Abridgment of the Debates of Congress, from 1789 to 1856, Vol. 3 (of 16)United States. Congress
History
Abridgment of the Debates of Congress, from 1789 to 1856, Vol. 3 (of 16)
United States. Congress
Law -- United States; United States -- Politics and government
Mr. M. observed that the extent of this shocking commerce was very
considerable at this time. Some time ago, he had seen a list of the
American vessels then known to be hovering on the coast of Guinea
in quest of captive negroes. They were numerous and active, and so
fatally busy as to excite the apprehensions of the benevolent Sierra
Leone Company. In various parts of the nation, outfits were made for
slave-voyages, without secrecy, shame, or apprehension. The construction
of the ships, the shackles for confining the wretched passengers, and all
the dismal apparatus of cruelty, were attended to with the systematic
coolness of an ordinary adventure. Regardless of legal prohibitions,
these merciless men, as greedy as the sharks of the element on which they
sailed, collected their slaves along the shores, and at the factories
of Negroland, from the river Senegal to the countries of Congo and
Angola. Countenanced by their fellow-citizens at home, who were as ready
to buy as they themselves were to collect and to bring to market, they
approached our Southern harbors and inlets, and clandestinely disembarked
the sooty offspring of the Eastern, upon the ill-fated soil of the
Western hemisphere. In this way, it had been computed that, during the
last twelve months, twenty thousand enslaved negroes had been transported
from Guinea, and, by smuggling, added to the plantation stock of Georgia
and South Carolina.
So little respect seems to have been paid to the existing prohibitory
statute, that it may almost be considered as disregarded by common
consent. And, therefore, as was observed by a gentleman from South
Carolina, (Mr. HUGER,) the Legislature of that State had lately repealed
their restrictive law, and legitimated a trade which neither that
regulation of their common wealth, nor the concurrent authority of the
nation, could prevent. And it may be received as a correct general idea
on this subject, that the citizens of the navigating States bring negroes
from Africa, and sell them to the inhabitants of those States which are
more distinguished for their plantations.
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