STATUTES AT LARGE. DATE. AMOUNT
APPROPRIATED.
VOL.PAGE
III.533–4March3, 1819$100,000
"764"3, 182350,000
IIV.141"14, 182632,000
"208March 2, 182736,710
20,000
"302May24, 182830,000
"354March2, 1829 16,000
"462"2, 183116,000
"615Feb.20, 1833 5,000
"67Jan.24, 18345,000
IV.157–8March3, 183711,413.57
"501Aug.4, 184210,543.42
"615 March3, 18435,000
IIX.96Aug.10, 184625,000
IXI.90"18, 18568,000
"227March3, 18578,000
"404"3, 185975,000
IXII.21May 26, 186040,000
"132 Feb.19, 1861900,000
"219 March2, 1861 900,000
"639Feb. 4, 1863 17,000
IXIII.424Jan. 24, 186517,000
IXIV.226July 25, 186617,000
"415Feb.28, 186717,000
IXV.58March30, 186812,500
"321March3, 186912,500
Total, 50 years$ 2,386,666.99
Minus surpluses re-appropriated (approximate)48,666.99?
$ 2,338,000
Cost of squadron, 1843–58, @ $384,500 per year (House Exec. Doc., 31 Cong. 1 sess. IX. No. 73)5,767,500
Returning slaves on "Wildfire" (Statutes at Large, XII. 41) 250,000
Approximate cost of squadron, 1858–66, probably not less than $500,000 per year4,000,000?
Approximate money cost of suppressing the slave-trade$ 12,355,500?

Cf. Kendall's Report: Senate Doc., 21 Cong. 2 sess. I. No. 1, pp. 211–8; Amer. State Papers, Naval, III. No. 429 E.; also Reports of the Secretaries of the Navy from 1819 to 1860.

126

65. Enforcement of the Supplementary Acts, 1818–1825. A somewhat more sincere and determined effort to enforce the slave-trade laws now followed; and yet it is a significant fact that not until Lincoln's administration did a slave-trader suffer death for violating the laws of the United States. The participation of Americans in the trade continued, declining somewhat between 1825 and 1830, and then reviving, until it reached its highest activity between 1840 and 1860. The development of a vast internal slave-trade, and the consequent rise in the South of vested interests strongly opposed to slave smuggling, led to a falling off in the illicit introduction of Negroes after 1825, until the fifties; nevertheless, smuggling never entirely ceased, and large numbers were thus added to the plantations of the Gulf States.

Monroe had various constitutional scruples as to the execution of the Act of 1819;[124] but, as Congress took no action, he at last put a fair interpretation on his powers, and appointed Samuel Bacon as an agent in Africa to form a settlement for recaptured Africans. Gradually the agency thus formed became merged with that of the Colonization Society on Cape Mesurado; and from this union Liberia was finally evolved.[125]

Meantime, during the years 1818 to 1820, the activity of the slave-traders was prodigious. General James Tallmadge declared in the House, February 15, 1819: "Our laws are already highly penal against their introduction, and yet, it is a well known fact, that about fourteen thousand slaves have been brought into our country this last year."[126] In the same year Middleton of South Carolina and Wright of Virginia estimated illicit introduction at 13,000 and 15,000 respectively.

[127] Judge Story, in charging a jury, took occasion to say: "We have but too many proofs from unquestionable sources, that it [the slave-trade] is still carried on with all the implacable rapacity of former times. Avarice has grown more subtle in its evasions, and watches and seizes its prey with an appetite quickened rather than suppressed by its guilty vigils. American citizens are steeped to their very mouths (I can hardly use too bold a figure) in this stream of iniquity."[128] The following year, 1820, brought some significant statements from various members of Congress. Said Smith of South Carolina: "Pharaoh was, for his temerity, drowned in the Red Sea, in pursuing them [the Israelites] contrary to God's express will; but our Northern friends have not been afraid even of that, in their zeal to furnish the Southern States with Africans. They are better seamen than Pharaoh, and calculate by that means to elude the vigilance of Heaven; which they seem to disregard, if they can but elude the violated laws of their country."[129] As late as May he saw little hope of suppressing the traffic.[130] Sergeant of Pennsylvania declared: "It is notorious that, in spite of the utmost vigilance that can be employed, African negroes are clandestinely brought in and sold as slaves."[131] Plumer of New Hampshire stated that "of the unhappy beings, thus in violation of all laws transported to our shores, and thrown by force into the mass of our black population, scarcely one in a hundred is ever detected by the officers of the General Government, in a part of the country, where, if we are to believe the statement of Governor Rabun, 'an officer who would perform his duty, by attempting to enforce the law [against the slave trade] is, by many, considered as an officious meddler, and treated with derision and contempt;' ... I have been told by a gentleman, who has attended particularly to this subject, that ten thousand slaves were in one year smuggled into the United States; and that, even for the last year, we must count the number not by

hundreds, but by thousands."[132] In 1821 a committee of Congress characterized prevailing methods as those "of the grossest fraud that could be practised to deceive the officers of government."[133] Another committee, in 1822, after a careful examination of the subject, declare that they "find it impossible to measure with precision the effect produced upon the American branch of the slave trade by the laws above mentioned, and the seizures under them. They are unable to state, whether those American merchants, the American capital and seamen which heretofore aided in this traffic, have abandoned it altogether, or have sought shelter under the flags of other nations." They then state the suspicious circumstance that, with the disappearance of the American flag from the traffic, "the trade, notwithstanding, increases annually, under the flags of other nations." They complain of the spasmodic efforts of the executive. They say that the first United States cruiser arrived on the African coast in March, 1820, and remained a "few weeks;" that since then four others had in two years made five visits in all; but "since the middle of last November, the commencement of the healthy season on that coast, no vessel has been, nor, as your committee is informed, is, under orders for that service."[134] The United States African agent, Ayres, reported in 1823: "I was informed by an American officer who had been on the coast in 1820, that he had boarded 20 American vessels in one morning, lying in the port of Gallinas, and fitted for the reception of slaves. It is a lamentable fact, that most of the harbours, between the Senegal and the line, were visited by an equal number of American vessels, and for the sole purpose of carrying away slaves. Although for some years the coast had been occasionally visited by our cruizers, their short stay and seldom appearance

had made but slight impression on those traders, rendered hardy by repetition of crime, and avaricious by excessive gain. They were enabled by a regular system to gain intelligence of any cruizer being on the coast."[135]