Regulating the African slave trade

Civil War History

Volumn 54, Issue 4, 2008, Pages 379-405

  Finkelman, Paul ^a  

^a ALBANY LAW SCHOOL   (United States)

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EID: 77956857298     PISSN: 00098078     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Review

References (86)

1. "An Act for the Encouragement of the Importation of White Servants," Act of Oct. 8, 1698, 2 Statutes at Large of South Carolina 153 (1698).
2. For statistics on the growth of the white and slave populations in colonial South Carolina see Peter Wood, Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670 through the Stono Rebellion (New York: Knopf, 1974).
3. No. 368 (Dec. 11, 1717), 7 Statutes at Large of South Carolina 368, 370 (ed. David J. McCord, 1840);
4. see also W. E. B. DuBois, The Suppression of the African Slave-Trade to the United States of America, 1638-1870 (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1896), 7;
5. "An Act for laying an Imposition on Negroes . . . ," Act of July 24, 1719, 3 Statutes at Large of South Carolina 56, 57 (ed. Thomas Cooper, 1836).
6. See generally, Wood, Black Majority.
7. "An Act for the better strengthening of this Province, by granting to His Majesty certain taxes on the purchasers of Negroes imported. . . ." Act of Apr. 5, 1740, 3 Statutes at Large of South Carolina 556 (1740) (Sec. 1) (ed. Thomas Cooper, 1836).
8. An Act for the better strengthening of this Province, by granting to His Majesty certain taxes on the purchasers of Negroes imported. . . ." 3 Statutes at Large of South Carolina 1740) 1836).556 (Ibid.
9. An Act for the better strengthening of this Province, by granting to His Majesty certain taxes on the purchasers of Negroes imported. . . ." 3 Statutes at Large of South Carolina 1740) 1836).556 (Ibid.
10. DuBois, Suppression of the African Slave-Trade, 7.
11. "An Act for laying an additional duty upon all Negroes hereinafter to be imported into this Province," Act of Aug. 25, 1764, 4 Statutes at Large of South Carolina 187 (1764) (ed. Thomas Cooper, 1836).
12. DuBois, Suppression of the African Slave-Trade, 7.
13. Summary View of the Rights of British America (1774), in The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, 22 vols., ed. by Julian Boyd et al. (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univ. Press, 1950), 1:130;
14. Autobiography of Thomas Jefferson (1821),
15. reprinted in The Life and Selected Writings of Thomas Jefferson, ed. by Adrienne Koch and William Harwood Peden (New York: Modern Library, 1944), 51.
16. Paul Finkelman, Slavery and the Founders: Race and Liberty in the Age of Jefferson 2d ed. (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe. 2001).
17. The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, 1:426.
18. Finkelman, Slavery and the Founders.
19. Arthur Zilversmit, The First Emancipation: The Abolition of Slavery in the North (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1967);
20. Paul Finkelman, An Imperfect Union: Slavery, Federalism, and Comity (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1981). So too would the Canadian province of Upper Canada (Ontario).
21. "An Act to prevent the further introduction of slaves, and to limit the Term of Contracts for servitude within this Province," Act of July 9, 1793, Statutes of Upper Canada, 33 George III, pp. 24-25, chap. (1793).
22. Donald Robinson, Slavery in the Structure of American Politics, 1765-1820 (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1967), 295-99.
23. Max Farrand, The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, rev. ed., 4 vols. (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, 1966), 1:605.
24. For example, in the 1780s and 1790s Thomas Jefferson sold more than eighty slaves to raise money to pay his debts and buy the many things he imported from France. See Finkelman, Slavery and the Founders, chap. 7.
25. Farrand, Records, 2:220-23.
26. Farrand, Records, 2:Ibid., 306.
27. Farrand, Records, Ibid., 360, 363-64.
28. Farrand, Records, 360, Ibid., 363-65.
29. Farrand, Records, 360, Ibid., 369-70.
30. Farrand, Records, 360, Ibid., 369-70.
31. Farrand, Records, 360, Ibid., 369-70.
32. On scholarly and popular misunderstandings of Mason's views on slavery, see Peter Wallenstein, "Flawed Keepers of the Flame: The Interpreters of George Mason," Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 102 (Apr. 1994): 229-60 (quotation on 253).
33. Farrand, Records, 2:378 (McHenry notes).
34. Farrand, Records, 2:Ibid., 370-71.
35. Farrand, Records, 2:Ibid., 371-75.
36. Farrand, Records, 2:Ibid., 371-75.
37. Farrand, Records, 2:Ibid., 372-73.
38. Farrand, Records, 2:Ibid., 374.
39. Farrand, Records, 2:Ibid., 414-15.
40. Farrand, Records, 2:Ibid., 415-16.
41. This compromise also included the adoption of the Fugitive Slave Clause of Article IV, Sec. 2.
42. Farrand, Records, 2:449.
43. Farrand, Records, 2:Ibid., 449-52;
44. Luther Martin, "The Genuine Information Delivered to the Legislature of the State of Maryland Relative to the Proceedings of the General Convention Lately Held at Philadelphia," in The Complete Anti-Federalist, ed. Herbert J. Storing, 7 vols. (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1981), 2:60-61. Martin, who later opposed the Constitution, made this point in his letter to the Maryland ratifying convention. He had been on the committee that drafted the compromise over commerce and the slave trade.
