[114] Or, more accurately speaking, every one realized, in view of the increased activity of the trade, that it would be a failure.
[115] Nov. 18, 1818, the part of the presidential message referring to the slave-trade was given to a committee of the House, and this committee also took in hand the House bill of the previous session which the Senate bill had replaced: House Journal, 15 Cong. 2 sess. pp. 9–19, 42, 150, 179, 330, 334, 341, 343, 352.
[116] Of which little was reported: Annals of Cong., 15 Cong. 2 sess. pp. 1430–31. Strother opposed, "for various reasons of expediency," the bounties for captors. Nelson of Virginia advocated the death penalty, and, aided by Pindall, had it inserted. The vote on the bill was 57 to 45.
[117] The Senate had also had a committee at work on a bill which was reported Feb. 8, and finally postponed: Senate Journal, 15 Cong. 2 sess. pp. 234, 244, 311–2, 347. The House bill was taken up March 2: Annals of Cong., 15 Cong. 2 sess. p. 280.
[118] Statutes at Large, III. 532.
[119] Annals of Cong., 15 Cong. 2 sess. p. 1430. This insured the trial of slave-traders in a sympathetic slave State, and resulted in the "disappearance" of many captured Negroes.
[120] Statutes at Large, III. 533.
[121] The first of a long series of appropriations extending to 1869, of which a list is given on the next page. The totals are only approximately correct. Some statutes may have escaped me, and in the reports of moneys the surpluses of previous years are not always clearly distinguishable.
[122] In the first session of the sixteenth Congress, two bills on piracy were introduced into the Senate, one of which passed, April 26. In the House there was a bill on piracy, and a slave-trade committee reported recommending that the slave-trade be piracy. The Senate bill and this bill were considered in Committee of the Whole, May 11, and a bill was finally passed declaring, among other things, the traffic piracy. In the Senate there was "some discussion, rather on the form than the substance of these amendments," and "they were agreed to without a division": Senate Journal, 16 Cong. 1 sess. pp. 238, 241, 268, 287, 314, 331, 346, 350, 409, 412, 417, 420, 422, 424, 425; House Journal, 16 Cong. 1 sess. pp. 113, 280, 453, 454, 494, 518, 520, 522, 537; Annals of Cong., 16 Cong. 1 sess. pp. 693–4, 2231, 2236–7, etc. The debates were not reported.
[123] Statutes at Large, III. 600–1. This act was in reality a continuation of the piracy Act of 1819, and was only temporary. The provision was, however, continued by several acts, and finally made perpetual by the Act of Jan. 30, 1823: Statutes at Large, III. 510–4, 721. On March 3, 1823, it was slightly amended so as to give district courts jurisdiction.