The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America Part 26

[30] Report of Perry: _Senate Doc._, 28 Cong. 2 sess. IX. No.

150, p. 118.

[31] Consul Park at Rio Janeiro to Secretary Buchanan, Aug.

20, 1847: _House Exec. Doc._, 30 Cong. 2 sess. VII. No. 61, p.

7.

[32] Suppose "an American vessel employed to take in negroes at some point on this coast. There is no American man-of-war here to obtain intelligence. What risk does she run of being searched? But suppose that there is a man-of-war in port. What is to secure the master of the merchantman against her [the man-of-war's commander's knowing all about his [the merchant-man's] intention, or suspecting it in time to be upon him [the merchant-man] before he shall have run a league on his way to Texas?" Consul Trist to Commander Spence: _House Doc._, 27 Cong. 1 sess. No. 34, p. 41.]

[33] A typical set of instructions was on the following plan: 1. You are charged with the protection of legitimate commerce.

2. While the United States wishes to suppress the slave-trade, she will not admit a Right of Search by foreign vessels. 3.

You are to arrest slavers. 4. You are to allow in no case an exercise of the Right of Search or any great interruption of legitimate commerce.--To Commodore Perry, March 30, 1843: _House Exec. Doc._, 35 Cong. 2 sess. IX. No. 104.

[34] _House Reports_, 27 Cong. 3 sess. III. No. 283, pp.

765-8. Cf. Benton's speeches on the treaty of 1842.

[35] Report of Hotham to Admiralty, April 7, 1847: _Parliamentary Papers_, 1847-8, Vol. LXIV. No. 133, _Papers Relative to the Suppression of the Slave Trade on the Coast of Africa_, p. 13.

[36] _Opinions of Attorneys-General_, III. 512.

[37] _Tenth Annual Report of the Amer. and Foreign Anti-Slav.

Soc._, May 7, 1850, p. 149.

[38] _Opinions of Attorneys-General_, IV. 245.

[39] _Senate Doc._, 28 Cong. 2 sess. IX. No. 150, pp. 108, 132.

[40] _House Exec. Doc._, 30 Cong. 2 sess. VII. No. 61, p. 18.

[41] Foote, _Africa and the American Flag_, pp. 286-90.

[42] _British and Foreign State Papers_, 1839-40, pp. 913-4.

[43] Cf. United States census reports; and Olmsted, _Cotton Kingdom_.

[44] _House Journal_, 26 Cong. 1 sess. p. 118.

[45] _Ibid._, 27 Cong. 1 sess. pp. 31, 184.

[46] _Ibid._, 27 Cong. 2 sess. pp. 14, 15, 86, 113.

[47] _Senate Journal_, 28 Cong. 2 sess. pp. 191, 227.

[48] _House Exec. Doc._, 31 Cong. 1 sess. III. pt. I. No. 5, p. 7.

[49] Foote, _Africa and the American Flag_, p. 152.

[50] _Ibid._, pp. 152-3.

[51] _Ibid._, p. 241.

[52] Cf. e.g. _House Doc._, 28 Cong. 2 sess. IV. pt. I. No.

148; 29 Cong. 1 sess. III. No. 43; _House Exec. Doc._, 30 Cong. 2 sess. VII. No. 61; _Senate Exec. Doc._, 30 Cong. 1 sess. IV. No. 28; 31 Cong. 2 sess. II. No. 6; 33 Cong. 1 sess.

VIII. No. 47.

[53] Foote, _Africa and the American Flag_, p. 218.

[54] _Ibid._, p. 221.

[55] Palmerston to Stevenson: _House Doc._, 26 Cong. 2 sess.

V. No. 115, p. 5. In 1836 five such slavers were known to have cleared; in 1837, eleven; in 1838, nineteen; and in 1839, twenty-three: _Ibid._, pp. 220-1.

[56] _Parliamentary Papers_, 1839, Vol. XLIX., _Slave Trade_, cla.s.s A, Further Series, pp. 58-9; cla.s.s B, Further Series, p.

110; cla.s.s D, Further Series, p. 25. Trist pleaded ignorance of the law: Trist to Forsyth, _House Doc._, 26 Cong. 2 sess.

V. No. 115.

[57] _House Doc._, 26 Cong. 2 sess. V. No. 115.

[58] Foote, _Africa and the American Flag_, p. 290.

[59] _House Doc._, 26 Cong. 2 sess. V. No. 115, pp. 121, 163-6.

[60] _Senate Exec. Doc._, 31 Cong. 1 sess. XIV No. 66.

[61] Trist to Forsyth: _House Doc._, 26 Cong. 2 sess. V. No.

115. "The business of supplying the United States with Africans from this island is one that must necessarily exist,"

because "slaves are a hundred _per cent_, or more, higher in the United States than in Cuba," and this profit "is a temptation which it is not in human nature as modified by American inst.i.tutions to withstand": _Ibid._

[62] _Statutes at Large_, V. 674.

[63] Cf. above, p. 157, note 1.

[64] Buxton, _The African Slave Trade and its Remedy_, pp.

44-5. Cf. _2d Report of the London African Soc._, p. 22.

[65] I.e., Bay Island in the Gulf of Mexico, near the coast of Honduras.

[66] _Revelations of a Slave Smuggler_, p. 98.

[67] Mr. H. Moulton in _Slavery as it is_, p. 140; cited in _Facts and Observations on the Slave Trade_ (Friends' ed.

1841), p. 8.

[68] In a memorial to Congress, 1840: _House Doc._, 26 Cong. 1 sess. VI. No. 211.

[69] _British and Foreign State Papers_, 1845-6, pp. 883, 968, 989-90. The governor wrote in reply: "The United States, if properly served by their law officers in the Floridas, will not experience any difficulty in obtaining the requisite knowledge of these illegal transactions, which, I have reason to believe, were the subject of common notoriety in the neighbourhood where they occurred, and of boast on the part of those concerned in them": _British and Foreign State Papers_, 1845-6, p. 990.