When New Jersey abolished slavery in 1804, this statute obtained in all the Northern States. In their economy slavery was an incubus. This statute imposed no financial sacrifice on individuals, for in most cases the relatively few slaves had been transferred and sold in the South. Though there were threatening party differences, as yet there seems no general feeling against slavery in those States to which it was peculiar, and such sentiments as were entertained were more abstract than those common in the South itself.[13] Many Northern fortunes had been built upon the slave trade; though prohibiting the importation into their own States, numbers were still actively engaged in the traffic--and the Southern States were the only ports legally open to them, for an act forbidding the direct or indirect importation of slaves into foreign countries had become a United States statute in 1794. The South itself seldom engaged in this traffic--it was a degradation to which her aristocratic tendencies could not stoop; a “nigger-trade” was taboo; and though slave vessels plied to and from her ports, they were usually a part of Yankee enterprise. Jefferson, to whom the question had so long been a momentous one, welcomed the time when the traffic would end, and in his sixth annual message to Congress, December 2, 1806, rejoiced “on the approach of the period at which you may interpose your authority constitutionally, to withdraw the citizens of the United States from all further participation in those violations of human rights which have so long continued on the unoffending inhabitants of Africa, and which the morality, the reputation, and the best interests of the country have long been eager to proscribe.” With the first of January, 1808, it became unlawful for any person of color to be imported into the United States or her territory; any person aiding or abetting such traffic to be fined five thousand dollars; also “any citizen of the United States, building, fitting out, equipping, loading or otherwise preparing or sending away any ship or vessel, knowing that the same shall be employed in such trade or business” shall pay twenty thousand dollars, a part to go to the United States and another to any person or persons who shall prosecute the offender. Every vessel found engaged in the traffic was to be “seized, prosecuted, and condemned in any of the circuit courts or district courts where the said ship or vessel may be found or seized.” The President was authorized to use the naval and revenue forces to enforce the statute. They were to cruise on the coast of the United States and her territories; to seize and bring to port vessels contravening the provisions of the act, the captain or commander to be prosecuted before any court of the United States having jurisdiction thereof; and if convicted to be fined not more than ten thousand dollars, and to be subject to imprisonment to not more than four years.[14]