page_title: Thomas Jefferson and slavery
section_title: Ended international slave trade
hierarchical_section_title: Thomas Jefferson and slavery / As President (1801–1809) / Ended international slave trade
caption_attribution_description: Captioned, "Slavers Revenging their Losses," shows a coffle of men, women, and children, led by Arab slavers; one of the guards is murdering a captive unable to keep up with the rest. These people were taken across Central Africa to the east coast of Africa. The engravings in this book are based on, according to the editor, "rude sketches" made by Livingstone. On June 19, 1866, Livingstone wrote: "We passed a woman tied by the neck to a tree and dead, the people of the country explained that she had been unable to keep up with the other slaves in a gang, and her master had determined that she should not become the property of anyone else if she recovered after resting a time. . . . we saw others tied up in a similar manner . . . the Arab who owned these victims was enraged at losing his money by the slaves becoming unable to march, and vented his spleen by murdering them" (p. 56). This is one of the best known and frequently reproduced images in the literature on slaving in Africa. Also published in: J. E. Chambliss, "The Life and Labors of David Livingstone" (Philadelphia, 1875), p. 435; "The Life and African Explorations of Dr. David Livingstone" (St. Louis, 1874), p. 87; and in Thomas W. Knox, "The Boy Travellers on the Congo" (New York, 1888), p. 419 --with the caption "Slave Caravans on the Road" -- which is sometimes erroneously given as the primary source.
context_page_description: Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States, owned more than 600 African-American slaves throughout his adult life. Jefferson freed two of his slaves while he lived and seven others after his death. Jefferson consistently spoke out against the international slave trade and outlawed it while he was President. However, he privately advocated gradual emancipation and colonization of domestic slaves rather than immediate manumission.
  In 1767 at age 24, Jefferson inherited 5,000 acres of land along with 52 slaves by his father's will. In 1768, Jefferson began construction of his Monticello plantation. Through his marriage to Martha Wayles in 1772 and inheritance from his father-in-law John Wayles, in 1773 Jefferson inherited two plantations and 135 more slaves. By 1776, Jefferson was one of the largest planters in Virginia. However, the value of his property was increasingly offset by his growing debts, which made it very difficult for him to free any of his slaves. According to the operant financial laws of the time, slaves were regarded as "property" and hence as financial assets.
context_section_description: In 1806, Jefferson denounced the international slave trade and called for a law to make it a crime. He told Congress in his 1806 annual message, such a law was needed to "withdraw the citizens of the United States from all further participation in those violations of human rights ... which the morality, the reputation, and the best interests of our country have long been eager to proscribe."  Congress complied and on March 2, 1807, Jefferson signed the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves into law; it took effect 1 January 1808 and made it a federal crime to import or export slaves from abroad.  No such legislation could have taken effect prior to January 1, 1808, on account of the provisions of Article I, Section 9, Clause 1, of the United States Constitution.  By its Slave Trade Act 1807, Great Britain prohibited the slave trade in its colonies. The nations cooperated in enforcing interdiction of the slave trade on open seas.
  By 1808, every state but South Carolina had followed Virginia's lead from the 1780s in banning importation of slaves. By 1808, with the growth of the domestic slave population enabling development of a large internal slave trade, slaveholders did not mount much resistance to the new law, presumably because the authority of Congress to enact such legislation was expressly authorized by the Constitution, and was fully anticipated during the Constitutional Convention in 1787. Jefferson did not lead the campaign to prohibit the importation of slaves. Historian John Chester Miller rated Jefferson's two major presidential achievements as the Louisiana Purchase and the abolition of the international slave trade.
caption: Jefferson banned the international slave trade on March 2, 1807.
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