# The American Slave Trade (Spears)/Chapter 17

Contents
CHAPTER XVII
TALES OF THE COASTWISE SLAVE-SHIPS
When the United States prohibited the slave-trade by the act of March 2, 1807, a reservation was carefully made in favor of the coastwise trade of the nation itself. Sections 8 and 9 provided that no "ship or vessel of less burthen than forty tons," in the coast trade, should take on board or transport any slave "to any port or place whatsoever" under penalty of $800 for each slave. Any "ship or vessel of the burthen of forty tons or more. . . sailing coastwise from any port in the United States to any port or place within the jurisdiction of the same," might carry slaves, however, on making out "duplicate manifests of every such negro," with a full description of each, and delivering "such manifests to the collector of the port," before sailing. There was absolutely no limit specified as to the number to be carried, nor was there any provision for the safety, let alone the health and comfort, of the slaves so to be carried. And that, too, ​in the face of the fact that a voyage from the breeding plantations in Virginia to the market in New Orleans might, and often did, last as many days as the shorter voyages from Africa to the West Indies.
Curious tales are told regarding the working of this law. The first, so far as found by the writer hereof, is in an incidental reference in a public document quoted in Niles's Register for September 30, 1815, wherein is mentioned the fact that "a young woman named Catharine Richardson" was "in the schooner Cynthia, of New York, Charles Johnson, master." Johnson having touched at a British port, his slave managed to get ashore and found friends who secured her freedom under the British law that prohibited the importation of slaves. That occurred in 1811.
A New Orleans paper quoted in the Register for February 8, 1817, said:
"Some inhuman speculator at New York has disburthened the prison of that city of seventy or eighty negroes, by procuring their imprisonment to be commuted for transportation, and shipping them for this place — where they arrived a few days ago. But he has been disappointed of his profit, and we doubt if he will clear even the freight of his cargo. The corporation has very properly ordered the vessel containing this gang of thieves and ruffians to proceed without the limits of the city."
In that day newspapers did not employ professional humorists, but the editors wrote humor unintentionally and in spite of indignation. Fancy sending seventy able-bodied negroes beyond the limits of New Orleans, in 1817, as a means of depriving the holder of ​a profitable sale! If the editor had added that conscienceless New York was forcing an odious traffic upon helpless but indignant Louisiana as the wicked British forced the odious traffic on their helpless but indignant American colonies the editorial would have been worth printing as a red-ink broadside to be framed for lasting preservation.
A similar editorial item in June, 1818, says that "negro trading seems to be actively carried on through certain great villains holding their headquarters in New Jersey, from whence, we trust, the good people of that State will soon chase them, A vessel with thirty-six persons of color has been seized at New Orleans for not having a manifest, etc., as required by law. She received her cargo of human beings near Perth Amboy. It is probable that the greater part of these unfortunate creatures were stolen."
That is to say, free negroes in New Jersey were kidnapped, taken on board ship, and carried to New Orleans for sale an exact counterpart of one feature of the prohibited African slave-trade. Mr. Niles did not give the name of the vessel, but it was the brig Jlary Ann, and she sailed from Perth Amboy on March 10, 1818.
Near the end of 1829 the schooner Lafayette sailed from Norfolk for New Orleans, having on board a cargo of more than one hundred slaves. The slaves rose against the crew, but were subdued, and twentyfive of them were "bolted down on the deck" for the remainder of the voyage. That was the first "mutiny"? in the coastwise trade that I have found. Others more interesting followed.
To appreciate fully the following stories the reader ​must recall an act passed by the British Parliament in 1833, to take effect August 1, 1834. This act was, in one respect, the most notable in the history of human liberty, for while in a thousand other cases men have done noble deeds for their own liberty, in this one the British nation voluntarily taxed itself to the extent of £20,000,000 to provide liberty for an inferior race. During more than thirty years Great Britain spent regularly more than £500,000 a year on her African squadron and gave the lives of many of its best sailors for the benefit of the despised negro, and meantime, at one appropriation, added £20,000,000 to all that expense. As a national recognition of the obligation which the dominant race owes to all inferior races the work of Great Britain in connection with negro slavery and the slave-trade remains unequalled in the history of the world.
On August 1, 1834, slavery for life was forever abolished in the British nation. The legislation of all other nations of that day was based on the inhuman idea that mental and physical superiority in one race gave it the right to deprive inferior human beings of liberty and to extort from them labor for the aggrandizement of the superior race.
