CHAPTER under forty tons burden, to which a proviso had been XIX. added by the House, excluding from the operation of 1807. this section the coastwise transportation of slaves when

accompanied by the owner or his agent. The refusal of the Senate to concur in this amendment called out John Randolph, who hitherto had hardly spoken. "If the bill passed without this proviso, the Southern people," he said, "would set the act at defiance. He would set the first example. He would go with his own slaves, and be at the expense of asserting the rights of the slaveholders. The next step would be to prohibit the slaveholder himself going from one state to another. The bill without the amendment was worse than the exaction of shipmoney. The proprietor of sacred and chartered rights was prevented from the constitutional use of his property."

Other speeches were made in the same high strain, and finally a committee of conference was appointed, by which an amended proviso was agreed to, allowing the transportation of negroes, not imported contrary to the provisions of the act, in vessels of any sort on any river or inland bay within the jurisdiction of the United States. This, however, was far from satisfying the more violent Southern members. Randolph still insisted "that the provisions of the bill, so far as related to the coastwise transportation of slaves, touched upon the right of private property, and he expressed a fear lest at a future period this claim of power might be made the pretext for a general emancipation. He would rather lose all the bills of the session, every bill passed since the establishment of the government, than submit to such a provision. It went to blow the Constitution into ruins. If disunion should ever take place, the line of disseverance would not be between the East and the West, lately the topic of

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so much alarm, but between the slaveholding and the CHAPTER non-slaveholding states. Early and Williams joined in these furious demonstrations; but the report of the com- 1807. mittee of conference was agreed to, sixty-three to forty

nine.

The act, as finally passed, imposed a fine of $20,000 upon all persons concerned in fitting out any vessel for the slave trade, with the forfeiture of the vessel; likewise a fine of $5000, with forfeiture also of the vessel, for taking on board any negro, mulatto, or person of color in any foreign country, with the purpose of selling such person within the jurisdiction of the United States as a slave. For actually transporting from any foreign country and selling as a slave, or to be held to service or labor within the United States, any such person as above described, the penalty was imprisonment for not less than five nor more than ten years, with a fine not exceeding $10,000 nor less than $1000. The purchaser, if cognizant of the facts, was also liable to a fine of $800 for every person so purchased. Neither the importer nor the purchaser were to hold any right or title to such person, or to his or her service or labor; but all such persons were to remain subject to any regulations for their disposal, not contrary to the provisions of this act, which might be made by the respective states and territories. Coasting vessels transporting slaves from one state to another were to have the name, age, sex, and description of such slaves, with the names of the owners, inserted in their manifests, and certified also by the officers of the port of departure; which manifests, before landing any of the slaves, were to be exhibited and sworn to before the officer of the port of arrival, under pain of forfeiture of the vessel, and a fine of $1000 for each slave as to whom these formalities might be omitted. No vessel of

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CHAPTER less than forty tons burden was to take any slaves on board except for transportation on the inland bays and 1807. rivers of the United States; and any vessel found hovering on the coast with slaves on board, in contravention of this act, was liable to seizure and condemnation; for which purpose the president was authorized to employ the ships of the navy, half the proceeds of the captured vessels and their cargoes to go to the captors. The masters of vessels so seized were liable to a fine of $10,000, and imprisonment for not less than two nor more than four years. The negroes found on board were to be delivered to such persons as the states might respectively appoint to receive them, or, in default of such appointment, to the overseers of the poor of the place to which they might be brought; and if, under state regulations, they should be "sold or disposed of," the penalties of this act upon the seller and purchaser were not to attach in such cases. Though coming very near it, the provisions of this warmly-contested enactment did yet, vastly to the chagrin of the ultra slaveholders, avoid, as the Constitution of the United States had done, any acknowledgment of the existence, by natural law, of property in man, or any national participation in the sale of human beings.

Randolph's objections to the act, of which the restraint upon the transportation of slaves by water was made the pretense, did not cease with the passage of the bill. He Feb. 27. denounced it the day after in a most vehement speech,

in which he declared that whatever might be thought of alien, and sedition, and excise laws, they were nothing in comparison to this. It laid the axe at the root of all property in the Southern States. If Congress could abridge, alter, or modify the right of property in slaves, they could go a step further, and emancipate them.

He

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asked, therefore, for leave to bring in an explanatory bill. CHAPTER If the motion was rejected, he doubted if the House would ever again see any Southern delegates on its floor. He, 1807. for one, would say, let us secede and go home.

This display of insolent bravado, so often since repeated, did not meet with so much success as it has done on some subsequent occasions. Smilie declared that he was not to be frightened by any such scarecrow. He might lament a secession, but he did not fear it. The Northern people could take care of themselves; it was the South that would suffer. Leave, however, was granted, and Randolph brought in his explanatory bill, disavowing in its preamble any right in Congress to abridge, modify, or affect the right of property in slaves not ille. gally imported into the United States, and declaring the prohibition as to the transportation of slaves in vessels under forty tons burden not to apply to any masters or owners, or to their agents, transporting slaves from one port to another of the United States. Randolph insisted upon instant action, without the customary reference to a committee of the whole, as otherwise the bill would fail to pass at the present session; in which case he hoped. that the Virginia delegation would wait upon the presi dent to remonstrate against his signature of the bill already passed. In spite, however, of the fury of Randolph, the bill was referred in the usual way. Of course, it was not reached. It slept forever; yet the Union re

mained undissolved.

The importation of Africans into South Carolina during the four years from the reopening of the traffic up to the period when the law of the United States went into effect, amounted to about 40,000, of whom half were brought by English vessels. A very large proportion of the remainder seem to have been introduced by Rhode

CHAPTER Islanders.

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The English act for the abolition of the slave trade, and especially the commercial restrictions which 1807. went into operation simultaneously with the American act, contributed to give it an efficacy which otherwise. it might not have had. At a subsequent period, after the re-establishment of trade, additional provisions, as we shall see, became necessary.

That spirit, twin-born with the struggle for liberty and independence, which had produced in three states (Massachusetts, Vermont, and Ohio) the total prohibition of slavery, and in six others provisions for its gradual abolition; and, in spite of the efforts of the people of Indiana for its temporary introduction-efforts renewed again at the present session, but again, notwithstanding the favorable report of a committee, without successits continued prohibition in the territories northwest of the Ohio, culminating now in the total prohibition of the foreign slave trade, seems to have become, for a considerable interval, less active, or, at least, less marked in its manifestations.

The convention of delegates from the various abolition societies had continued, since its institution in 1793, to meet annually at Philadelphia; but of late the delegations from the South had greatly fallen off, and the convention of the present year resolved that its future meetings should be only triennial. The greater part of the societies whence the delegates came gradually died out, and even the triennial convention presently ceased. ferson, having much more about him of the politician than of the martyr, preserved, with all his zeal on this subject, a dead silence. In his private letters he sometimes alluded to the necessity of steps for getting rid of the evil of slavery; but he took good care not to hazard his popularity at the South by any public suggestions on the subject.

Jef