The material for this work was collected in the Yale University Library in New Haven, Connecticut, and in the Congressional Library at Washington. The sources used are to be found in the appended bibliography. The most helpful were books of travel, newspapers and periodicals, Statistics of Southern States and the United States Census Reports.
By : Winfield Hazlitt Collins (1868 - 1927)
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A SKETCH OF THE RISE OF THE SLAVE TRADE IN AFRICAN STATES AND OF THE FOREIGN SLAVE TRADE OF THE SOUTHERN STATES.
It is not our intention nor is it within our province to enter into details concerning the foreign slave trade. It seems, however, that a brief account is necessary as introductory to the subject of the Domestic Slave Trade.
The rise in Europe of the traffic in slaves from Africa was an incident in the commercial expansion of Portugal. It was coeval and almost coextensive with the development of commerce, and followed in the wake of discovery and colonization.
The first name connected with it is that of Antonio Gonçalvez, who was a marine under Prince Henry the Navigator. In 1441 he was sent to Cape Bojador to get a vessel load of "sea-wolves" skins. He signalized his voyage by the capture of some Moors whom he carried to Portugal. In 1442 these Moors promised black slaves as a ransom for themselves. Prince Henry approved of this exchange and Gonçalvez took the captives home and received, among other things, ten black slaves in exchange for two of them. The king justified his act on the ground that the negroes might be converted to the Christian religion, but the Moors could not. Two years later the Company of Lagos chartered by the king, and engaged in exploration on the coast of Africa, imported about two hundred slaves from the islands of Nar and Tidar. "This year (1444) Europe may be said to have made a distinct beginning in the slave trade, henceforth to spread on all sides like the waves stirred up water, and not like them to become fainter and fainter as the circles widen."
After the discovery of America, the islands which became known as the Spanish West Indies were speedily colonized, and the inefficiency of the Indian as a laborer in the mines there soon led to the substitution of the negro. As early as 1502 a few were employed, and in 1517 Charles V. granted a patent to certain traders for the exclusive supply of 4,000 negroes annually to the islands of Hispaniola, Cuba, Jamaica and Porto Rico.
So far as known John Hawkins was the first Englishman to engage in the slave traffic. He left England for Sierra Leone with three ships and a hundred men in 1562, and having secured three hundred negroes he proceeded to Hispaniola where he disposed of them, and having had a very profitable voyage, he returned to England in 1563. This appears to have excited the avarice of the British Government. The next year Hawkins was appointed to the command of one of the Queen's ships and proceeded to Africa where in company with several others, it appears, he engaged in the slave traffic.
In 1624 France began the slave trade and later Holland, Denmark, New England and other English colonies, though the leader in the trade and the last to abandon it was Great Britain.
The first slaves introduced into any of the English continental colonies was in 1619 about the last of August when a piratical Dutch frigate, manned chiefly by English, stopped at Jamestown, Virginia, and sold the colonists twenty negroes. Even for a long while after this, it seems, importation of negroes was merely of an occasional or incidental nature. Indeed, in 1648 only three hundred negroes were to be found in Virginia. However, several shiploads were brought in between 1664 and 1671, and at the latter date Virginia had two thousand slaves. During the latter part of the seventeenth and the early part of the eighteenth century the importation of negroes gradually increased. In 1705, eighteen hundred negroes were brought in and in 1715 Virginia had twenty-three thousand. By 1723 they were being imported into this colony at the rate of fifteen hundred or sixteen hundred a year.
In the eighteenth century Virginia sought from time to time to hinder the introduction of slaves by placing heavy duties on them. Indeed, from 1732 until the Revolution there were only about six months in which slaves could be brought into Virginia free of duty. Nevertheless, in 1776 Virginia had 165,000 slaves.
Though all the other colonies imported slaves more or less during the same period, yet with the possible exception of South Carolina they fell far short of the number imported by Virginia.
In November 1708, Governor Seymour of Maryland, writing to the English Board of Trade, stated that 2,290 negroes were imported into that colony from midsummer 1698 to Christmas 1707. He reported the trade to be running very high, six or seven hundred having been imported during the year. In 1712 there were 8,330 negroes in Maryland. During about the same time (midsummer 1699 to October 1708) Virginia imported 6,607 while a northern colony, New Jersey, imported only one hundred and fifteen from 1698 to 1726.
Du Bois says that South Carolina received about three thousand slaves a year from 1733 to 1766. She had forty thousand in 1740.
In 1700 North Carolina had eleven hundred, 1732 six thousand, and in 1764 about thirty thousand.
Until near the beginning of the eighteenth century it was rare that the English continental colonies received a shipload of slaves direct from Africa, and even these were usually brought in by some unlicensed "interloper." It is very probable that most of the negroes imported before this time were from Barbados, Jamaica and other West India Islands. But by the beginning of the eighteenth century it appears that slaves were being imported more rapidly. After the Assiento, in 1713, England became a great carrier of slaves and so continued until the Revolution. The effect of this was very sensibly felt by the colonies.
