State Documents on Federal Relations/149

by Herman V. Ames

149. New York Denounces the Re-opening of the Slave Trade.

April 18, 1859.

The growing demand for slave labor in the cotton states led to a marked increase in the number of foreign slaves that were brought into the country contrary to law. Beginning about 1854 there was initiated a considerable movement in favor of legally re-opening the foreign slave trade. Governor Adams of South Carolina recommended it in his message of November, 1856 (Cluskey, 524), and in the several Southern Commercial Conventions held between 1855 and 1859 there was a strong element in its favor, which finally at the Vicksburg Convention in May, 1859, secured the adoption of a resolution by a vote of 40 to 19, declaring "that all laws, state or federal, prohibiting the African slave-trade, ought to be repealed." (De Bow's Review, xxvii, 99.) Leading southerners in Congress favored the movement during the same period.

The following resolves of the New York Legislature were called out in opposition to this movement.^[1] The Legislature of New Hampshire, June 23, 1859, also denounced the proposition, and again, July 4, 1860, declared: "That the virtual re-opening of the slave trade in violation of the law, is a species of nullification more dangerous to the Union and more degrading to the country than that nullification which formerly threatened to accomplish disunion by force." Laws of New Hamp., 1859, 2140; Ibid., 1860, 2298. References : For proceedings of the commercial conventions and southern opinion see De Bow's Review, XXII, 91, 102, 216-224; XXIII, 309-319; XXIV, 473-491, 579-606; XXV, 121, 122, 166-185, 289, 308, 491-506; XXVI, 51-66; XXVII, 94-235; Cluskey, 585-595. General accounts, DuBois, Suppression of the Slave Trade, ch. xi; Rhodes, II, 241, 367-372, 481, 482; Von Hoist, V, 484-490; VI, 313-324; VII, 262-266; Wilson, II, ch. xlviii.; Collins, Domestic Slave Trade, 54-60.

Resolved, That this Legislature, and the citizens of this State, look with surprise, mortification and detestation upon the virtual reopening, within the Federal Union, of the slave trade ; that against this invasion of our laws, our feelings, and the dictates of Christianity, we solemnly protest here, as we will protest elsewhere, and especially at the ballot-box ; that we call upon the citizens of this Union, to make common cause, in the name of religion, humanity, and as friends of principles underlying our system of government, to unite in bringing to immediate arrest and punishment, all persons engaged in the unlawful and wicked slave trade, and hereby instruct our senators and representatives in Congress to exert all lawful powers for the immediate suppression of the infamous traffic.
[Resolution of transmission.]

[Laws of New York, 1850, 1210.]

1. The Legislature of South Carolina returned the resolutions. Repts. and Res. of South Carolina, 1859, 536.