Though all the other colonies imported slaves more or less during the same period, yet with the possible exception of South Carolina they fell far short of the number imported by Virginia.
In November 1708, Governor Seymour of Maryland, writing to the English Board of Trade, stated that 2,290 negroes were imported into that colony from midsummer 1698 to Christmas 1707. He reported the trade to be running very high, six or seven hundred having been imported during the year. In 1712 there were 8,330 negroes in Maryland.[13] During about the same time (midsummer 1699 to October 1708) Virginia imported 6,607[14] while a northern colony, New Jersey, imported only one hundred and fifteen from 1698 to 1726.[15]
Du Bois says that South Carolina received about three thousand slaves a year from 1733 to 1766.[16] She had forty thousand in 1740.[17]
In 1700 North Carolina had eleven hundred, 1732 six thousand,[18] and in 1764 about thirty thousand.[19]
Until near the beginning of the eighteenth century it was rare that the English continental colonies received a shipload of slaves direct from Africa, and even these were usually brought in by some unlicensed "interloper." It is very probable that most of the negroes imported before this time were from Barbados, Jamaica and other West India Islands.[20] But by the beginning of the eighteenth century it appears that slaves were being imported more rapidly. After the Assiento,[21] in 1713, England became a great carrier of slaves and so continued until the Revolution.[22] The effect of this was very sensibly felt by the colonies.
Even in the latter part of the seventeenth century some of the colonies began to show their dislike by levying duties on further importation. In the eighteenth century the colonial opposition to the importation of slaves, arising probably from a fear of insurrection, became much more pronounced. Heavy restrictions in the form of duties were laid upon the trade. In some cases these were so heavy as would seem to amount to total prohibition.[23] But the efforts on the part of the colonies to restrict the trade were frowned upon and often disallowed by the British Government.[24]
In 1754 the instructions to Governor Dobbs, of North Carolina, were: "Whereas, acts have been passed in some of our plantations in America for laying duties on the importation and exportation of negroes to the great discouragement of the Merchants trading thither from the coast of Africa, ... it is our will and pleasure that you do not give your assent to or pass any law imposing duties upon negroes imported into our Province of North Carolina."[25]
The colonies considered the slave trade so important to Great Britain that at the dawn of the Revolution some of them appear to have had hopes of bringing her to terms by refusing to import any more slaves.[26]
In the original draft of the Declaration of Independence as submitted by Jefferson, the king of Great Britain is arraigned "for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or restrain this execrable commerce."[27]