Coastwise slave trade

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Atlantic slave trade

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View of the port of New Orleans in the 1850s, etching by Scattergood in Lloyd's Steamboat Directory

The coastwise slave trade existed along the southern and eastern coastal areas of the United States in the antebellum years prior to 1861. Hundreds of vessels of various capacities domestically traded loads of slaves along waterways, generally from the Upper South which had a surplus of slaves to the Deep South where new cotton plantations created high demand for labor.

International tensions developed when ships were forced by weather or incident into ports in Bermuda and the British West Indies, as the British freed the slaves as part of the banned trade on the high seas, even before its abolition of slavery in its territories in 1834. There were several cases: Comet (1830), Encomium (1833), Enterprise (1835), Hermosa (1840), and, most notably, the Creole case of 1841, the result of a ship slave revolt that forced the vessel into Nassau, Bahamas. British officials freed the 128 slaves who chose to stay in the Bahamas.

## Legal rights

[edit]

Prior to 1807, the 1787 United States Constitution and the 1793 Fugitive Slave Act were the only national United States laws on slavery. Individual states had enacted laws authorizing and regulating slavery within their boundaries.

The multi-faceted 1807 Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves abolished the "importation of slaves" from Africa, effective in 1808. The United States and Great Britain patrolled to create an international Blockade of Africa, trying to suppress the slave trade. In addition, American and British ships patrolled the Caribbean, where illegal slaves were generally brought for sale to the sugar plantations and smuggling into the United States.

The 1807 Act also regulated the United States' "coastwise slave trade"; it protected shipping by domestic slave traders between markets along the other slave trading coasts. Attorneys argued that ships at sea were an extension of United States sovereignty, which permitted domestic slave trade among the states.

## Conflict between the United States and Britain in the Caribbean

[edit]

Complications developed between the United States and Great Britain from their differing interpretations of the application of laws against the slave trade in the Caribbean colonies. When American merchant ships were forced by weather or incident into ports in Bermuda and the British West Indies, the British freed the slaves as part of the banned trade on the high seas, even before its abolition of slavery in its territories in 1834. As early as 1825, the Home Office in London had ruled that "any slave brought to the Bahamas from outside the British West Indies would be manumitted, which led to 300 slaves owned by U.S. nationals being freed."[1] In addition, slaves who escaped to the Bahamas from Florida became free.

Several cases occurred as anti-slavery agitation increased and abolition was passed: Comet (1830), Encomium (1833), Enterprise (1835), and Hermosa (1840) In each case, the British freed the slaves from the ships that had put into ports in Bermuda and the Bahamas, whether by weather or accident.[2]

The most notable case was the 1841 Creole, the result of a ship slave revolt that forced the vessel into Nassau, Bahamas. One of the slave leaders had heard of slaves being freed from the Hermosa there the previous year.[3]

Holding that the slaves were free persons illegally detained in slavery, British officials ultimately freed the 128 of 135 slaves from the Creole who chose to stay in the Bahamas. It has been termed the "most successful slave revolt in U.S. history".[4] The US slaveholders feared this would encourage other slave ship revolts.

## Selected list of laws and court rulings

[edit]

The following are generally considered the most important United States statutory laws and case laws on slavery, in the order of their enactment:[citation needed]

1787: United States Constitution
1793: Fugitive Slave Act
1807: Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves
1841: United States v. The Amistad[5]
1850: Fugitive Slave Act
1857: Dred Scott v. Sandford
1865: 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution

## Cabotage

[edit]

The act of sailing along a coast and using landmarks for guidance is called cabotage, from the French word caboter ("to coast," "go from cape to cape"). When slaves were the merchandise being transported by cabotage, the practice was called the coastwise slave trade.

