Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/473

 to a fine of $10,000, and imprisonment for not less than two nor more than four years. The negroes found on board were to be delivered to such persons as the states might respectively appoint to receive them, or, in default of such appointment, to the overseers of the poor of the place to which they might be brought; and if, under state regulations, they should be "sold or disposed of," the penalties of this act upon the seller and purchaser were not to attach in such cases.

"The importation of Africans into South Carolina," says Hildreth, "during the four years from the reopening of the traffic up to the-period when the law of the United States went into effect, amounted to about 40,000, of whom half were brought by English vessels. A very large proportion of the remainder seem to have been introduced by Rhode Islanders. The English act for the abolition of the slave-trade, and especially the commercial restrictions which went into operation simultaneously with the American act, contributed to give it an efficacy which otherwise it might not have had. At a subsequent period, after the reestablishment of freedom of navigation, additional provisions, as we shall see, became necessary.

"The convention of delegates from the various abolition societies had continued, since its institution in 1793, to meet annually at Philadelphia; but of late the delegations from the south had greatly fallen off, and the convention of the present year resolved that its future meetings should be only triennial. That spirit, twin-born with the struggle for liberty and independence, which had produced in three states (Massachusetts, Vermont, and Ohio,) the total prohibition of slavery, in six others provisions for its gradual abolition, and, in spite of the efforts of the people of Indiana for its temporary introduction, (efforts renewed again at the present session, but again, notwithstanding the favorable report of a committee, without success,) its continued prohibition in the territories northwest of the Ohio, culminating now in the total prohibition of the foreign slave-trade, seems to have become, for a considerable interval, less active, or at least, less marked in its manifestations. The greater part of the societies whence the delegates came gradually died out, and even the triennial convention presently ceased. Jefferson preserved, with all his zeal on this subject, a dead silence. In his private letters he sometimes alluded to the necessity of steps for getting rid of the evil of slavery; but he took good care not to hazard his popularity at the south by any public suggestions on the subject.

"That dread of and antipathy to free negroes which had been evinced in the debate on the slave-trade prohibition act had not been without its influence upon the legislation of the states. Indeed, it had led to some serious infractions of these alleged rights of property, but a very distant approach to which by the general government had thrown Randolph into such excitement. In 1196, North Carolina had reënforced and reënacted her law prohibiting emancipation except for meritorious services and by allowance of the county courts. South Carolina, in 1800, had prohibited emancipation except by consent of a justice of the peace and of five indifferent freeholders. Another South