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13-05-2015, 07:42

FIRST U. S. CONSTRAINTS ON SLAVERY

In 1780, the enslaved populations in the United States totaled nearly 575,000. Nine percent of these resided north of the Chesapeake; the remainder lived in the South. As part of one of the great constitutional compromises, the nation’s forefathers agreed in 1787 to permit the existence of slavery but not to allow the importation of slaves after 20 years. (In 1807, therefore, Congress prohibited the foreign slave trade, effective the

TABLE 13.1 A CHRONOLOGY OF EMANCIPATION, 1772-1888

1772	Lord Chief Justice Mansfield rules that slavery is not supported by English law, thus laying the legal basis for the freeing of England’s 15,000 slaves.
1774	The English Society of Friends votes the expulsion of any member engaged in the slave trade.
1775	Slavery abolished in Madeira.
1776	The Societies of Friends in England and Pennsylvania require members to free their slaves or face expulsion.
1777	The Vermont Constitution prohibits slavery.
1780	The Massachusetts Constitution declares that all men are free and equal by birth; a judicial decision in 1783 interprets this clause as having the force of abolishing slavery. Pennsylvania adopts a policy of gradual emancipation, freeing the children of all slaves born after November 1, 1780, at their 28th birthday.
1784	Rhode Island and Connecticut pass gradual emancipation laws.
1787	Formation in England of the “Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade.”
1794	The French National Convention abolishes slavery in all French territories. This law is repealed by Napoleon in 1802.
1799	New York passes a gradual emancipation law.
1800	U. S. citizens barred from exporting slaves.
1804	Slavery abolished in Haiti.
New Jersey adopts a policy of gradual emancipation.
1807	England and the United States prohibit engagement in the international slave trade.
1813	Gradual emancipation adopted in Argentina.
1814	Gradual emancipation begins in Colombia.
1820	England begins using naval power to suppress the slave trade.
1823	Slavery abolished in Chile.
1824	Slavery abolished in Central America.
1829	Slavery abolished in Mexico.
1831	Slavery abolished in Bolivia.
1838	Slavery abolished in all British colonies.
1841	The Quintuple Treaty is signed, under which England, France, Russia, Prussia, and Austria agree to mutual search of vessels on the high seas in order to suppress the slave trade.
1842	Slavery abolished in Uruguay.
1848	Slavery abolished in all French and Danish colonies.
1851	Slavery abolished in Ecuador.
Slave trade ended in Brazil.
1854	Slavery abolished in Peru and Venezuela.
1862	Slave trade ended in Cuba.
1863	Slavery abolished in all Dutch colonies.
1865	Slavery abolished in the United States as a result of the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution and the end of the Civil War.
1871	Gradual emancipation initiated in Brazil.
1873	Slavery abolished in Puerto Rico.
1886	Slavery abolished in Cuba.
1888	Slavery abolished in Brazil.

Source: From TIME ON THE CROSS: The Economics of American Negro Slavery by Robert William Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman. Copyright © 1974 by Robert William Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman. Used by permission ofW. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Following year.) Also in 1787, the Northwest Land Ordinance forbade slavery in the Northwest Territory.

It merits notice that the timing of the debates and discussions leading to the slavery restrictions in the Constitution and land ordinances coincided within days. In this way, the growth of slavery in the United States was limited and regionally restricted. Of course, the smuggling of human cargo was not uncommon, and various estimates suggest that as many as a quarter of a million blacks were illegally imported into the United States before 1860. But illicit human importation was only a minor addition to the total numbers held in bondage, and by 1860 foreign-born blacks were a small percentage of the enslaved population. Indeed, most blacks were third-, fourth-, and fifth-generation Americans. As mentioned earlier, natural sources of population expansion, averaging 2.4 percent per year between 1800 and 1860, were predominant in increasing the number of slaves. In 1863, the slaves numbered almost 4 million—all residing in the South.