conservative trend, however, could not wholly remove the
Revolution's impress of philosophical liberalism from the minds of men.
Slavery was always a thing of appreciable disrelish in many quarters; and
the slave trade especially, whether foreign or domestic, bore a permanent
stigma.

[Footnote 25: _E. g., Annals of Congress_, 1799-1801, pp. 230-246.]

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 enacted prohibitions, and in Georgia alone at the South.
The 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.

[Footnote 1: 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.]

[Footnote 2: W.C. Ford, ed., _Journals of the Continental Congress_
(Washington, 1904), I, 75, 77.]

[Footnote 3: DuBois, pp. 44-48.]

[Footnote 4: 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.]

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]

[Footnote 5: American Historical Association _Report_ for 1903, pp. 459,
460.]

[Footnote 6: LaRochefoucauld-Liancourt, _Travels in the United States_
(London, 1799), p. 605.]

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 intensify the danger of slave insurrections. The
several arguments had varying degrees of influence in the several areas.
In the older settlements where the planters had relaxed into easy-going
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 L50 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 L90
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 indicates that at this
time there was no unanimity of conservatives against it.

[Footnote 7: Charleston _Evening Gazette_, Sept. 26 and 28, 1785.]

[Footnote 8: _Ibid_., Oct. 1, 1785.]

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]

[Footnote 9: Charleston _Morning Post_, March 23, 1787.]

[Footnote 10: _Ibid_., March 29, 1787; Cooper and McCord, _Statutes at
Large of South Carolina_, VII, 430.]

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 regime 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]

[Footnote 11: _Georgia State Gazette_ (Savannah), Feb. 17, 1788.]

[Footnote 12: Augusta, Ga., _Chronicle_, Jan. 30, 1802.]

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.

[Footnote 13: Charleston _Courier_, Dec. 5, 1803.]

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.

[Footnote 14: _Annals of Congress_, 1803-1804, p. 992.]

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 who dealt in this property would sell it at a very long credit.
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.

[Footnote 15: Charleston _Courier_, Dec. 26, 1803.]

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]

[Footnote 16: _Ibid_., Dec. 20, 1803.]

[Footnote 17: Charleston _City Gazette_, Dec. 22, 1803.]

[Footnote 18: "Diary of Edward Hooker" in the American Historical
Association _Report_ for 1896, p. 878.]

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 volumes. As he wrote in after
years, the news that the legislature 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]

[Footnote 19: E.S. Thomas, _Reminiscences_, II, 35, 36.]

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.

[Footnote 20: _Virginia Argus_, Jan. 19, 1808.]

[Footnote 21: _Annals of Congress_, 1821-1822, pp. 73-77.]

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 amendment to the Federal Constitution empowering Congress at 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.