The local effect of the repeal is indicated in the experience of E.S. Thomas, a Charleston bookseller of the time who in high prosperity had just opened a new importation of fifty thousand volumes. As he wrote in after years, the news that the legislature had reopened the slave trade "had not been five hours in the city, before two large British Guineamen, that had been lying on and off the port for several days expecting it, came up to town; and from that day my business began to decline…. A great change at once took place in everything. Vessels were fitted out in numbers for the coast of Africa, and as fast as they returned their cargoes were bought up with avidity, not only consuming the large funds that had been accumulating, but all that could be procured, and finally exhausting credit and mortgaging the slaves for payment…. For myself, I was upwards of five years disposing of my large stock, at a sacrifice of more than a half, in all the principal towns from Augusta in Georgia to Boston."[19]
[Footnote 19: E.S. Thomas, Reminiscences, II, 35, 36.]
As reported at the end of the period, the importations amounted to 5386 slaves in 1804; 6790 in 1805; 11,458 in 1806; and 15,676 in 1807.[20] Senator William Smith of South Carolina upon examining the records at a later time placed the total at 39,310, and analysed the statistics as follows: slaves brought by British vessels, 19,449; by French vessels, 1078; by American vessels, operated mostly for the account of Rhode Islanders and foreigners, 18,048.[21] If an influx no greater than this could produce the effect which Thomas described, notwithstanding that many of the slaves were immediately reshipped to New Orleans and many more were almost as promptly sold into the distant interior, the scale of the preceding illicit trade must have been far less than the official statements and the apologies in Congress would indicate.
[Footnote 20: Virginia Argus, Jan. 19, 1808.]
[Footnote 21: Annals of Congress, 1821-1822, pp. 73-77.]
South Carolina's opening of the trade promptly spread dismay in other states. The North Carolina legislature, by a vote afterwards described as virtually unanimous in both houses, adopted resolutions in December, 1804, instructing the Senators from North Carolina and requesting her Congressmen to use their utmost exertions at the earliest possible time to procure an amendment to the Federal Constitution empowering Congress at once to prohibit the further importation of slaves and other persons of color from Africa and the West Indies. Copies were ordered sent not only to the state's delegation in Congress but to the governors of the other states for transmission to the legislatures with a view to their concurrence.[22] In the next year similar resolutions were adopted by the legislatures of New Hampshire, Vermont, Maryland and Tennessee;[23] but the approach of the time when Congress would acquire the authority without a change of the Constitution caused a shifting of popular concern from the scheme of amendment to the expected legislation of Congress. Meanwhile, a bill for the temporary government of the Louisiana purchase raised the question of African importations there which occasioned a debate in the Senate at the beginning of 1804[24] nearly as vigorous as those to come on the general question three years afterward.
[Footnote 22: Broadside copy of the resolution, accompanied by a letter of Governor James Turner of North Carolina to the governor of Connecticut, in the possession of the Pennsylvania Historical Society.]
[Footnote 23: H.V. Ames, Proposed Amendments to the Constitution, in the
American Historical Association Report for 1896, pp. 208, 209.]
[Footnote 24: Printed from Senator Plumer's notes, in the American
Historical Review, XXII, 340-364.]
In the winter of 1804-1805 bills were introduced in both Senate and House to prohibit slave importations at large; but the one was postponed for a year and the other was rejected,[25] doubtless because the time was not near enough when they could take effect. At last the matter was formally presented by President Jefferson. "I congratulate you, fellow-citizens," he said in his annual message of December 2, 1806, "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. Although no law you can pass can take effect until the day of the year one thousand eight hundred and eight, yet the intervening period is not too long to prevent, by timely notice, expeditions which cannot be completed before that day."[26] Next day Senator Bradley of Vermont gave notice of a bill which was shortly afterward introduced and which, after an unreported discussion, was passed by the Senate on January 27. Its conspicuous provisions were that after the close of the year 1807 the importation of slaves was to be a felony punishable with death, and that the interstate coasting trade in slaves should be illegal.