• 1808 – As a result of the lobbying efforts by the abolitionist movement (emblem pictured), the importation of slaves into the United States was officially banned, although slavery itself was not yet abolished.



"Am I not a man and a brother", emblem used by abolitionists

Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves

Long title: An Act to prohibit the importation of slaves, into any port or place within the jurisdiction of the United States, from and after the first day of January, in the year of our Lord, One Thousand Eight Hundred and Eight.
Enacted by: the 9th United States Congress
Effective: January 1, 1808
Citations
Public law: Pub. L. 9–22
Statutes at Large: 2 Stat. 426, Chap. 22
Legislative history:
Introduced in the Senate as S. 41 by James Turner (D-R–NC)
Passed the Senate on December 17, 1805 (16-11)
Passed the House on February 13, 1807 (113-5)
Signed into law by President Thomas Jefferson on March 2, 1807

The Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves of 1807 (2 Stat. 426, enacted March 2, 1807) is a United States federal law that prohibited the importation of slaves into the United States. It took effect on January 1, 1808, the earliest date permitted by the United States Constitution.

This legislation was promoted by President Thomas Jefferson, who called for its enactment in his 1806 State of the Union Address. He and others had promoted the idea since the 1770s. It reflected the force of the general trend toward abolishing the international slave trade, which Virginia, followed by all the other states, had prohibited or restricted since then. South Carolina, however, had reopened its trade. Congress first regulated against the trade in the Slave Trade Act of 1794. The 1794 Act ended the legality of American ships participating in the trade. The 1807 law did not change that—it made all importation from abroad, even on foreign ships, a federal crime.

The domestic slave trade within the United States was not affected by the 1807 law. Indeed, with the legal supply of imported slaves terminated, the domestic trade increased in importance. In addition, some smuggling of slaves persisted.

Background

The Act affected only the import or export of slaves, and did not affect the internal trade in states or between states. During the American Revolution, all of the Thirteen Colonies prohibited their involvement in the international slave trade (some also internally abolished slavery), but three of them later enacted legislation legalizing the international slave trade again. Article 1 Section 9 of the United States Constitution protected a state's involvement in the Atlantic slave trade for twenty years from federal prohibition. Article 5 said that this clause could not be affected by constitutional amendment. Only starting on January 1, 1808 could there be a federal law to abolish the international slave trade in all states, although individual states could and did ban it before such time.

The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a tax or duty may be imposed on such Importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each Person.

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Effectiveness and prosecutions for slaving

While there are no exact figures known, historians estimate that up to 50,000 slaves were illegally imported into the United States after 1808, mostly through Spanish Florida and Texas, before those states were admitted to the Union. However, South Carolina Governor Henry Middleton estimated in 1819 that 13,000 smuggled African slaves arrived every year.

Carl C. Cutler's classic book on American clippers records:

The act outlawing the slave trade in 1808 furnished another source of demand for fast vessels, and for another half century ships continued to be fitted out and financed in this trade by many a respectable citizen in the majority of American ports. Newspapers of the fifties contain occasional references to the number of ships sailing from the various cities in this traffic. One account stated that as late as 1859 there were seven slavers regularly fitted out in New York, and many more in all the larger ports.

In 1820, slave trading became a capital offense with an amendment to the 1819 Act to Protect the Commerce of the United States and Punish the Crime of Piracy. A total of 74 cases of slaving were brought in the United States between 1837 and 1860, "but few captains had been convicted, and those had received trifling sentences, which they had usually been able to avoid". Nathaniel Gordon, who was hanged in 1862, was the only person to be executed for illegal slave-trading in the United States.

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