In 1807, at the second session of the 9th Congress, on the recommendation of Mr. Jefferson, then President, an act was passed for the prohibition of the slave trade from foreign countries to the United States, to take effect on the 1st day of January, 1808. Up to that time the trade had been continued by English, New England, and New York traders to South Carolina and Georgia by evading the laws against it, when such were in force, but it ceased after the United States law went into effect; many slaves were introduced into the port of Charleston within the last four years prior to the time when the law went into effect, brought in by English and Northern vessels.
In the same year and about the same time that the United States law was passed, under the brief ministry of Lord Grenville, the Parliament of Great Britain passed the act to abolish the trade on the part of British subjects, though not without serious opposition. Among the opponents of the measure was another Lord Chancellor of England, Lord Eldon, at that time for a short period out of the office which he had held for many years, and to which he returned in about two months after the passage of the bill to continue in it until the year 1827. In opposing the bill, Lord Eldon said: "I do not believe the measure now proposed would diminish the transport of negroes, or that a single individual would be preserved by it, at the same time, that it would be utterly destructive of the British interests involved in that commerce." He asked "was it right because there was a change of men and of public measures in consequence, that the interests of those who petitioned against the bill should be disregarded and what was before considered fit matter of enquiry should now be rejected as immaterial and inapplicable?"
In the argument of Wilberforce and others, in favor of the measure, it was shown that there had never been any natural increase of the slaves in the British and West India Islands—the excess of deaths over births in Jamaica being as follows:
| From | 1698 | to | 1730, | 3 | 1/2 | per | cent. |
| " | 1730 | " | 1755, | 2 | 1/2 | " | " |
| " | 1755 | " | 1769, | 1 | 3/4 | " | " |
| " | 1769 | " | 1780, | 3/5 | " | " | |
| " | 1780 | " | 1800, | 1/24 | " | " |
The supply had therefore been kept up by constant importations to meet the growing demands and the advocates of the measure urged the following reasons for its adoption:
"The grand, the decisive advantage which recommends the abolition of the slave trade is, that by closing the supply of foreign negroes to which the planters have hitherto been accustomed to trust for all of their undertakings, we will compel them to promote the multiplication of the slaves on their estates; and it is obvious that this cannot be done without improving their physical and moral condition. Thus not only will the inhuman traffic itself be prevented in so far at least as the inhabitants of this country are concerned, but a provision will be made for the progressive amelioration of the black population in the West Indies, and that too on the securest of all foundations, the interests and selfish desires of the masters in whose hands they are placed."
It seems from this that "slave breeding" was not considered a crime by the philanthropists of that day but this discovery was reserved for those of a later time.
Slavery in the United States has now been brought down to the time of the abolition of the slave trade by both the United States and Great Britain, and it will be seen that the former government had no jurisdiction over the matter in any way, except to give protection to that species of property in the states where it existed, in the same way that it was bound to protect every other species of property within the scope of its delegated powers. Slavery existed in the states prior to the creation of the government and independent of it, and the states in forming that government as sovereign states, reserved to themselves the exclusive power of continuing or discontinuing it at their option. Not only was this so with regard to the original states, but by express stipulation with the states of North Carolina and Georgia at the time of their cession of territory. Congress had bound itself not to interfere with slavery in that territory.
Kentucky had been formed out of part of Virginia and was admitted into the Union upon the same footing as that state, and by the treaty with France upon the acquisition of Louisiana, the faith of the United States was pledged to respect and protect the right of property in slaves within the limits of the acquired territory in the same way that it was pledged to respect and protect the right of property in every thing else. This embraced all of the territory within the limits of the United States except the northwestern territory, and to that the prohibition against slavery had been extended by the ordinance of 1787, prior to the adoption of the Federal Constitution. The validity of that ordinance has been disputed, and certainly if it had any validity, that was given by the assent of Virginia from whom the territory was acquired. The act for the organization of the government of the Northwestern territory recognized the validity of the restriction contained in the ordinance, and did not create it.
The states which had thought proper to abolish or exclude slavery because it was not to their interests to have it, had no right to complain of its existence in other states. If they did not desire to be allied to states which tolerated slavery, then they should have refused to ratify the Constitution. Having ratified it, the faith of those states became pledged by every consideration that can bind states as communities, or men as individuals, to respect the institutions, rights and property of the other states and to faithfully abide by all of the compromises and guaranties of the Constitution. They were bound to respect and abide by them not only in the capacity of states, but they were bound by the exercise of their just powers of legislation and restraint, to compel their citizens to respect and abide by them. This obligation extended not merely to abstaining from all violent interference and active measures of wrong, but from all agitation or incitement to others to do wrong, by disturbing the peace, property or rights of other states and the citizens thereof.