Part 16 (1/2)
_1806._ Feb. 4. + Bidwell's amendment.
Notice. + Dec. 3. + Committee on Bill introduced. + 8.
slave trade.
Committed. + 9.
15. + Bill reported.
17.
18.
19.
23.
29.
31.
_1807._
Jan. 5.
7.
8. + Read third time; Reported. + 15.
recommitted.
16.
20. + Reported Third reading. + 26.
amended.
Pa.s.sED. + 27.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
28.
Senate bill Feb. 9.
reported.
10.
11. +
Senate bill 12.
amended.
Reported from House. 13. + Pa.s.sED.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Reported to House.
17. Reported back.
- - - - - - - - - - - 18.
House insists; - - - - - - - - - - - asks conference.
/ - - _ __ - - - - - - X House asks conference. _ _ _/ _ __ _ 2
5 - - - -_ Conference report _ _ _ _ _ _-
- - - - - adopted.
Conference report / 2
6 adopted. _ _ _
Bill enrolled. - - - -2
8 March
2.
V Signed by the President.
This bill received the approval of President Jefferson, March 2, 1807, and became thus the ”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.”[65] The debates in the Senate were not reported. Those in the House were prolonged and bitter, and hinged especially on the disposal of the slaves, the punishment of offenders, and the coast-trade. Men were continually changing their votes, and the bill see-sawed backward and forward, in committee and out, until the House was thoroughly worn out. On the whole, the strong anti-slavery men, like Bidwell and Sloan, were outgeneraled by Southerners, like Early and Williams; and, considering the immense moral backing of the anti-slavery party from the Revolutionary fathers down, the bill of 1807 can hardly be regarded as a great anti-slavery victory.
60. ~Enforcement of the Act.~ The period so confidently looked forward to by the const.i.tutional fathers had at last arrived; the slave-trade was prohibited, and much oratory and poetry were expended in celebration of the event. In the face of this, let us see how the Act of 1807 was enforced and what it really accomplished. It is noticeable, in the first place, that there was no especial set of machinery provided for the enforcement of this act. The work fell first to the Secretary of the Treasury, as head of the customs collection. Then, through the activity of cruisers, the Secretary of the Navy gradually came to have oversight, and eventually the whole matter was lodged with him, although the Departments of State and War were more or less active on different occasions. Later, at the advent of the Lincoln government, the Department of the Interior was charged with the enforcement of the slave-trade laws. It would indeed be surprising if, amid so much uncertainty and s.h.i.+fting of responsibility, the law were not poorly enforced. Poor enforcement, moreover, in the years 1808 to 1820 meant far more than at almost any other period; for these years were, all over the European world, a time of stirring economic change, and the set which forces might then take would in a later period be unchangeable without a cataclysm. Perhaps from 1808 to 1814, in the midst of agitation and war, there was some excuse for carelessness. From 1814 on, however, no such palliation existed, and the law was probably enforced as the people who made it wished it enforced.
Most of the Southern States rather tardily pa.s.sed the necessary supplementary acts disposing of illegally imported Africans. A few appear not to have pa.s.sed any. Some of these laws, like the Alabama-Mississippi Territory Act of 1815,[66] directed such Negroes to be ”sold by the proper officer of the court, to the highest bidder, at public auction, for ready money.” One-half the proceeds went to the informer or to the collector of customs, the other half to the public treasury. Other acts, like that of North Carolina in 1816,[67] directed the Negroes to ”be sold and disposed of for the use of the state.”
One-fifth of the proceeds went to the informer. The Georgia Act of 1817[68] directed that the slaves be either sold or given to the Colonization Society for transportation, providing the society reimburse the State for all expense incurred, and pay for the transportation. In this manner, machinery of somewhat clumsy build and varying pattern was provided for the carrying out of the national act.
61. ~Evidence of the Continuance of the Trade.~ Undoubtedly, the Act of 1807 came very near being a dead letter. The testimony supporting this view is voluminous. It consists of presidential messages, reports of cabinet officers, letters of collectors of revenue, letters of district attorneys, reports of committees of Congress, reports of naval commanders, statements made on the floor of Congress, the testimony of eye-witnesses, and the complaints of home and foreign anti-slavery societies.
”When I was young,” writes Mr. Fowler of Connecticut, ”the slave-trade was still carried on, by Connecticut s.h.i.+pmasters and Merchant adventurers, for the supply of southern ports. This trade was carried on by the consent of the Southern States, under the provisions of the Federal Const.i.tution, until 1808, and, after that time, clandestinely.
