Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves facts for kids
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| Long title | 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. |
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| Enacted by | the 9th United States Congress |
| Effective | January 1, 1808 |
| Citations | |
| Public law | Pub.L. 9-22 |
| Statutes at Large | 2 Stat. 426, Chap. 22 |
| Legislative history | |
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The Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves of 1807 was an important U.S. federal law. It made it illegal to bring new enslaved people into the United States. This law officially started on January 1, 1808. This was the earliest date allowed by the U.S. Constitution.
President Thomas Jefferson strongly supported this law. He spoke about it in his 1806 State of the Union Address. Many people, including Jefferson, had wanted to end the international slave trade since the 1770s.
Before this Act, many states, like Virginia, had already stopped or limited the international slave trade. However, South Carolina had reopened its trade. The U.S. Congress first tried to control the trade with the Slave Trade Act of 1794. That law stopped American ships from taking part in the international slave trade. The 1807 law went further. It made it a federal crime to import enslaved people from other countries, even on foreign ships.
It's important to know that this 1807 law did not stop the trade of enslaved people within the U.S. In fact, because new enslaved people could no longer be brought in from outside the country, the trade of enslaved people already in the U.S. became even more important. Some people also continued to smuggle enslaved people into the country illegally.
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Why the Act Was Needed
This Act only dealt with bringing enslaved people into or out of the country. It did not affect the trade of enslaved people inside states or between states. During the American Revolution, all thirteen colonies had agreed to stop their involvement in the international slave trade. Some states even ended slavery completely within their borders.
However, three states later allowed the international slave trade again. The U.S. Constitution, Article 1 Section 9, said that Congress could not ban the Atlantic slave trade for 20 years. This meant a federal law to stop the international slave trade in all states could only happen after January 1, 1808. But individual states could ban it earlier, and many did.
The Constitution stated:
The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a tax or duty may be imposed on such Importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each Person.
By 1775, about 20% of the people in the Thirteen Colonies were Africans, both free and enslaved. This made them the second largest group after English Americans. In 1774, a group called the Fairfax Resolves called for an end to the "wicked, cruel, and unnatural" Atlantic slave trade. During the Revolutionary War, the colonies promised to ban their involvement in this trade. They did this for many reasons, including economic, political, and moral ones.
After the U.S. won independence in 1783, South Carolina reopened its slave trade. It then banned it again in 1787, but reopened it once more in 1803. North Carolina allowed the trade after the Treaty of Paris until 1794. Georgia allowed the trade from 1783 until 1798. By 1807, only South Carolina still allowed the Atlantic slave trade.
In 1794, Congress passed the Slave Trade Act of 1794. This law made it illegal to build or prepare any ship in the U.S. for the slave trade. This mostly limited the trade to foreign ships. In 1797, John Brown from Providence, Rhode Island, was the first American tried under this 1794 law. He was found guilty and lost his ship, the Hope.
In 1798, Congress created the Mississippi Territory. It allowed enslaved people to be moved there from other parts of the U.S. However, it also banned bringing enslaved people into the Mississippi Territory from "foreign parts" (other countries). In 1800, Congress passed another law, the Slave Trade Act of 1800. This law made it illegal for U.S. citizens to invest in the slave trade or work on ships involved in it.
How the Act Became Law
On December 2, 1806, President Thomas Jefferson spoke to Congress. He called for an end to the "violations of human rights" that had been happening to people in Africa. He said:
I congratulate you, fellow-citizens, on the approach of the period at which you may interpose your authority constitutionally, to withdraw the citizens of the United States from all further participation in those violations of human rights which have been so long continued on the unoffending inhabitants of Africa, and which the morality, the reputation, and the best interests of our country, have long been eager to proscribe.
A bill was then created and passed by both the House and Senate on March 2, 1807. This bill was called 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. It also controlled the coastwise slave trade, which was the trade of enslaved people along the U.S. coast. President Thomas Jefferson signed the bill into law on March 2, 1807. Many in Congress hoped this act would eventually end slavery in the South, but this did not happen.