45. Farrand, Records, 2:449-53.
46. Farrand, Records, 2:Ibid., 453-54.
47. U.S. Constitution, Art. I, Sec. 9, Cl. 1.
48. Wallenstein, "Flawed Keepers of the Flame"; Farrand, Records, 2:633, 640.
49. Washington quoted in John C. Miller, Wolf by the Ears: Thomas Jefferson and Slavery (New York: Free Press, 1977), 107.
50. See also, Henry Wiencek, An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation of America (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003);
51. Fritz Hirshfeld, George Washington and Slavery: A Documentary Portrayal (Columbia: Univ. of Missouri Press, 1997).
52. Letters from a Countryman from Dutchess [sic] County (letter of Jan. 22, 1788), in Storing, The Complete Anti-Federalist, 6:62.
53. "Blessings of the New Government," in Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution, ed. by John P. Kaminski and Gaspare J. Saladino, 22 vols. (Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1981), 13:354-46.
54. "Essays by Republicus (Mar. 12, 1788)," in Storing, Complete Anti-Federalist, 5:169.
55. Consider Arms, Malichi Maynard, and Samuel Field, "Reasons for Dissent," in Storing, Complete Anti-Federalist, 4:262-63.
56. Jonathan Elliot, ed., The Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution, 5 vols. (1888; rpt., New York: Burt Franklin, 1987), 2:484, 287, 207.
57. [Tench Coxe], "An American Citizen IV: On the Federal Government," Oct. 21, 1787, reprinted in Kaminski and Saladino, Documentary History, 13:431.
58. Pennsylvania Gazette, Sept. 26, 1787,
59. reprinted in Kaminski and Saladino, Documentary History, 13:253, 254.
60. Benjamin Rush to John Coakley Lettsom, Sept. 28, 1787, in Kaminski and Saladino, Documentary History, 13:262.
61. Backus quoted in Finkelman, An Imperfect Union, 25.
62. Speech of James Wilson, Dec. 3, 1787, in Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution, ed. by Merrill Jensen, 22 vols. (Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1976), 2:463.
63. Speech of James Wilson, Dec. 4, 1787, in Jensen, Documentary History, 2:499.
64. Elliot, Debates in the Several State Conventions, 3:598-99 (Randolph; emphasis in the original), 4:286 (Pinckney).
65. Civis [David Ramsey] "To the Citizens of South Carolina," Charleston Columbian Herald, Feb. 4, 1788,
66. in Kaminski and Saladino, Documentary History, 16:25.
67. "An Act to prohibit the carrying on the Slave Trade from the United States to any foreign place or country," 3d Cong. 1, 1st sess., Act of Mar. 22, 1794, Chap. 11, 1 Stat. 347, 349.
68. "An Act in addition to the act entitled, 'An Act to prohibit the carrying on the Slave Trade from the United States to any foreign place or country,'" 6th Cong., 1st sess., Act of May 10, 1800, Chap. 51, 2 Stat. 70.
69. "An Act to alter and amend the several Acts respecting the importation or bringing into this State, from beyond seas or elsewhere, Negroes. . . ." Dec. 17, 1803, 7 Statutes at Large of South Carolina 449-51 (ed. David J. McCord, 1840).
70. See also Jed H. Shugerman, "The Louisiana Purchase and South Carolina's Reopening of the Slave Trade in 1803," Journal of the Early Republic 22 (2002): 263.
71. "An Act to prevent the importation of certain persons into certain states where, by the laws thereof, their admission is prohibited," 7th Cong., 2d sess, Act of Feb. 28, 1803, Chap. 10, 2 Stat. 205.
72. Thomas Jefferson, "Sixth Annual Message," Dec. 2, 1806, in A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, ed. by James D. Richardson, 10 vols. (New York: Bureau of National Literature, 1897), 1:396.
73. "An Act to prohibit the importation of slaves into any port or place within the jurisdiction of the United States, from and after the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and eight," 9th Cong., 2d Sess., Act of Mar. 2, 1807, Chap. 22, 2 Stat. 426.
74. An Act to prohibit the importation of slaves into any port or place within the jurisdiction of the United States, from and after the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and eight," 9th Cong., 2d Sess., Act of Mar. 2, 1807, Ibid., Secs. 2 and 3.
75. An Act to prohibit the importation of slaves into any port or place within the jurisdiction of the United States, from and after the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and eight," 9th Cong., 2d Sess., Act of Mar. 2, 1807, Ibid., Secs. 2, 3, 4, 5.
76. Thomas Jefferson to Edward Coles, Aug. 25, 1814, in The Portable Jefferson, ed. by Merrill D. Peterson (New York: Viking, 1975), 546.
77. Finkelman, Slavery and the Founders, chaps. 6 and 7.
78. Dred Scott v. Sandford, 19 How. (60 U.S.) 393 (1857).
79. "An Act in addition to 'An act to prohibit the introduction [importation] of slaves . . ." Act of Apr. 10, 1818, 3 Stat. 450.
80. An Act in addition to 'An act to prohibit the introduction [importation] of slaves . . ." Ibid., Sec. 8.
81. "An Act in addition to the Acts prohibiting the slave trade," Act of Mar. 3, 1819, Chap. 101, 3 Stat. 532.
82. "An Act to continue in force . . . 'An act to protect the commerce of the United States, and punish the crime of piracy . . . '"; Act of May 15, 1820, Chap. 113, 3 Stat. 600.
83. "An Act in addition to 'An act to continue in force . . . '" Act of Jan. 30, 1823, Chap. 7, 3 Stat. 721.
84. Shugerman, "Louisiana Purchase."
85. The only trader actually hanged was Nathaniel Gordon. See United States v. Gordon, 25 F. Cas. 1364 (1861),
86. affirmed, Ex parte Gordon, 66 U.S. (1 Black.) 503 (1861).