Even in the latter part of the seventeenth century some of the colonies began to show their dislike by levying duties on further importation. In the eighteenth century the colonial opposition to the importation of slaves, arising probably from a fear of insurrection, became much more pronounced. Heavy restrictions in the form of duties were laid upon the trade. In some cases these were so heavy as would seem to amount to total prohibition. But the efforts on the part of the colonies to restrict the trade were frowned upon and often disallowed by the British Government.
In 1754 the instructions to Governor Dobbs, of North Carolina, were: "Whereas, acts have been passed in some of our plantations in America for laying duties on the importation and exportation of negroes to the great discouragement of the Merchants trading thither from the coast of Africa, ... it is our will and pleasure that you do not give your assent to or pass any law imposing duties upon negroes imported into our Province of North Carolina."
The colonies considered the slave trade so important to Great Britain that at the dawn of the Revolution some of them appear to have had hopes of bringing her to terms by refusing to import any more slaves.
In the original draft of the Declaration of Independence as submitted by Jefferson, the king of Great Britain is arraigned "for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or restrain this execrable commerce."
It has been estimated that in the year of the Declaration the whole number of slaves in the thirteen colonies was 502,132, apportioned as follows: Massachusetts, 3,500; Rhode Island, 4,376; Connecticut, 6,000; New Hampshire, 627; New York, 15,000; New Jersey, 7,600; Pennsylvania, 10,000; Delaware, 9,000; Maryland, 80,000; Georgia, 16,000; North Carolina, 75,000; South Carolina, 110,000; Virginia, 165,000.
Two years after this, in 1778, Virginia took the lead against the introduction of slaves by passing a law prohibiting importation either by land or sea. This law made an exception of travellers and immigrants. Other States soon followed suit, passing laws to restrict it temporarily or at specified places. By 1803 all the States and territories had laws in force prohibiting the importation of slaves from abroad. It must not be supposed, however, that these were entirely effective. Indeed, the statement was made in Congress Feb. 14, 1804, that in the preceding twelve months "twenty thousand" enslaved negroes had been transported from Guinea, and by smuggling, added to the plantation stock of Georgia and South Carolina.
In 1798 an act of Congress establishing the territory of Mississippi provided that no slave should be brought within its limits from without the United States. In 1804, when Louisiana was erected into the territories of Louisiana and Orleans the provision was made that only slaves which had been imported before May 1, 1798, might be introduced into the territories and these must be the bona fide property of actual settlers.
Upon the petition of the inhabitants for the removal of the restrictions, a bill was introduced in Congress, of which Du Bois says: "By dexterous wording, this bill, which became a law March 2, 1805, swept away all restrictions upon the slave trade except that relating to foreign ports, and left even this provision so ambiguous that later by judicial interpretations of the law, the foreign slave trade was allowed at least for a time."
South Carolina had even before this time (December 17, 1803), repealed her law against the importation of slaves from Africa. The trade was thus open through this State for four years, during which time 39,075 slaves were imported through Charleston alone.
The action of South Carolina in opening the slave trade forced the question upon the attention of Congress. During 1805-6 it was much discussed but it was not until March 2, 1807, that a bill was passed against it. This prohibited the importation of slaves after January 1, 1808, under penalty of imprisonment for not less than five nor more than ten years, and a fine of not less than $5,000 nor more than $10,000.
This law was not entirely effective. In 1810 the Secretary of the Navy writing to Charleston, South Carolina, says: "I hear not without great concern, that the law prohibiting the importation of slaves has been violated in frequent instances near St. Mary's."
Drake, a slave smuggler, says, that during the war of 1812 the business of smuggling slaves through Florida into the United States was a lively one.
Vincent Nolte says that in 1813 "pirates captured Spanish and other slave ships on the high seas and established their main depot and rendezvous on the island of Barataria lying near the coast adjacent to New Orleans. This place was visited by the sugar planters, chiefly of French origin, who bought up the stolen slaves at from $150 to $200 per head when they could not have procured as good stock in the city for less than $600 or $700. These were then conveyed to the different plantations, through the innumerable creeks called bayous, that communicate with each other by manifold little branches."
In 1817-1819 slaves were very high and in great demand in the South. As a consequence great numbers of them were smuggled in at various places. The evidence of this is quite convincing.
Amelia Island and the town of St. Mary's became notorious as two of the principal rendezvous of smugglers. A writer in "Niles' Register" in 1818 says that a regular chain of posts was established from the head of St. Mary's river to the upper country, and through the Indian nation by means of which slaves are hurried to every part of the country. The woodmen along the river side rode like so many Arabs loaded with slaves ready for market. When ready to form a caravan, an Indian alarm was created that the woods might be less frequented, and if pursued in Georgia they escaped to Florida.