The U.S. Navy's job was expanded to include patrolling the coasts of Cuba and South America. They were looking for ships illegally bringing enslaved people. The date the Act became effective, January 1, 1808, was celebrated by Peter Williams, Jr. in a speech in New York City.
How Well the Act Worked
It's hard to know exact numbers, but historians believe that up to 50,000 enslaved people were illegally brought into the U.S. after 1808. Most of these came through Spanish Florida and Texas before these areas became U.S. states. However, one governor, Henry Middleton, thought that as many as 13,000 enslaved Africans were smuggled in every year around 1819.
Even after the Act, many American ships were still used for the illegal slave trade. Some reports from the 1850s said that many ships were still being prepared for this trade in major American ports.
In 1820, the punishment for illegal slave trading became very severe. It could even lead to the death penalty. Between 1837 and 1860, 74 cases of illegal slave trading were brought to court in the U.S. However, few ship captains were found guilty, and those who were often received light sentences. Nathaniel Gordon was the only person to face the most severe punishment for illegal slave trading in the United States in 1862.
Even after 1808, many Americans continued to be involved in the slave trade. They transported Africans to places like Cuba. From 1808 to 1860, nearly one-third of all slave ships were either owned by American merchants or built in American ports. It's possible that U.S. citizens brought twice as many Africans to other countries like Cuba and Brazil as they did to their own ports.
The U.S. Navy was slow to patrol the African coast to stop illegal slave ships. It wasn't until 1820 that the president was given the power to use naval ships for this task. Even then, these efforts were not very effective. Many slave ships from other countries would falsely fly the American flag to avoid being stopped by British patrols. The first U.S. warship sent to the African coast was the USS Cyane. In 1820 and 1821, five U.S. Navy ships were there, arresting 11 American slave traders. No more U.S. anti-slave patrols happened until 1842. Even then, they were not very effective because of political pressure from states that supported slavery. The Atlantic slave trade finally ended during the American Civil War. At that time, American-built and managed ships were stopped from operating in the trade.
Calls to Reopen the Trade
In the Southern states before the Civil War, some extreme pro-slavery groups, known as the Fire-Eaters, wanted to cancel the 1807 Act. They wanted to make the international slave trade legal again in the U.S. Historians say this was a way to show their strong support for slavery. It was also a plan to divide the country and create a new nation based on slavery.
The Fire-Eaters hoped that reopening the slave trade would make people in the North very angry. They thought this anger would unite white Southerners and lead them to break away from the U.S. They also wanted to reopen the trade to lower the price of enslaved people. They believed it would help balance the large number of European immigrants settling in the North. This would help the South keep its power in Congress.
They also wanted to argue that slavery was morally right. They felt that if slave trading was made legal again, it would show that both slavery and the African slave trade were acceptable. This idea was the exact opposite of what abolitionists believed. Abolitionists said that both slavery and the slave trade were wrong. Even some pro-slavery figures, like former President John Tyler, were worried by the Fire-Eaters' ideas. Tyler wrote a letter condemning their call to break a treaty that banned the slave trade.
During the 1850s, slavery and the cotton economy grew rapidly. Cotton prices went up, which also made the price of enslaved people rise. This led to more pressure to reopen the slave trade to meet demand or lower prices. However, not all Southerners agreed, as high prices for enslaved people benefited slave owners and merchants. But many Southerners felt that if slavery was good, then bringing more people into slavery must also be good. They reasoned that if trading enslaved people within the South was okay, then trading them from Africa should also be okay.
Southern planter groups often called for the trade to reopen. However, this idea had no chance of passing in Congress. There were also attempts by state governments to allow the import of "apprentices" from Africa, but these failed. When they couldn't repeal the Act, some people simply ignored it. Notable cases in the 1850s included enslaved people smuggled aboard the ships Wanderer and the Clotilda.
