Notwithstanding these several treaties and statutes, and notwithstanding both Britain and the United States have for many years kept a naval force cruising upon the western shores of Africa along the Slave Coast; yet the trade remains unsuppressed to this day, and for a series of years the number of slaves shipped for transportation was greater than it had ever been while the trade was legal and fostered by the legislation of France, Britain, and Spain. Its illicit character, however, has added much to its enormity and horrors. The slave-marts have ceased to be markets overt, and the victims of the trade are hidden in prisons and dens from the time they are brought to the coast. The transfer to the slave-ship is by night, and attended with much danger. The ship itself, instead of the large commodious vessels formerly used, is of the narrow clipper-built style, prepared with a view to a chase from the English or American cruiser. The slave decks are no longer ventilated with a view to health, but placed below the hatches, to escape detection, closely confined and of much diminished proportions. The numbers crowded into these narrow cells are much increased, being no longer regulated by law, and the increased risk and increased expense requiring increased profits to the adventurous owners. The persons engaged in the trade, of necessity, are no longer the enlarged and liberal merchant, with his humane master and crew, but the most desperate of buccaneers, who being declared pirates by law, become pirates in fact. The horrors of the middle passage are necessarily increased, and the difficulties of another instance of the object of legislation defeated by its own vindictiveness. The bonâ fide purchaser of slaves, in a slave country, who seeks to transport them to another slave country, is not a pirate. The kidnapper of free negroes might be properly so declared. The acts are justified upon the difficulty of making proof of kidnapping, &c. This is an unfortunate truth, but does not justify the severity of the proposed remedy. The result is, that convictions under the act are very rare. landing the cargoes add to the sufferings of the slaves, already more than decimated by disease." This trade is not carried on with the United States. But few slaves have been landed on their coast since the trade was prohibited. All the West Indies for a time, and subsequently the Spanish and Portuguese West Indies and Brazil, furnished the markets for this illicit trade. As already remarked, the policy has been to buy rather than to breed negroes. And so long as slave labor in the West Indies remains so profitable, the price of slaves will continue to hold out inducements to lawless adventurers to violate all treaties and laws, in order to reap the immense profits of this trade. The abolition of slavery, in the English, French, Danish, Dutch, and Swedish West Indies, as we shall directly show, have only increased the profits of slave labor in the Spanish and Portuguese colonies, and thus increased the value of slaves and the temptation for the trade. 1 Mr. Buxton estimates that seven-tenths of the captured slaves die in the process. Thus, of 1000 victims of the trade, One-half perish in the seizure, march, and detention on One-fourth of those embarked, die in the middle passage, Slave-Trade and Remedy, 199, et seq. 500 125 75 700 He states that the eastern 2 See Wilkes's Exp. Exp. i, pp. 36, 55, 88. coast of Africa furnishes most of the slaves. mart. The slaves are carried across the Island of Madagascar, to be sold on the eastern coast to Europeans, ix, pp. 184, 190, 272, 273. The slaves in the captured vessels are treated but little better by the English than by the traders; i, 55, 88. CHAPTER XI. ABOLITION OF NEGRO SLAVERY IN THE UNITED STATES. As the first efforts for the prohibition of the slavetrade were made in America, so the first movement for the abolition of negro slavery had its origin there. To trace all the efforts that have been made, their origin and end, would be a task we have neither time nor space to enter upon. A mere glance at results is all that we can do. The American Revolution was in a remarkable degree a struggle for political liberty. The grievances of the Colonies, though existing in fact, were not sufficiently aggravated to have aroused a whole people to throw off the government of their fathers. The war was undertaken for a principle, was fought upon principle, and the success of their arms was deemed by the colonists as the triumph of the principle. That principle was the right of a people to the enjoyment of political liberty. But the investigation and assertion of this right by a nation for a series of years necessarily imbued their minds with an ardent love of personal liberty, and hence, the very declaration of their political liberty announced as a self-evident truth, that all men were created free and equal. This announcement was not a formal incorporation of an abstract truth into a diplomatic paper. It was the reflection of the feelings of the ardent espousers of the cause. It was the natural result of the excited state of the public mind. We should expect to find such a declaration from men about to engage in such a struggle. And knowing as we do, and rejoicing as we should, in the honesty and purity of their motives, we should expect to find such men prosecuting their principles to their legitimate results, and proclaiming all involuntary servitude to be opposed to the natural rights of man. It is not surprising, then, that Franklin should have been the president of the first abolition society in Pennsylvania, as early as 1787; nor that Henry, and Jefferson, and Jay, should avow their hostility to the system, and their hopes for its overthrow; nor that even the wise, and good, and great Washington, should, by his will emancipating his own slaves, acknowledge that his own mind was at least wavering as to the propriety of their bondage. In fact, at that day, Virginia was much more earnest in the wish for general emancipation than were New York, Massachusetts, or Rhode Island. So general was the feeling, that the Ordinance of 1787, which excluded slavery from the Northwest Territory (out of which the present populous and thriving Northwestern States are formed), was ratified by the first Congress of the United States, with but one dissenting voice, and that from a delegate from New York; the entire Southern vote being cast in its favor. Neither the climate nor the productions of the northern and eastern portions of the United States are adapted to negro slavery. The sun is as necessary to negro perfection as it is to the cotton plant. The labor of the slave is only valuable where that labor can be applied to a routine of business which requires no reflection or judgment upon the part of the laborer, and which continues throughout the year. Hence, the number of slaves in these older and more flourishing portions of the States, by the census of 1790, amounted only to 40,370, while the southern and more feeble colonies (Virginia excepted), embraced in their territory 567,527. It required, therefore, no sacrifice of interest upon the part of these States, to provide for the extinction of slavery. It checked not their growth; did not make it necessary for them to seek out new channels for labor and the acquisition of wealth; and required no great sacrifice of property at their hands. Vermont claims the honor of having first excluded slavery, by her Bill of Rights, adopted in 1777. The census of 1790 shows but seventeen slaves in the whole State. It required no great measure of philanthropy to sacrifice the value of seventeen slaves. Massachusetts never did, by statute, abolish slavery; and as late as 1833, her Supreme Court left it an open question, when slavery was abolished in that State.1 Certain it is, that the census of 1790 gives no enumeration of slaves in that State. The statute-book of New Hampshire also seems to be silent upon this subject, and the census of 1790 gives to this State 158 slaves; one of these was still reported in 1840. Rhode Island adopted a plan of gradual emancipation by declaring that all blacks born in that State after March, 1784, should be free. Five of the old stock seems to have survived to have their names registered in the census of 1840. Connecticut adopted a similar plan of emancipation, and seventeen of her slaves, it seems by the census, were surviving in 1840. Connecticut held 2759 slaves in 1790. The interest was too great for immediate emancipation. Pennsylvania was in the same situation, having 3737 slaves in 1790. This State also provided for gradual emancipation, by an act passed in 1780, by which it was provided, that all slaves born after that time should serve as slaves until they reached the age of twenty |