In the year 1830 the city of Alexandria, Va., was what may be called the Omaha of the human cattle trade. Slaves were gathered there by traders for transfer to the ever-craving maw of the Gulf States. In the course of the year the brig Comet was loaded there with slaves and cleared for New Orleans, but on the way she was wrecked on the False Keys of the Bahama group. Wreckers carried crew and slaves to Nassau, where the authorities held that the slaves were free, ​because, as alleged, the British laws prohibited the introduction of slaves.
The brig "Encomium", from Charleston for New Orleans, with slaves, met the same fate in the same locality, with the same result to the slaves, early in 1834.
The "Enterprise", with a cargo of slaves from the District of Columbia Washington was noted for its slave barracoons in those days also carrying slaves for the New Orleans market, was compelled by stress of weather to put into Bermuda on February 20, 1835.
The "Friendly Society" of colored people of the town at once got out writs of habeas corpus, served them upon the people interested, and had all the negroes, seventy-eight in number, brought before the proper court, with their alleged owners and the master of the ship. It was nine o'clock at night when they appeared before the court. The master of the ship had striven to have the hearing put off until next day, hoping, no doubt, to go to sea, but the effort was vain. He had also promised to give the slaves considerable sums of money if they would tell the Court that they preferred to continue the voyage.
Having all the slaves in court, the Chief Justice took his seat, called up one of the negro men, and said:
"Your name is George Hammett; you came in the brig "Enterprise" as a slave, and it is my duty (understanding that you were kept on board that vessel against your will) to inform you that in this country you are free free as any white person; and should it be your wish to remain here, instead of proceeding to the port whither you was bound, to be sold or held to service as a slave, you will be protected by the authorities here; and if you do decide to remain, you ​will become, as I have observed, a free person, and will be punished for any breach or break of the laws of this colony; while if you conduct yourself with propriety, soberness, honesty, and industry, you will meet with encouragement from the whole community. Do you therefore wish to remain and be a free person, or continue your voyage to the vessel's destined port and remain a slave?"
All of the slaves save a woman with five children declared they would remain. This one family went on to their destination as slaves.
The expressive phrase of "twisting the lion's tail" had not been invented in those days, but twisting the lion's tail was much more common then than even in those recent years before our war with Spain had shown us what a real and natural bond of sympathy existed between the two English-speaking nations. And the manner in which members of Congress turned and twisted the lion's tail in connection with these slave-ship deliveries was memorable.
As to the British, their attitude was admirably portrayed by the picture of the true griffin in Ruskin's "Modern Painters." They were at once reposeful and alert, and withal ready to fulfil national obligations.
International law, which is presumably founded on natural rights, demanded that all the property on those vessels should be held sacred for the owners, but straightway there arose a question as to the property right of masters in their slaves. Under the laws of the United States that right was granted [See the fugitive slave laws]. Under the laws of Great Britain that right had been everywhere abolished within her jurisdiction on August 1, 1834. ​After the matter had been fully discussed, Lord Palmerston said that the slaves taken from the "Encomium" and the "Comet" had been unlawfully freed because when they came within British jurisdiction British law recognized property in human beings. Therefore they would be paid for. Those of the "Enterprise" arrived when British soil and water were free, and would not be paid for. This decision was made in 1837. From that year property in man, as a feature of international law, "ceased and determined for ever."
Nevertheless, the question was to come up again. On October 25, 1841, the "Creole", under the command of Captain Robert Ensor, sailed from Richmond, Va., bound for New Orleans, having on board three white men as passengers, with the wife and child and a niece of the captain. In the hold were one hundred and thirty-five slaves for the New Orleans market. Two days later the "Creole" cleared the Capes and thereafter had a prosperous voyage until Sunday evening, November 7, 1841, when she was within about twelve hours' sail of Nassau.
Among the slaves was a man named Madison Washington, who was of unusual character. He had fled from slavery in Virginia some time before that, and by the underground railway had safely reached the free soil of Canada. But when there he remembered his wife away back on the old plantation, and out of love for her had returned to carry her to freedom also. He reached the plantation in safety, but before he could get away with the wife he was caught by the planter.
In those days the fate of these runaways was settled in advance. They were whipped unmercifully and then sold for the New Orleans market. To the ​ordinary negro, to be placed on a New Orleans ship was to end hope. To Madison Washington it brought opportunity for freedom.