There was a good deal of conversation on the subject, in private circles.” Other States were said to be even more involved than Connecticut.[69] The African Society of London estimated that, down to 1816, fifteen of the sixty thousand slaves annually taken from Africa were s.h.i.+pped by Americans. ”Notwithstanding the prohibitory act of America, which was pa.s.sed in 1807, s.h.i.+ps bearing the American flag continued to trade for slaves until 1809, when, in consequence of a decision in the English prize appeal courts, which rendered American slave s.h.i.+ps liable to capture and condemnation, that flag suddenly disappeared from the coast. Its place was almost instantaneously supplied by the Spanish flag, which, with one or two exceptions, was now seen for the first time on the African coast, engaged in covering the slave trade. This sudden subst.i.tution of the Spanish for the American flag seemed to confirm what was established in a variety of instances by more direct testimony, that the slave trade, which now, for the first time, a.s.sumed a Spanish dress, was in reality only the trade of other nations in disguise.”[70]
So notorious did the partic.i.p.ation of Americans in the traffic become, that President Madison informed Congress in his message, December 5, 1810, that ”it appears that American citizens are instrumental in carrying on a traffic in enslaved Africans, equally in violation of the laws of humanity, and in defiance of those of their own country. The same just and benevolent motives which produced the interdiction in force against this criminal conduct, will doubtless be felt by Congress, in devising further means of suppressing the evil.”[71] The Secretary of the Navy wrote the same year to Charleston, South Carolina: ”I hear, not without great concern, that the law prohibiting the importation of slaves has been violated in frequent instances, near St. Mary's.”[72]
Testimony as to violations of the law and suggestions for improving it also came in from district attorneys.[73]
The method of introducing Negroes was simple. A slave smuggler says: ”After resting a few days at St. Augustine, ... I agreed to accompany Diego on a land trip through the United States, where a _kaffle_ of negroes was to precede us, for whose disposal the shrewd Portuguese had already made arrangements with my uncle's consignees. I soon learned how readily, and at what profits, the Florida negroes were sold into the neighboring American States. The _kaffle_, under charge of negro drivers, was to strike up the Escambia River, and thence cross the boundary into Georgia, where some of our wild Africans were mixed with various squads of native blacks, and driven inland, till sold off, singly or by couples, on the road. At this period [1812], the United States had declared the African slave trade illegal, and pa.s.sed stringent laws to prevent the importation of negroes; yet the Spanish possessions were thriving on this inland exchange of negroes and mulattoes; Florida was a sort of nursery for slave-breeders, and many American citizens grew rich by trafficking in Guinea negroes, and smuggling them continually, in small parties, through the southern United States. At the time I mention, the business was a lively one, owing to the war then going on between the States and England, and the unsettled condition of affairs on the border.”[74]
The Spanish flag continued to cover American slave-traders. The rapid rise of privateering during the war was not caused solely by patriotic motives; for many armed s.h.i.+ps fitted out in the United States obtained a thin Spanish disguise at Havana, and transported thousands of slaves to Brazil and the West Indies. Sometimes all disguise was thrown aside, and the American flag appeared on the slave coast, as in the cases of the ”Paz,”[75] the ”Rebecca,” the ”Rosa”[76] (formerly the privateer ”Commodore Perry”), the ”Dorset” of Baltimore,[77] and the ”Saucy Jack.”[78] Governor McCarthy of Sierra Leone wrote, in 1817: ”The slave trade is carried on most vigorously by the Spaniards, Portuguese, Americans and French. I have had it affirmed from several quarters, and do believe it to be a fact, that there is a greater number of vessels employed in that traffic than at any former period.”[79]
62. ~Apathy of the Federal Government.~ The United States cruisers succeeded now and then in capturing a slaver, like the ”Eugene,” which was taken when within four miles of the New Orleans bar.[80] President Madison again, in 1816, urged Congress to act on account of the ”violations and evasions which, it is suggested, are chargeable on unworthy citizens, who mingle in the slave trade under foreign flags, and with foreign ports; and by collusive importations of slaves into the United States, through adjoining ports and territories.”[81] The executive was continually in receipt of ample evidence of this illicit trade and of the helplessness of officers of the law. In 1817 it was reported to the Secretary of the Navy that most of the goods carried to Galveston were brought into the United States; ”the more 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 a.s.sistance. Several hundred slaves are now at Galveston, and persons have gone from New-Orleans to purchase them. Every exertion will be made to intercept them, but I have little hopes of success.”[82] Similar letters from naval officers and collectors showed that a system of slave piracy had arisen since the war, and that at Galveston there was an establishment of organized brigands, who did not go to the trouble of sailing to Africa for their slaves, but simply captured slavers and sold their cargoes into the United States. This Galveston nest had, in 1817, eleven armed vessels to prosecute the work, and ”the most shameful violations of the slave act, as well as our revenue laws, continue to be practised.”[83] Cargoes of as many as three hundred slaves were arriving in Texas. All this took place under Aury, the buccaneer governor; and when he removed to Amelia Island in 1817 with the McGregor raid, the illicit traffic in slaves, which had been going on there for years,[84]
took an impulse that brought it even to the somewhat deaf ears of Collector Bullock. He reported, May 22, 1817: ”I have just received information from a source on which I can implicitly rely, that it has already become the practice to introduce into the state of Georgia, across the St. Mary's River, from Amelia Island, East Florida, Africans, who have been carried into the Port of Fernandina, subsequent to the capture of it by the Patriot army now in possession of it ...; were the legislature to pa.s.s an act giving compensation in some manner to informers, it would have a tendency in a great degree to prevent the practice; as the thing now is, no citizen will take the trouble of searching for and detecting the slaves. I further understand, that the evil will not be confined altogether to Africans, but will be extended to the worst cla.s.s of West India slaves.”[85]
Undoubtedly, the injury done by these pirates to the regular slave-trading interests was largely instrumental in exterminating them.
