Page:The American Slave Trade (Spears).djvu/152

 to prohibit the slave-trade. They think this act prohibited the trade.

The truth is the act was merely "to prohibit the carrying on the Slave-trade from the United States to any foreign place or country" and to prohibit fitting out slavers here fora foreign country. It was merely an act in mild restraint of the trade — so mild, in fact, that it never injured the slavers to the extent of a dollar.

Here the matter rested for six years — save only that by the act of April 3, 1798, "in relation to the Mississippi territory," to which the constitutional provision did not extend, the introduction of slaves was forbidden, under severe penalties, and every slave imported contrary to the act was to be entitled to freedom. But in 1800 a petition of Pennsylvania free negroes for a revision of the laws relating to the slave-trade, the fugitive slave law, and for gradual emancipation, once more stirred the House to fever heat.

In the debate that followed, Dana, of Connecticut, declared that the petition contained "nothing but a farrago of the French metaphysics of liberty and equality." That from Connecticut!

Brown, of Rhode Island, said: "We want money; we want a navy; we ought therefore to use the means to obtain it.... Why should we see Great Britain getting all the slave-trade to themselves — why may not our country be enriched by that lucrative traffic?"

Congress, however, made it unlawful not only to fit out ships for the foreign slave-trade but to hold any interest, direct or indirect, in foreign slaver voyages. And serving on slavers was prohibited to American citizens. Naval vessels were directed to make prizes