Act Prohibiting importation of slaves - wikipedia Act Prohibiting importation of slaves For the British statute passed the same year, see Slave Trade Act 1807. 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 9 - 22 Statutes at Large 2 Stat. 426 Legislative history 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 stated that no new slaves were permitted to be imported into the United States. It took effect in 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 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 in the Slave Trade Act of 1794. The 1807 Act ended the legality of trade with the U.S. However, it was not always well enforced and slaves continued to be smuggled in limited numbers. All the northern states had ended slavery by 1804, but ownership remained legal in all the Southern states. The 1807 law did not change that -- it just made importation from abroad a crime. The domestic slave trade within the U.S. was unaffected by the 1807 law. Britain, the major power involved in the Atlantic slave trade, passed the comparable Abolition of the Slave Trade Act that same month. Contents 1 Background 2 Passage of the Act 3 Effectiveness and prosecutions for slaving 4 Antebellum proposals by Fire - Eaters to reopen 5 See also 6 References 7 Further reading 8 External links Background Part of a series on Slavery Contemporary Child labour Conscription Debt Forced marriage Bride buying Wife selling Forced prostitution Human trafficking Peonage Penal labour Sexual slavery Wage slavery Historical Antiquity Ancient Rome Babylonia Ancient Greece Topics and practices Atlantic slave trade Middle Passage Arab slave trade Ghilman Mamluk Saqaliba Aztec Blackbirding Byzantine Empire Coolie Corvée labor Field slaves in the United States House slaves Kholop Medieval Europe Panyarring Thrall Serfs History Russia Slave market Slave raiding Naval Galley slave Impressment Pirates Shanghaiing Slave ship By country or region Sub-Saharan Africa Contemporary Africa Slavery on the Barbary Coast Barbary slave trade Slave Coast Angola Chad Ethiopia Mali Mauritania Niger Somalia South Africa Sudan Seychelles North and South America Americas indigenous U.S. Natives Brazil Lei Áurea Canada Caribbean Barbados Code Noir Cuba Haiti revolt Restavek Latin America Puerto Rico Trinidad United States colonial maps female partus penal labor Slave codes interregional Human trafficking Virgin Islands Central, East, and South Asia Human trafficking in Southeast Asia Bhutan China Booi Aha Laogai India Debt bondage Chukri System Japan comfort women South Korea Yankee princess North Korea Vietnam Australia and Oceania Blackbirding in Australia Human trafficking in Australia Slave raiding in Easter Island Human trafficking in Papua New Guinea Blackbirding in Polynesia Europe and North Asia Sex trafficking in Europe Britain Denmark Dutch Republic Germany in World War II Norway Poland Portugal Romania Russia Spain colonies Sweden North Africa and West Asia Iran Libya Human trafficking in the Middle East Ottoman Empire Yemen Religion Bible Christianity Catholicism Mormonism Islam 21st century Judaism Bahá'í Faith Opposition and resistance Timeline Abolitionism U.K. U.S. Anti-Slavery International Blockade of Africa U.K. U.S. Compensated emancipation Freedman manumission Freedom suit Abolitionists Slave Power Underground Railroad songs Slave rebellion Slave Trade Acts International law 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution Related Common law Indentured servitude Unfree labour Fugitive slaves laws Great Dismal Swamp maroons List of slaves owners Slave narrative films songs Slave name Slave catcher Slave patrol Slave Route Project Treatment in U.S. breeding court cases Washington Jefferson Adams Lincoln 40 acres Freedmen 's Bureau bit Emancipation Day Article 1 Section 9 of the United States Constitution protected the slave trade for twenty years. Article 5 said this clause could not be affected by constitutional amendment. Only starting January 1, 1808, could there be a federal law to entirely abolish the international slave trade, although individual states could and did ban it at any 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. In the 18th century, Great Britain had become the world 's largest slave trader. During the American Revolution ( 1775 -- 1783 ) against Great Britain, all the states banned the international slave trade. This was done for a variety of economic, political, and moral reasons depending on the state. The trade was later reopened in South Carolina and Georgia. On March 22, 1794, Congress passed the Slave Trade Act of 1794, which prohibited making, loading, outfitting, equipping, or dispatching of any ship to be used in the trade of slaves, essentially limiting the trade to foreign ships. On August 5, 1797, John Brown of Providence, Rhode Island, became the first American to be tried in federal