## See also

[edit]

* Enterprise (slave ship)
* Creole case
* United States v. The Amistad (1841)
* Slavery in the United States
* Atlantic Creole
* Bristol slave trade
* Colonial South and the Chesapeake
* Scramble (slave auction)
* Seasoning (slavery)
* Tobacco colonies

## References

[edit]

1. ^ Gerald Horne, Negro Comrades of the Crown: African Americans and the British Empire Fight the U.S. Before Emancipation, New York University (NYU) Press, 2012, p. 103
2. ^ Horne (2012), pp. 107-108
3. ^ Jervey, Edward D. and Huber, C. Harold. "The Creole Affair", The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 65, No. 3 (Summer 1980), pp. 196–211, accessed 8 April 2013
4. ^ Williams, Michael Paul (February 11, 2002). "Brig Creole slaves". Richmond Times-Dispatch. Richmond, VA. Retrieved February 2, 2010.
5. ^ Dudley T. Cornish, Mutiny on the Amistad: The Saga of a Slave Revolt and Its Impact on American Abolition, Law, and Diplomacy (review), Civil War History, Volume 34, Number 1, March 1988, pp. 79-80, Project Muse 10.1353/cwh.1988.0011, accessed 30 March 2013. Note: The historian Samuel Eliot Morison in 1965 described the Amistad case as the most important court case involving slavery before being eclipsed by that of Dred Scott.

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History of slavery in Virginia

* Slavery in the colonial history of the United States
* History of Virginia

Enslaved people|

* Angela (fl. 1619–1625)
* Henry Box Brown (c. 1815–1897)
* Anthony Burns (1834–1862)
* John Casor (living 1655)
* Emanuel Driggus (c. 1620s-d. 1673)
* Olaudah Equiano (c. 1745–1797)
* Isabella Gibbons (c. 1836–1890)
* William D. Gibbons (1825–1886)
* John Graweere (living 1641)
* Elizabeth Key Grinstead (Greenstead) (1630–1665)
* Left, husband of Jane Webb (fl. 1704–1727)
* Mary and Anthony Johnson (1600–1670)
* Philip Lee (c. 1785–?)
* Dangerfield Newby (c. 1820–1859)
* John Punch (fl. 1630s, living 1640)
* Gabriel Prosser (1776–1800)
* William Tucker (born 1624)
* Nat Turner (1800–1831)
* Booker T. Washington (1856–1915)

Slave owners|

* Presidents of the United States
* Washington
* Jefferson
* Madison
* Monroe
* Tyler
* John Armfield (1797–1871)
* Carter Braxton (1736–1797)
* Landon Carter (1710–1778)
* Robert "King" Carter (1663–1732)
* Robert Carter III (1728–1804)
* Thomas Roderick Dew (1802–1846)
* Andrew Hunter (1804–1888)
* Robert M. T. Hunter (1809–1887)
* Eppa Hunton (1822–1908)
* Richard Bland Lee (1761–1827)
* William Mahone (1826–1895)
* George Mason (1725–1792)
* James M. Mason (1798–1871)
* John Page (1628–1692)
* Thomas Prosser (died 1798)
* Randolph family of Virginia
* William Barton Rogers (1804–1882)
* George Henry Thomas (1816–1870)
* William Tucker (died 1642)
* John Wayles (1715–1773)
* Henry A. Wise (1806–1876)
* Seth Woodroof (1805–1875)

Plantations|

* Beall-Air
* Berry Hill
* Brookfield
* Kenmore
* Monticello
* Montpelier
* Mount Airy
* Mount Vernon (enslaved people)
* Oatlands
* Poplar Forest
* Shirley
* Stratford Hall
* Tuckahoe
* Westover
* Woodlawn
* List of plantations in Virginia

Slave pens|

* Bruin's Slave Jail
* The Cage
* Franklin and Armfield Office
* Lumpkin's Jail

Other sites|

* African American Burial Ground
* Bremo Slave Chapel
* Memorial to Enslaved Laborers
* White House of the Confederacy

Legal history|

* Virginia Slave Codes of 1705
* Virginia v. John Brown

Revolts|

* Gabriel's Rebellion
* Nat Turner's Rebellion
* John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry

Related articles|

* The 1619 Project
* Atlantic Creole
* Burning of Winchester Medical College
* Coastwise slave trade
* First Africans in Virginia
* Indentured servitude in Virginia
* District of Columbia retrocession
* Great Dismal Swamp maroons
* Human trafficking in Virginia
* Liberation and Freedom Day
* Richmond slave market
* Virginia in the American Civil War

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