The Slave Trade: An Overview

The desire to introduce slavery into the New World began shortly after the arrival of the first Europeans. The situation faced by these new settlers was an abundance of land and too few laborers. In order to make the land profitable the settlers introduced slavery as a means to cultivate the land. Originally Native Americans were sought to perform this task. However, their special vulnerability to European diseases and fear of antagonizing conflict among local Native Americans made enslaving Africans more desirable.

Prior to the Enlightenment, slavery was a widely accepted economic system, the legitimacy of which was unchallenged. With the Enlightenment, moral questions began to emerge that challenged the system's legitimacy. In his work Two Treatises on Government (1690), the English philosopher John Locke wrote, "the natural liberty of man is to be free from any superior power on earth" (1980, p. 17). Yet within the Enlightenment framework, Locke justified slavery in certain circumstances. If a person committed a crime worthy of execution or was captured in a just war, then, according to Locke, it would be an act of benevolence to "delay" death by submitting the prisoner into a condition of slavery. Later advocates of the slave trade used this reasoning to justify the practice. In A Defence of the Planters in the West Indies (1792), the author contended slaves taken from Africa were "prisoners taken in war—criminals—such negroes as the mode of African government had judged to be sacrificed to their laws" (Foot 1792, p. 47). While the author is mostly correct in his assertion that the enslaved were made so by local African authorities, most were not enslaved by the Lockean conception of criminality or "just war," but rather kidnapped by force.

While the ghastly cruelties of the slave trade concerned many, John Newton, a former slave trader turned abolitionist, explained that while "the Slave Trade was always unjustifiable … inattention and [self] interest prevented … the evil from being perceived" by many (Newton 1788, p. 7). Further, those involved in the trade became so familiar "with the suffering of the slaves" they could "become callous, and insensible to the pleadings of humanity" (p. 16). This callousness became so entrenched that Newton described incidences where as many as 100 slaves were thrown overboard due to low levels of provisions. In another case, a slave trader snatched an infant child from the arms of his mother to be thrown overboard when his cries overly annoyed the crewmember.

The slave trade became so notoriously cruel that statesman Thomas Jefferson sought to include the practice within his original draft of the Declaration of Independence. Here he condemned the king of England who had "waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it's [sic] most sacred rights of life & liberty" by "captivating & carrying [humans] into slavery in another hemisphere … where men should be bought and sold" (1950, p. 426). Despite being considered an odious institution by many, it was nevertheless struck out of the final draft. Northern shippers who engaged in the Atlantic slave trade certainly took offense. Also, representatives from Georgia and South Carolina, while not yet in a position to argue slavery as a moral good, felt slavery was necessary for labor in their regions. They believed the Atlantic slave trade was essential for the time being, as large swaths of empty land required labor, which was scarce at the time. Yet, aside from pro-slavery sentiments was also a sense of the propriety condemning the king in such a manner. For delegates who felt slavery was an embarrassment for the nation, it seemed hypocritical to blame King George III for a trade in which members within the colonies participated. Rather than highlight such an egregious contradiction, many felt it was better to ignore it.

During the Constitutional Convention questions over the future of the slave trade caused some controversy. Originally a proposal was introduced that would allow Congress to outlaw the slave trade by 1800. However, Charles Pinckney of South Carolina introduced a plan to extend this provision until 1808. James Madison, generally a moderate on the issue, immediately objected to this plan stating, "twenty years will produce all the mischief that can be apprehended from the liberty to import slaves." Madison continued, "so long a term will be more dishonorable to the national character than to say nothing about it in the Constitution" (Farrand 1966, p. 415). Ultimately the convention settled on 1808 as the first year the trade could be outlawed. Between the ratification of the Constitutional Convention in 1887 and the closing of the slave trade in 1808, unprecedented influxes of slaves were transported to the United States. The unintended consequence of this window of time was to fuel the slaveholders' desire to obtain all the slaves they could before law prohibited the trade.