Mr. M'Intosh, Collector of the Port of Darien, in a letter in 1818, says: "I am in possession of undoubted information that African and West Indian negroes are almost daily illicitly introduced into Georgia, for sale or settlement, or passing through it to the territories of the United States."
In 1817 it was reported to the Secretary of the Navy that "most of the goods carried to Galveston are introduced into the United States, the most bulky and least valuable regularly through the custom house; the most valuable and the slaves are smuggled in through the numerous inlets to the westward where the people are but too much disposed to render them every possible assistance. Several hundred slaves are now at Galveston."
"Niles' Register," in 1818, quoting from the "Democrat Press," has a very interesting account of how the law against the importation of slaves was evaded at New Orleans: An agent would be sent to the West Indies and even to Africa to purchase a cargo of slaves. On the return when the slave ship got near Balize the agent would leave her, go in haste to New Orleans and inform the proper authorities that a certain vessel had come into the Mississippi, said to be bound for New Orleans and having on board a certain number of negroes contrary to the law of the United States. The vessel and cargo would be libelled and the slaves sold at public auction. One half of the purchase money would go to the informer and the other to the United States. The informer and agent was the same man and a partner in the transaction. This was a profitable business and about ten thousand slaves a year are said to have been thus introduced.
It is quite evident that the illicit slave trade at this time was very great. In 1819 Mr. Middleton, of South Carolina, said in Congress that in his opinion thirteen thousand Africans were annually smuggled into the United States, and Mr. Wright, of Virginia, estimated the number at fifteen thousand.
In 1818, 1819 and 1820 Congress passed acts to supplement and render more effective the act of 1807. Du Bois says that for a decade after 1825 there appears little positive evidence of a large illicit importation, but thinks notwithstanding that slaves were largely imported.
Captain J.E. Alexander in a book published in 1833 says that he was assured by a planter of forty years' standing that persons in New Orleans were connected with slave traders in Cuba, and that at certain seasons of the year they would go up the Mississippi River and meet slave ships off the coast. They would relieve these of their cargoes, return to the main stream of the river, drop down in flat boats and dispose of the negroes to those who wished them. Thomas Powell Buxton makes the statement, upon what he claims to be high authority, that fifteen thousand negroes were imported into Texas from Africa in one year, about 1838.
The "Liberator" quoting the "Maryland Colonization Herald," says a writer in that paper was assured, in 1838, by Pedro Blanco, one of the largest slave traders on the coast of Africa, that for the preceding forty years the United States had been his best market through the west end of Cuba and Texas.
"Between 1847 and 1853," says Du Bois, "the slave smuggler Drake had a slave depot in the Gulf, where sometimes as many as sixteen hundred negroes were on hand, and the owners were continually importing and shipping."
Drake himself says: "Our island was visited almost weekly by agents from Cuba, New York, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Boston and New Orleans, ... the seasoned and instructed slaves were taken to Texas or Florida, overland, and to Cuba, in sailing boats. As no squad contained more than half a dozen, no difficulty was found in posting them to the United States, without discovery, and generally without suspicion.... The Bay Island plantation sent ventures weekly to the Florida Keys. Slaves were taken into the great American swamps, and there kept till wanted for market. Hundreds were sold as runaways from the Florida wilderness. We had agents in every slave State, and our coasters were built in Maine and came out with lumber. I could tell curious stories ... of this business of smuggling Bozal negroes into the United States. It is growing more profitable every year, and if you should hang all the Yankee merchants engaged in it, hundreds would fill their places."
Owing to the increasing demand, and to the high price of slaves from 1845 to 1860, and to the fact that the Southern people were becoming more and more favorable to the reopening of the African slave trade, thus making it easier to practice smuggling successfully, we have no reason to doubt the truth of these accounts of this illicit traffic.
Stephen A. Douglas said in 1859 it was his confident opinion that more than fifteen thousand slaves had been imported in the preceding year, and that the trade had been carried on extensively for a long while. About 1860 it was stated that twenty large cities and towns in the South were depots for African slaves and sixty or seventy cargoes of slaves had been introduced in the preceding eighteen months. It was estimated in 1860 that eighty-five vessels which had been fitted out from New York City during eighteen months of 1859 and 1860, would introduce from thirty thousand to sixty thousand annually.
From what has been said it seems to us certain that at least 270,000 slaves were introduced into the United States from 1808 to 1860 inclusive. These we would distribute as follows: Between 1808 and 1820, sixty thousand; 1820 to 1830, fifty thousand; 1830 to 1840, forty thousand; 1840 to 1850, fifty thousand and from 1850 to 1860 seventy thousand. We consider these very moderate and even low estimates.
It will be seen later that these figures are of prime importance in accounting for the presence of certain slaves in the States of the extreme South.
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