court under the 1794 law. Brown was convicted and was forced to forfeit his ship Hope. On April 7, 1798, the fifth Congress passed an act that imposed a three hundred dollar per slave penalty on persons convicted of performing the illegal importation of slaves. It was an indication of the type of behavior and course of events soon to become commonplace in the Congress. In the Slave Trade Act of 1800, Congress outlawed U.S. citizens ' investment in the trade, and the employment of U.S. citizens on foreign vessels involved in the trade. Passage of the Act On December 2, 1806, in his annual message to Congress, widely reprinted in most newspapers, President Thomas Jefferson denounced the `` violations of human rights '' attending the international slave trade and called for its criminalization on the first day that was possible ( January 1, 1808 ). He said : I congratulate you, fellow - citizens, on the approach of the period at which you may interpose your authority constitutionally, to withdraw the citizens of the United States from all further participation in those violations of human rights which have been so long continued on the unoffending inhabitants of Africa, and which the morality, the reputation, and the best interests of our country, have long been eager to proscribe. The House and Senate agreed on a bill, approved on March 2, 1807, called 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. The bound measure also regulated the coastwise slave trade. President Thomas Jefferson signed the bill into law on March 2, 1807. Many in Congress believed the act would doom slavery in the South, but they were mistaken. The role of the Navy was expanded to include patrols off the coasts of Cuba and South America. The effective date of the Act, January 1, 1808, was celebrated by Peter Williams, Jr., in `` An Oration on the Abolition of the Slave Trade '' delivered in New York City. 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. Carl C. Cutler 's classic book on American clipper ships 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 retrieved 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 slave - trading in the United States. In addition, after the 1808 abolition of the slave trade to the United States, many Americans continued to engage in the slave trade by transporting Africans to Cuba. from 1808 - 1860, almost one - third of all slave ships were either owned by American merchants, or were built and outfitted in American ports. It is possible that U.S. citizens `` may have transported twice as many Africans to other countries such as Cuba and Brazil as they did to their own ports ''. Antebellum proposals by fire - eaters to reopen In the South, the Fire - Eaters -- antebellum pro-slavery extremists -- proposed repealing the act and once more legalizing the international slave trade in the United States. Historian Erskine Clarke writes that this call `` was a shameless expression of their contempt for any antislavery sentiment and a part of their stratagem to divide the nation and create a slaveholding confederacy. Among other things, the fire - eaters hoped that a reopened international slave trade would incense the North, and that Northern outrage would cause white Southerns to unite and move toward secession. '' In addition to whipping up sectional tensions, Fire - Eaters advocated the reopening of the slave trade in order to drive down the price of slaves ; to balance the millions of European immigrants who had settled in the North and maintain Southern representation in Congress ; and assert the morality of slavery : `` Slave trading had to be made right, otherwise slavery was imperiled. '' Fire - Eaters essentially desired to `` legitimize the slave trade in order to make the point that both slavery and the African slave trade were morally acceptable practices '' -- a view intended to be precisely opposite that of the abolitionists, who affirmed the immorality of both slavery and the slave trade. The view alarmed even pro-slavery figures, such as former President John Tyler, who in a widely - republished letter written in his retirement condemned the Fire - Eaters ' call to abrogate article 8 of the Webster -- Ashburton Treaty ( which barred the slave trade ), noting that the South had voted to ratify the treaty. '' Arguably the Civil War 's 600,000 deaths could have been avoided through more presidential correspondence with Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee explaining that Congress abolished the slave trade previously. Nothing wrong with presidential correspondence. James T. Struck BA, BS, AA, MLIS See also Blockade of Africa Slave Trade Act 1807 ( equivalent British act of Parliament ) Slave Trade Acts Act to Protect the Commerce of the United States and Punish the Crime of Piracy ( 1820 ) Slavery in International Law Abolitionism References Jump up ^ U.S. Constitution -- Article 1 Section 9 Jump up ^ `` European traders ''. International Slavery Museum. Retrieved 8 July 2014. Jump up ^ Finkelman, Paul ( 2007 ). `` The Abolition of The Slave Trade ''. New York Public Library. Retrieved 25 June 2014. Jump up ^ Timeline : The Atlantic Slave Trade Archived March 11, 2010, at the Wayback Machine. Jump up ^ Papers of the American Slave Trade Jump up ^ United States ; Joseph Story ( 1827 ). The public and general statutes passed by the Congress of the United States of America : from 1789 to 1827 inclusive, whether expired, repealed, or in force : arranged in chronological order, with marginal references, and a copious index : to which is added the Constitution of the United States, and an appendix. Wells and Lilly. p. + 1798 % 22 + % 22three + hundred + dollars % 22&hl = en&sa = X&ei = oJu6UPXtFea3iQeSqIHwAw&ved = 0CDEQ6AEwAQ # v = onepage&q = % 22April % 207 % 2C % 201798 % 22 % 20 % 22three % 20hundred % 20dollars % 22&f = false 495. Jump up ^ `` REGULATING THE TRADE ''. New York Public Library. Retrieved December 5, 2015. Jump up ^ John Paul Kaminski ( 1995 ). A Necessary Evil ? : Slavery and the Debate Over the Constitution. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 256. Jump up ^ United States ( 1850 ). The Public Statutes at Large of the United States of America. Charle C. Little and James Brown. pp. 426 -- 430. Jump up ^ Peter Kolchin, American Slavery ( 1993 ) p 80 Jump up ^ Pater Williams, Jr., An Oration on the Abolition of the Slave Trade ; Delivered in the African Church in the City of New - York, January 1, 1808, Paul Royster, Ed., online pdf version, Digital Commons, University of Nebraska -- Lincoln, accessed 31 May 2012 Jump up ^ Randy J. Sparks, Africans in the Old South : Mapping Exceptional Lives Across the Atlantic World ( Harvard University Press, 2016 ), p. 80. Jump up ^ Cutler, Carl C. ( 1984 ). Greyhounds of the Sea ( 3rd ed. ). p. 39. ^ Jump up to : Hugh Thomas, The Slave Trade : The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade : 1440 - 1870 ( Simon & Schuster, 1997 ), p. 774. ^ Jump up to : Matt D. Childs, `` Cuba, the Atlantic Crisis of the 1860s, and the Road to Abolition '' in American Civil Wars : The United States, Latin America, Europe, and the Crisis of the 1860s ( ed. Don H. Doyle : University of North Carolina Press, 2017 ). Jump up ^ Erskine Clarke, By the Rivers of Water : A Nineteenth - Century Atlantic Odyssey ( Basic Books, 2013 ), p. 324. Jump up ^ Erik Calonius, The Wanderer : The Last American Slave Ship and the Conspiracy That Set Its Sails ( St. Martin 's Griffin, 2006 ), pp. 43 - 43. Jump up ^ Edward P. Crapol, John Tyler, the Accidental President ( University of North Carolina Press, 2006 ), pp. 247 - 48. Further reading Channing, Edward ( 1921 ). A History of the United States : Federalists and Republicans, 1789 - 1815. Macmillan. pp. 432 -- 36. Du Bois, William Edward Burghardt ( 1904 ). The Suppression of the African Slave - trade to the United States of America, 1638 - 1870. Longmans, Green and Company. Marques, Leonardo. The United States and the transatlantic slave trade to the Americas, 1776 - 1867 ( Yale University Press, 2016 ). Marques, Leonardo. `` Slave Trading in a New World : The Strategies of North American Slave Traders in the Age of Abolition '' ' Journal of the Early Republic 32 # 2 ( 2012 ) pp. 233 - 260 online External links Complete Text of the Act Thomas Jefferson 3rd President of the United States ( 1801 -- 1809 ) 2nd U.S. Vice President ( 1797 -- 1801 ) 1st U.S. Secretary of State ( 1790 -- 1793 ) U.S. Minister to France ( 1785 -- 1789 ) 2nd Governor of Virginia ( 1779 -- 1781 ) Delegate, Second Continental Congress ( 1775 -- 1776 ) Founding documents of the United States A Summary View of the Rights of British America ( 1774 ) Initial draft, Olive Branch Petition ( 1775 ) Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms ( 1775 ) 1776 Declaration of Independence Committee of Five authored physical history `` All men are created equal '' `` Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness '' `` Consent of the governed '' 1786 Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom freedom of religion French Revolution Co-author, Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen ( 1789 ) Presidency Inaugural Address ( 1801 1805 ) Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves Louisiana Purchase Lewis and Clark Expedition Corps of Discovery timeline Empire of Liberty Red River Expedition Pike Expedition Cumberland Road Embargo Act of 1807 Chesapeake -- Leopard Affair Non-Intercourse Act of 1809 First Barbary War Native American policy Marbury v. 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Question: what restriction did the united states congress place on slavery in 1808
Answer: no new slaves were permitted to be imported into the United States