Untitled - African American History

ABOLITION OF THE SLAVE-TRADE.
Notwithstanding these several treaties and statutes,
and notwithstanding both Britain and the United States
have for many years kept a naval force cruising upon
the western shores of Africa along the Slave Coast ; yet
the trade remains unsuppressed to this day, and for a
series of years the number of slaves shipped for trans-
than it had ever been while the
portation was greater
trade was legal and fostered by the legislation of
France, Britain, and Spain. Its illicit character, however,
has added much to its enormity and horrors. The
slave-marts have ceased to be markets overt, and the
victims of the trade are hidden in prisons and dens from
the time they are brought to the coast. The transfer to
the slave-ship is by night, and attended with much danger.
The ship itself, instead of the large commodious
vessels formerly used, is of the narrow clipper-built style,
prepared with a view to a chase from the English or
American cruiser. The slave decks are no longer ven-
tilated with a view to health, but placed below the
hatches, to escape detection, closely confined and of
much diminished proportions. The numbers crowded
into these narrow cells are much increased, being no
longer regulated by law, and the increased risk and increased
expense requiring increased profits to the ad-
venturous owners. The persons engaged in the trade,
of necessity, are no longer the enlarged and liberal merchant,
with his humane master and crew, but the most
desperate of buccaneers, who being declared pirates by
law, become pirates in fact. The horrors of the middle
passage are necessarily increased, and the difficulties of
another instance of the object of legislation defeated by its own vindictiveness.
The bona fide purchaser of slaves, in a slave country, who
seeks to transport them to another slave country, is not a pirate. The
kidnapper of free negroes might be properly so declared. The acts are
justified upon the difficulty of making proof of kidnapping, &c. This is
an unfortunate truth, but does not justify the severity of the proposed
remedy. The result is, that convictions under the act are very rare.