By 1806 Congress started making legislative preparations to outlaw the practice. The debate centered not on whether to outlaw the practice—but how. The original bill allowed for Africans seized by illegal slave trading to be sold as "goods" by the government. Congressman John Smilie of Pennsylvania immediately objected, stating such a policy would "take upon ourselves the odium of becoming slave traders." (Annals of Congress, 9th Congress, 2nd Session (1806, p. 170) Efforts were made to set the seized "cargo" free, setting off a sectional debate in Congress. Finally a compromise was reached where state authorities would settle the fate of the illegally traded slaves. Ultimately the slave trade was outlawed with a House vote of 113 to 5. Two of the dissenting votes came from Northern antislavery representatives upset with how the ban would be implemented. Opposition to the Atlantic slave trade by this time in America had achieved near universal consensus. While, to be sure, opposition had a strong moral base, for some wealthy planters, closure of the slave trade ensured the value of their slaves remained high by closing the supply.

By 1820 the Atlantic slave trade had become so detested that Congress almost unanimously passed a provision making illegal slave trading the equivalent of piracy with the punishment of death. During this congressional move, Virginian Charles Mercer issued the following committee report:

Your committee cannot perceive wherein the offence of kidnapping an unoffending inhabitant of a foreign country; of chaining him down for a series of days, weeks, and months, amidst the dying and the dead, to the pestilential hold of a slaveship; of consigning him, if he chance to live out the voyage, to perpetual slavery in a remote and unknown land, differs in malignity from piracy, or why milder punishment should follow then on the other crime (U.S. Congress, Annals of Congress [1820], p. 2209).

THE CONVERSION OF A BRITISH SLAVE TRADER

Amazing grace! (how sweet the sound)
That saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.

Born in 1725, John Newton spent the early part of his life on the sea with his father. His life on the sea eventually led to his own enslavement in Africa. After his release, Newton became involved in the slave trade and worked his way up to shipmaster of several slave ships. During his time on the sea, Newton both witnessed and participated in the most brutal and inhumane aspects of slavery. It was also during this time that he began his own religious awakening. Newton eventually quit the slave trading business and by 1764 became an Anglican priest.

During his years as a priest Newton grew in repentance for his life as a slave trader. Soon he joined forces with William Wilberforce and other abolitionists in Great Britain to put an end to the slave trade. In 1779 Newton wrote and published his famous hymn Amazing Grace, cataloging his conversion from a life of sin to devotion for God and love. The song quickly gained international renown as the anthem for the antislavery movement.

SOURCE: Turner, Steve. Amazing Grace: The Story of America's Most Beloved Song. New York: Harper Perennial, 2003.

Yet with the close of the Atlantic slave trade came the rise of the interstate slave trade. Though Deep South regions of the United States (abundant in land and short on laborers) could no longer import the enslaved from Africa, there were plenty to be brought in from the northern regions of the United States. At the close of the eighteenth century and early nineteenth century Northern states moved to gradually abolish slavery. In the process they set time limits and age thresholds for persons to be freed. However, such rules only went into effect for the enslaved if they remained in the North. Owners not wishing to take a financial loss sold their slaves South in what became known as the interstate slave trade.

The enslaved across the North and the upper regions of the South were "sold down the river" and sent into the Deeper South regions of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi where slavery and the lash were applied with greater force. In addition to being sent into a harsher world of slavery, among the enslaved the trade displaced marriages and separated children from their parents. As the former slave and famed lecturer Frederick Douglass once observed referring to the often bar room deals, "many a child has been snatched from the arms of its mother by bargains arranged in a state of total drunkenness" (Douglass 1945, p. 46).

During a visit into the South, William H. Seward, the antislavery politician from New York and eventual secretary of state in the Lincoln administration, and his wife came across an old blind enslaved woman turning the wheel of a machine. She was unaware if she had a husband since he had long been sold away. When asked if she had any children she replied, "I don't know mistress; I had children, but they were sold" and had "never herd from any of them since" (Seward 1916, p. 15).