At eight o'clock on the night of November 7th the crew hove to the Creole for the night, because of the dangers of navigation ahead of them. At 9.30 o'clock if was reported to the mate Z. C. Gifford, who had the deck, that one of the negro men was among the female slaves. At that Gifford made an examination and found Madison Washington there. Having a very wrong idea of the negro's intentions in going there, Gifford expressed his surprise, and then, having brought him on deck, was about to secure him for punishment, when Washington suddenly resisted, a shot was fired by an unknown hand, the mate was severely wounded in the back of the head, and Washington cried out:
"Come on, my boys! We have commenced and must go through with it."
He had planned a mutiny, and the other negroes were awaiting his detection in the hold as a signal for the assault on the crew.
In the fight one white man was killed and several were wounded. No negro was hurt, and in ten minutes Washington controlled the ship. Then by threats and promises he got her navigated into Nassau harbor, where she arrived on Tuesday morning, the 9th, at eight o'clock.
Of course the American consul, as in duty bound, at once made every effort to get the brig again under the command of her crew, with the slaves on board. The populace, including the authorities, knowing all about the case of the Enterprise at Bermuda, were ​determined that the negroes should go free, and free they became, though nineteen of them, who were identified as active in the assault on the crew, were taken in custody on the charges of mutiny and murder preferred by the consul and the crew. But they were not replaced on the Creole.
To state the case of the slave-owners, we may quote the words of Henry Clay when he said that the Creole was carried to Nassau by "an act of mutiny and murder." and if the British authorities sanctioned "the enormity," "Americans would be virtually denied the benefits of the coastwise trade of their own country, because their vessels could not proceed in safety from one port to another with slaves on board." It is apparent that under the laws of the United States, as they then stood, Mr. Clay was entirely justified in what he said. But by the laws of Great Britain there was no such thing as property in man. "All men were born free," by her law, and the negroes who were held in slavery, contrary to their will, were justified in taking the lives of their masters in order to obtain their natural right. Having carried the brig into British waters, the slaves, under British laws, became free; and the result was that they all remained free except five who voluntarily continued the voyage to New Orleans.
It is perhaps worth mentioning here that Joshua R. Giddings, a member of the House from Ohio, prepared a number of resolutions on the subject in which he sustained the natural right of the negroes to liberty and to use force to obtain it. These resolutions he took to the House, introduced them, and gave notice that he would call them up for consideration. For ​this he was censured by the House by a vote of one hundred and twenty-five to sixty-nine. Remarkable as it seems now, the pro-slavery members were so far fanatical in their pursuit of Mr. Giddings that they refused to allow him to defend himself or even explain his object in introducing the resolutions, Such unjust action eventually did more harm to the perpetrators than to anyone else — it did harm, in fact, to no one else. Giddings resigned, went home, and was returned by his constituents within five weeks.
Thus the mutiny on the "Creole", a coasting slaver, became one of the most important episodes in the "irrepressible conflict" that was rising between the slave and the free-soil States.
The number of slaves that were shipped in coastwise traders is now really a matter of conjecture, but one may get an idea from kindred facts. Thus the Virginia Times, in an article quoted in Niles's Register for October 8, 1836, boasts that no less than 40,000 slaves had been sold for export from Virginia to other States during the fiscal year preceding, and that the sales had brought into the State an average of $600 per head, or $24,000,000 all told. A letter to the Journal of Commerce, of New York, at about that period estimates the number driven (i.e., sent South on foot) out of the State in a year at 20,000. This would leave 20,000 to be sent by ship.
Another estimate may be drawn from the fact that the number of slaves in the Lafayette, Encomium, Enlerprise, and Creole was near one hundred per vessel. Very likely that was an average coaster cargo. Now one Alexandria firm advertised two ships a month, ​and there was at least, on the average, a vessel a week from that port the year round. Norfolk was a port about as lively, and Baltimore and Richmond were not far behind. Apparently two hundred vessels carried a hundred slaves each to a Southern market every year from the waters of Virginia.
In the "Democratic Review", of New York, for July, 1858, in an article entitled "Visitation and Search of Vessels." wherein an argument is made in favor of reopening the over-sea slave-trade, the editor says of the over-sea and the coast trades:
"We aver that if one is wrong, then both are wrong; "that if one is right, then both are right". We enter protest against such absurd definitions and distinctions as have been made by Congress."