The slave trade

by Theodore D. Jervey

In the year which followed came in Congress the first great sectional struggle over the Missouri Question, involving the right of Southern men to move into the Northwest with their slaves, with regard to which some of them argued, that, in the long run, such diffusion of slaves would not increase their number or result in the extension of slavery, but rather tend to check the increase.

In his contemporaneous publication of speeches from both sides, the editor of Niles’ Register regrets his inability to secure a copy of the speech of William Lowndes, which, in all probability would have been the most illuminating exposition of the Southern view, which could have been submitted; but the speech of Tucker, of Virginia, does put forward the idea as about stated; while Sergeant, of Pennsylvania, the leading speaker on the Northern side, combats the same at sufficient length to create the impression, that it was held by more than one. But what is of greater interest is the distinct note of racial inferiority, which Sergeant sounds loudly. It is not only objection to the Negro slave; but to the Negro per se; ... “Nature has placed upon them an unalterable mark ... They are and must forever remain distinct.”[44]

Senator Smith, who, by his vote in the South Carolina Legislature in 1805 had most materially assisted in setting aside the South Carolina law in opposition to African importation, while at the same time fatuously declaring that he only did so because he thought it impossible to prevent it, now, in the United States Senate, refused all compromise, declaring that by sanctioning the slave trade in the Constitution, the Federal Government was responsible for existing conditions. But a compromise was effected, and in the year 1820, the Union, then consisting of just double the number of the original thirteen States, adjusted the difference on the Negro Question.

Geographically considered it was apparent that the black belt had slipped a little lower down upon the body politic. The total colored population of the Union was 1,771,856, more than half of whom were to be found in the three States of Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina. In Virginia, 402,031; in South Carolina, 265,301; in North Carolina, 219,629; a total of 886,961. Southwest of this section and south of the Ohio River, the Negro population amounted to 529,856; but in no State in the Union had the increase since 1800 been so enormous as in South Carolina; for with an area and white population only two-fifths of Virginia, the increase of the Negro population of the two States had practically been the same, viz.: 156,538 for Virginia, 156,457 for South Carolina. Nor could any comforting reassurance have been drawn from the fact that the percentage of increase of the same species of population in the States of Georgia, Tennessee and Kentucky had been greater; for such had been accompanied, in these newer States, with an even greater increase of their white population, and was based upon an original Negro population very small indeed, when compared to that of South Carolina in 1800. When comparison was made with Maryland, on the other hand, where the number of Negroes had originally been greater than in South Carolina, with the increase of the whites in the three decades not so great, small as had been the increase of the whites, it was yet greater than that of the colored, and originally the proportion of whites had been greater.

From all these causes South Carolina was becoming in place of Virginia the State most identified with the Negro question, in a section where it was becoming a larger and more important property interest.

Yet, while the increase of the Negro population in the lower South and Middle and Southwest had been very great, the census furnished no evidence of that movement of Negroes from North to South which has been so often alluded to. The Negro population of New York had increased by more than 50 per cent; New Jersey by at least 43; Connecticut, 40; and Delaware 38. Pennsylvania’s increase in the 30 years had been 200 per cent, and even in Massachusetts the increase had been 22 per cent. The only State in which there had been a decrease, which could be attributed to a movement to another section, was Rhode Island, and it was not large enough to be considered, amounting in all to less than a thousand. Considering the population of the Southern States, however, the census afforded information well warranting the assumption that from Virginia and Maryland between the years 1810 and 1820 some 30,000 colored people had moved out. In the same time the colored population of North Carolina had increased by an accession of about 40,000; South Carolina, 65,000; Georgia, 44,000; Alabama, 24,000; Mississippi, 16,000; Louisiana, 35,000; Tennessee, 37,000; and Missouri, 7,000; the percentage of increase being, North Carolina 24 per cent; South Carolina 32 per cent; Georgia 42 per cent; Mississippi 95 per cent; Louisiana 55 per cent; Tennessee 80 per cent; Kentucky 58 per cent; and Missouri nearly 300 per cent, with no basis with which to estimate the 42,000 of Alabama.

These figures establish a movement from Virginia and Maryland but also from without, to the eight States of North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennessee and Kentucky, averaging about 45 per cent increase in the decade, and with every reasonable allowance for the movement from Virginia and Maryland and New York, of which at least one-third must have gone to the Northwest and Missouri, illegal importation must have been proceeding apace. Now, if there was illegal importation, where would it be most likely to occur?

In Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee; and there we find an increase of nearly 85 per cent, or an addition to the Negro population of something like 88,000.

These facts, therefore, disclose the weakness of the Southern argument that the diffusion of slaves would not have resulted in any extension of slavery. Theoretically it was a sound argument, that the slaves being spread over the face of the country, they and their masters would be brought more and more under the influences which would work against slavery and for emancipation. But if illicit importation from abroad was proceeding to any great extent, the premise upon which the argument was based gave way, and this is what must have been the case, as has been shown.

This is also where the argument of Prof. Ulrich Bonnell Phillips fails to convince, when he expresses the opinion, that “the importance of the repeal, in 1818, of the law which had prohibited the importation of slaves from other States into South Carolina has been exaggerated.” He bases his reason for this view upon the claim that “the Federal Censuses show that the average rate of increase of the Negro population in South Carolina between 1810 and 1860, was substantially smaller than that of the Negroes in the United States at large, “which” he thinks, “indicates that South Carolina was in that half century more of a slave exporting than a slave importing State; and that a prohibition of slave imports would have had no appreciable influence upon the ratio of increase of her Negro population.”[45]