Act Prohibiting the Importation of Slaves

Introduction

The question of slavery’s future figured prominently when the Constitutional Convention met in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787. Some delegates from Northern states hoped to banish the practice. They ultimately abandoned their fight in the face of the reality that the Southern states would rather bolt the convention, thereby dooming the effort to create a more effective national government, than agree to abolish slavery. The opponents of slavery, however, won one concession. The Constitution provided that after a twenty-year wait, Congress could ban the importation of enslaved people. In March 1807, at President Thomas Jefferson’s request, Congress did just that. On January 1, 1808, the Act Prohibiting the Importation of Slaves went into effect. It was the first U.S. law that broke with the transatlantic slave system, and it curtailed U.S. participation in the international slave trade. SHAFR historians ranked the Act Prohibiting the Importation of Slaves as the eighth-best U.S. foreign policy decision.

The debate over slavery at the Constitutional Convention largely, but not solely, pitted delegates from Northern states against those from Southern states. Many Northern states had either abolished or were moving to abolish slavery. In contrast, Southern states, and particularly states in the Deep South, viewed slavery as the lifeblood of their economies. They threatened to walk out of the convention if their demands were not met.

One of the specific issues that the delegates argued over was whether to ban the transatlantic slave trade. The Continental Congress had banned it in October 1774. The Articles of Confederation subsequently shifted responsibility for deciding whether to allow the import of enslaved people to the states. By 1787, Georgia was the only state that permitted it without restriction. North Carolina imposed a prohibitive tariff on the import of enslaved people that same year, and South Carolina temporarily suspended the practice. The importation of enslaved people was banned in every other state.

Despite the consensus that the United States should not participate in the transatlantic slave trade, Georgia and South Carolina demanded that the new constitution deny the national government the power to ban the import of enslaved people. Both delegations went even further; they also wanted to bar the national government from having the power to tax the import of enslaved people because such tariffs could be used to make the slave trade prohibitively expensive. Georgia and South Carolina both favored an unfettered international slave trade because they had lost as much as one-third of their enslaved populations during the Revolutionary War to fighting, disease, and the British push for emancipation. For both states, the slave trade was the cheapest way to rebuild their economies.

A draft version of the Constitution presented to the convention in August gave Georgia and South Carolina what they wanted. Northern delegates immediately objected. Some stressed the immorality of the slave trade, calling it a crime against “the most sacred laws of humanity.” Others attacked the provision on economic grounds. If the new constitution exempted the importation of enslaved people from being taxed, Northern states would bear more of the burden of financing the national government.

In the end, the delegates compromised. Article 1, Section 9, Clause 1 of the Constitution barred the national government from prohibiting the import of enslaved people until 1808 and capped the tariff on the slave trade at $10 per person. The provision avoided using the word “slave” in deference to delegates who saw slavery as an abomination that had no place in the founding document of a free society. The euphemistic language aside, the point was clear: twenty years after the Constitution was expected to take effect, Congress could ban participation in the transatlantic slave trade. In the interim, it could tax it.

The ban on the import of slaves dramatically curtailed U.S. participation in the international slave trade. The illegal smuggling of enslaved people continued, especially in the Deep South, where enforcement was weak or nonexistent. The act also did not, as Jefferson hoped, lead to the end of slavery. The enslaved population of the United States rose from 1.2 million to nearly 4 million people over the next half century. Despite what it failed to accomplish, the law set an important precedent in the struggle to abolish slavery. It was the United States’ first legislative break with the transatlantic slave system, and it ended official sanction of the heinous practice by which Africans were forced into servitude. The act also had consequences for U.S. foreign policy. It signaled to European powers that the United States would not contest the growing international consensus to end the international slave trade, and it laid the basis for the United States to sign several treaties with Great Britain to conduct anti-slavery patrols.