1825, March 3. Congress (House): Proposed Resolution against Right of Search.
"Mr. Forsyth submitted the following resolution:
"Resolved, That while this House anxiously desires that the Slave Trade should be, universally, denounced as Piracy, and, as such, should be detected and punished under the law of nations, it considers that it would be highly inexpedient to enter into engagements with any foreign power, by which all the merchant vessels of the United States would be exposed to the inconveniences of any regulation of search, from which any merchant vessels of that foreign power would be exempted." Resolution laid on the table. House Journal, 18 Cong. 2 sess. pp. 308–9; Gales and Seaton, Register of Debates, I. 739.
1825, Dec. 6. President Adams's Message.
"The objects of the West India Squadron have been, to carry into execution the laws for the suppression of the African Slave Trade: for the protection of our commerce against vessels of piratical character.... These objects, during the present year, have been accomplished more effectually than at any former period. The African Slave Trade has
long been excluded from the use of our flag; and if some few citizens of our country have continued to set the laws of the Union, as well as those of nature and humanity, at defiance, by persevering in that abominable traffic, it has been only by sheltering themselves under the banners of other nations, less earnest for the total extinction of the trade than ours." House Journal, 19 Cong. 1 sess. pp. 20, 96, 296–7, 305, 323, 329, 394–5, 399, 410, 414, 421, 451, 640.
1826, Feb. 14. Congress (House): Proposition to Repeal Parts of Act of 1819.
"Mr. Forsyth submitted the following resolutions, viz.:
1. "Resolved, That it is expedient to repeal so much of the act of the 3d March, 1819, entitled, 'An act in addition to the acts prohibiting the slave trade,' as provides for the appointment of agents on the coast of Africa.
2. "Resolved, That it is expedient so to modify the said act of the 3d of March, 1819, as to release the United States from all obligation to support the negroes already removed to the coast of Africa, and to provide for such a disposition of those taken in slave ships who now are in, or who may be, hereafter, brought into the United States, as shall secure to them a fair opportunity of obtaining a comfortable subsistence, without any aid from the public treasury." Read and laid on the table. Ibid., p. 258.