While the interstate slave trade flourished, most slaveholders recognized the cruelties of the trade. As Abraham Lincoln observed speaking to the South, "you have amongst you, a sneaking individual, of the class of native tyrants known as the 'SLAVEDEALER.'" If these slaveholders "cannot help it, you sell to him; but if you can help it, you drive him from your door. You despise him utterly. You do not recognize him as a friend, or even as an honest man" (Lincoln 2001, p. 302). Lincoln used this observation to demonstrate to Southerners that they recognized the humanity of the enslaved, and understood them to be more than mere property.

Yet as antislavery sentiment seemed poised to make Americans reach the logical conclusion that opposition to the slave trade meant an inherent opposition to slavery itself, proponents of the institution disagreed. They instead sought to not only strengthen the interstate slave trade, but also to reopen the Atlantic slave trade. While politicians on both sides of the Mason—Dixon near unanimously opposed reopening the Atlantic slave trade from its close in 1808 until the early 1850s, a younger generation of proslavery zealots took up the cause to reopen. In 1853, Leonidas Spratt, a young newspaper editor of the Charleston Standard, became one of the first important figures to argue in favor of reopening the Atlantic slave trade. By 1856 the governor of South Carolina, James Adams, expressed his backing for reopening the trade as support for the issue grew. However, opposition resoundingly remained strong. In reaction to its growing popularity, the United States House of Representatives voted 183 to 8 on a resolution declaring the Atlantic slave trade to be "inexpedient, unwise, and contrary to settled policy of the United States." An earlier resolution passed by the same body calling the Atlantic slave trade "shocking to the moral sentiment" passed by a vote of 152 to 57 (Fehrenbacher 2001, p. 181).

The closest reopening of the Atlantic slave trade came to being policy, occurred in Louisiana in 1858. Through use of a clever loophole to get around federal law, a bill was introduced which would allow "voluntary" African "apprentices" to be imported into the state. These persons would labor in their condition for fifteen years, after which they "might" return to Africa. In reality the bill was a ruse to import slaves. The bill quickly passed the Louisiana House and tentatively passed the Louisiana Senate by one vote. However, one state senator, upon reflection, switched his vote causing the bill to go down in defeat.

Though reopening of the Atlantic slave trade grew in popularity during the turbulent political crisis over slavery, support for reintroducing the practice remained small. At the outbreak of secession and Civil War in 1861, even the Confederate government, whose "cornerstone" was said to have rested on the institution of slavery, outlawed the Atlantic slave trade within its own constitution. During the Civil War, under an antislavery Republican Congress for the first time, the United States federal government and Lincoln administration established a treaty with Great Britain to strengthen the suppression of the Atlantic slave trade. Further, during the Lincoln administration, Nathaniel Gordon became the first American slave trader to be convicted and hanged by the federal government for engaging in the notorious trade.

Yet, as the enforcement mechanisms against the illegal Atlantic slave trade began to tighten, the institution of slavery in the United States began to unravel. With Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 and the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865 forever outlawing slavery in the United States, the prospects of reopening the slave trade in America were forever put to rest.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Douglass, Frederick. Frederick Douglass: Selections from Writings, ed. Philip S. Foner. New York: International Publishers, 1945.

Farrand, Max, ed. The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, vol. 2. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1966.

Fehrenbacher, Don E. The Slaveholding Republic: An Account of the United States Government)s Relations to Slavery. Ed. Ward M. McAfee. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.

Foot, Jesse. A Defence of the Planters in the West Indies. London, 1792.

Jefferson, Thomas. The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Julian Boyd. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1950.

Lincoln, Abraham. Abraham Lincoln: His Speeches and Writings, ed. Roy Basler. Cleveland: DeCapo Press, 2001.

Locke, John. Two Treatises on Government, ed. C. B. Macpherson. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1980.

Newton, John. Thoughts upon the African Slave Trade. London: 1788.

Seward, Frederick. Reminiscences of a War-Time Statesman and Diplomat. New York: Nickerbocker Press, 1916.

U.S. Congress. Annals of Congress. 9th Cong., 2nd sess., 1806.

U.S. Congress. Annals of Congress. 16th Congress, 1st sess., 1820.

                                         John J. Wickre