Late in 1817 United States troops seized Amelia Island, and President Monroe felicitated Congress and the country upon escaping the ”annoyance and injury” of this illicit trade.[86] The trade, however, seems to have continued, as is shown by such letters as the following, written three and a half months later:--
PORT OF DARIEN, March 14, 1818.
... It is a painful duty, sir, to express to you, that I am in possession of undoubted information, that African and West India negroes are almost daily illicitly introduced into Georgia, for sale or settlement, or pa.s.sing through it to the territories of the United States for similar purposes; these facts are notorious; and it is not unusual to see such negroes in the streets of St. Mary's, and such too, recently captured by our vessels of war, and ordered to Savannah, were illegally bartered by hundreds in that city, _for_ this bartering or bonding (as _it is called_, but in reality _selling_,) actually took place before any decision had [been] pa.s.sed by the court respecting them. I cannot but again express to you, sir, that these irregularities and mocking of the laws, by men who understand them, and who, it was presumed, would have respected them, are such, that it requires the immediate interposition of Congress to effect a suppression of this traffic; for, as things are, should a faithful officer of the government apprehend such negroes, to avoid the penalties imposed by the laws, the proprietors disclaim them, and some agent of the executive demands a delivery of the same to him, who may employ them as he pleases, or effect a sale by way of a bond, for the restoration of the negroes when legally called on so to do; which bond, it is _understood_, is to be _forfeited_, as the amount of the bond is so much less than the value of the property.... There are many negroes ... recently introduced into this state and the Alabama territory, and which can be apprehended. The undertaking would be great; but to be sensible that we shall possess your approbation, and that we are carrying the views and wishes of the government into execution, is all we wish, and it shall be done, independent of every personal consideration.
I have, etc.[87]
This ”approbation” failed to come to the zealous collector, and on the 5th of July he wrote that, ”not being favored with a reply,” he has been obliged to deliver over to the governor's agents ninety-one illegally imported Negroes.[88] Reports from other districts corroborate this testimony. The collector at Mobile writes of strange proceedings on the part of the courts.[89] General D.B. Mitch.e.l.l, ex-governor of Georgia and United States Indian agent, after an investigation in 1821 by Attorney-General Wirt, was found ”guilty of having prost.i.tuted his power, as agent for Indian affairs at the Creek agency, to the purpose of aiding and a.s.sisting in a conscious breach of the act of Congress of 1807, in prohibition of the slave trade--and this from mercenary motives.”[90] The indefatigable Collector Chew of New Orleans wrote to Was.h.i.+ngton that, ”to put a stop to that traffic, a naval force suitable to those waters is indispensable,” and that ”vast numbers of slaves will be introduced to an alarming extent, unless prompt and effectual measures are adopted by the general government.”[91] Other collectors continually reported infractions, complaining that they could get no a.s.sistance from the citizens,[92] or plaintively asking the services of ”one small cutter.”[93]
Meantime, what was the response of the government to such representations, and what efforts were made to enforce the act? A few unsystematic and spasmodic attempts are recorded. In 1811 some special instructions were sent out,[94] and the President was authorized to seize Amelia Island.[95] Then came the war; and as late as November 15, 1818, in spite of the complaints of collectors, we find no revenue cutter on the Gulf coast.[96] During the years 1817 and 1818[97] some cruisers went there irregularly, but they were too large to be effective; and the partial suppression of the Amelia Island pirates was all that was accomplished. On the whole, the efforts of the government lacked plan, energy, and often sincerity. Some captures of slavers were made;[98] but, as the collector at Mobile wrote, anent certain cases, ”this was owing rather to accident, than any well-timed arrangement.” He adds: ”from the Chandalier Islands to the Perdido river, including the coast, and numerous other islands, we have only a small boat, with four men and an inspector, to oppose to the whole confederacy of smugglers and pirates.”[99]
To cap the climax, the government officials were so negligent that Secretary Crawford, in 1820, confessed to Congress that ”it appears, from an examination of the records of this office, that no particular instructions have ever been given, by the Secretary of the Treasury, under the original or supplementary acts prohibiting the introduction of slaves into the United States.”[100] Beside this inactivity, the government was criminally negligent in not prosecuting and punis.h.i.+ng offenders when captured. Urgent appeals for instruction from prosecuting attorneys were too often received in official silence; complaints as to the violation of law by State officers went unheeded;[101] informers were unprotected and sometimes driven from home.[102] Indeed, the most severe comment on the whole period is the report, January 7, 1819, of the Register of the Treasury, who, after the wholesale and open violation of the Act of 1807, reported, in response to a request from the House, ”that it doth not appear, from an examination of the records of this office, and particularly of the accounts (to the date of their last settlement) of the collectors of the customs, and of the several marshals of the United States, that any forfeitures had been incurred under the said act.”[103]
