Charles Sumner: his complete works, volume 08 (of 20)Sumner, Charles
History
Charles Sumner: his complete works, volume 08 (of 20)
Sumner, Charles
Slavery -- United States; Speeches, addresses, etc., American
Subsequent action was prompt. The treaty was ratified by the
Senate April 24th; ratifications were exchanged in London May
25th; the treaty was proclaimed by the President June 7th, 1862.
June 10th, a message of the President, transmitting a copy of
the treaty, with correspondence between Mr. Seward and Lord
Lyons in relation to it, was laid before the Senate, and on
motion of Mr. Sumner referred to the Committee on Foreign
Relations, and ordered to be printed.
June 13th, Mr. Sumner reported from the Committee a bill to
carry the treaty into effect, providing for the appointment,
with the advice and consent of the Senate, of a judge and also
an arbitrator on the part of the United States to reside at
New York, a judge and also an arbitrator to reside at Sierra
Leone, and a judge and also an arbitrator to reside at the Cape
of Good Hope,--all the judges to be paid $2,500 annually, the
arbitrator at New York $1,000, and the arbitrators at Sierra
Leone and the Cape of Good Hope $2,000 respectively.
Owing to the pressure of business incident to the latter days
of a very crowded session, Mr. Sumner was not able to call it
up immediately. June 26th, on his motion, it was considered and
passed: Yeas, 34; Nays, only 4.
Among the nays was Mr. Saulsbury, of Delaware, who remarked:--
“I do not object to the suppression of the African
slave-trade, but I do not believe that this Government has
the constitutional right to establish any such court. I
think the treaty ought not to have been adopted.”
July 7th the bill passed the House, and July 11th was approved
by the President.
* * * * *
The importance of this treaty had not been exaggerated. The
_Journal des Débats_, organ of French intelligence at Paris, in
its enunciation, June 15, 1862, of the objects accomplished by
the National Government, says: “There is a treaty with England,
which, loyally executed, must soon render the slave-trade
almost impossible.”
The slave-trade became almost impossible, so that practically
it ceased to exist. The terror of the law, with these
provisions for its enforcement, sufficed at last to deter the
perpetrators of this inhuman crime, and the ocean, so often
traversed by slave-ships, became like a peaceful metropolis
with a well-ordered police.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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