CHAPTER XXIV.
Political History of Slavery in the United States from 1189 to 1800.
The first session of the new Congress was held in the city of New York in 1789. A quorum was obtained for business on the 6th of April. A tariff bill having been reported, and being under discussion in the house on the question of its second reading, Parker, of Virginia, moved to insert a clause imposing a duty of ten dollars on every slave imported. "He was sorry the constitution prevented Congress from prohibiting the importation altogether. It was contrary to revolution principles, and ought not to be permitted." The only state which seemed to have a direct pecuniary interest in this question was Georgia. In all the other states at present represented on the floor, the importation of slaves, whether from Africa or elsewhere, was prohibited. Even South Carolina, just before the meeting of the federal convention, had passed an act, as she had been accustomed to do occasionally in colonial times, when the prices of produce were too low to be remunerative, prohibiting, for one year, the importation of slaves — a prohibition since renewed for three years. But, notwithstanding this temporary prohibition, the same jealousy as to her right of importation, so strongly manifested in the federal convention, was now exhibited on the floor of the house. Smith, the representative from the Charleston district, "hoped that such an important and serious proposition would not be hastily adopted. It was rather a late moment for the first introduction of a subject so big with serious consequences. No one topic had been yet introduced so important to South Carolina and the welfare of the Union." Sherman, of Connecticut, threw out some suggestions similar to those he had offered in the federal convention. He "approved the object of the motion, but did not think it a fit subject to be embraced in this bill. He could not reconcile himself to the insertion of human beings, as a subject of impost, among goods, wares, and merchandise. He hoped the motion would be withdrawn for the present, and taken up afterwards as an independent subject."
Jackson, of Georgia, "was not surprised, however others might be so, at the