63. ~Typical Cases.~ At this date (January 7, 1819), however, certain cases were stated to be pending, a history of which will fitly conclude this discussion. In 1818 three American schooners sailed from the United States to Havana; on June 2 they started back with cargoes aggregating one hundred and seven slaves. The schooner ”Const.i.tution” was captured by one of Andrew Jackson's officers under the guns of Fort Barancas. The ”Louisa” and ”Marino” were captured by Lieutenant McKeever of the United States Navy. The three vessels were duly proceeded against at Mobile, and the case began slowly to drag along. The slaves, instead of being put under the care of the zealous marshal of the district, were placed in the hands of three bondsmen, friends of the judge. The marshal notified the government of this irregularity, but apparently received no answer. In 1822 the three vessels were condemned as forfeited, but the court ”reserved” for future order the distribution of the slaves.
Nothing whatever either then or later was done to the slave-traders themselves. The owners of the s.h.i.+ps promptly appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States, and that tribunal, in 1824, condemned the three vessels and the slaves on two of them.[104] These slaves, considerably reduced in number ”from various causes,” were sold at auction for the benefit of the State, in spite of the Act of 1819.
Meantime, before the decision of the Supreme Court, the judge of the Supreme Court of West Florida had awarded to certain alleged Spanish claimants of the slaves indemnity for nearly the whole number seized, at the price of $650 per head, and the Secretary of the Treasury had actually paid the claim.[105] In 1826 Lieutenant McKeever urgently pet.i.tions Congress for his prize-money of $4,415.15, which he has not yet received.[106] The ”Const.i.tution” was for some inexplicable reason released from bond, and the whole case fades in a very thick cloud of official mist. In 1831 Congress sought to inquire into the final disposition of the slaves. The information given was never printed; but as late as 1836 a certain Calvin Mickle pet.i.tions Congress for reimburs.e.m.e.nt for the slaves sold, for their hire, for their natural increase, for expenses incurred, and for damages.[107]
64. ~The Supplementary Acts, 1818-1820.~ To remedy the obvious defects of the Act of 1807 two courses were possible: one, to minimize the crime of transportation, and, by encouraging informers, to concentrate efforts against the buying of smuggled slaves; the other, to make the crime of transportation so great that no slaves would be imported. The Act of 1818 tried the first method; that of 1819, the second.[108] The latter was obviously the more upright and logical, and the only method deserving thought even in 1807; but the Act of 1818 was the natural descendant of that series of compromises which began in the Const.i.tutional Convention, and which, instead of postponing the settlement of critical questions to more favorable times, rather aggravated and complicated them.
The immediate cause of the Act of 1818 was the Amelia Island scandal.[109] Committees in both Houses reported bills, but that of the Senate finally pa.s.sed. There does not appear to have been very much debate.[110] The sale of Africans for the benefit of the informer and of the United States was strongly urged ”as the only means of executing the laws against the slave trade as experience had fully demonstrated since the origin of the prohibition.”[111] This proposition was naturally opposed as ”inconsistent with the principles of our Government, and calculated to throw as wide open the door to the importation of slaves as it was before the existing prohibition.”[112] The act, which became a law April 20, 1818,[113] was a poorly constructed compromise, which virtually acknowledged the failure of efforts to control the trade, and sought to remedy defects by pitting cupidity against cupidity, informer against thief. One-half of all forfeitures and fines were to go to the informer, and penalties for violation were changed as follows:--
For equipping a slaver, instead of a fine of $20,000, a fine of $1000 to $5000 and imprisonment from 3 to 7 years.
For transporting Negroes, instead of a fine of $5000 and forfeiture of s.h.i.+p and Negroes, a fine of $1000 to $5000 and imprisonment from 3 to 7 years.
For actual importation, instead of a fine of $1000 to $10,000 and imprisonment from 5 to 10 years, a fine of $1000 to $10,000, and imprisonment from 3 to 7 years.
For knowingly buying illegally imported Negroes, instead of a fine of $800 for each Negro and forfeiture, a fine of $1000 for each Negro.