Smith’s vote was sufficient to kill the bill. It failed of passage by 15 to 16 in the Senate.[35] He thus, by his vote alone made impossible, what he claimed to favor, but declined to support, because he asserted he believed to be impossible. Later in the United States Senate he disclosed, that in the four years he thus secured for the slave trade to pour its flood upon South Carolina, in 202 vessels, 39,075 slaves were brought into the port of Charleston[36] for which he had the effrontery to hold almost everybody but himself responsible. This disastrous piece of legislation increased the Negro population of South Carolina in that decade 41 per cent, against an increase of only 9 per cent whites, and checked almost entirely the remarkable increase of whites, which had marked the previous decade. As to the effect upon the business of Charleston, in the reminiscence of one of the editors of the daily press, we have an illuminating illustration of the truth of Senator Barnwell’s prophecy. Says Mr. Thomas: “In November 1803, I returned from my fourth voyage with a printed catalogue of fifty thousand volumes of books in every branch of literature, arts and sciences, being by far the largest importation ever made into the United States. I had only got them opened and arranged for sale three days when news arrived from Columbia that the Legislature then in session had opened the port for the importation of slaves from Africa. The news had not been five hours in the city before two large British Guineamen that had been laying off and on the port for several days, expecting it, came up to town, and from that day my business began to decline, although then in a situation to carry it on to three times the extent I had ever done before. Previous to this the planters had large sums of money laying idle in the banks, which they liberally expended not only for their actual, but supposed wants. A great change at once took place in everything. Vessels were fitted out in numbers for the coast of Africa, and as fast as they returned their cargoes were bought up with avidity, not only consuming the large funds which had been accumulating, but all that could be procured, and finally exhausting credit and mortgaging the slaves for payment, many of whom were not redeemed for ten years afterwards to my knowledge.”[37] On the other hand the State of Ohio, which had been admitted in 1800 with 45,628 whites and only 336 colored, was so disturbed by the growth of its colored population that before they reached in number two thousand, that State passed the notorious Black Laws of January 9, 1805, of which Section 4 reads as follows: “That no black or mulatto person shall hereafter be permitted to be sworn or give evidence in any Court of record or elsewhere in the State in any cause depending or matter of controversy, where either party to the same is a white person, or in any prosecution which shall be instituted in behalf of this State against any white person.”[38]