efforts were made to secure the coöperation of the other European powers, and of the States of America, in the suppression of the traffic. Our country, however, had been moving simultaneously with Great Britain; and, to its honor be it said, it was The first to prohibit the prosecution of the slave trade.
As early as 1794,[1] it was enacted, that no person in the United States should fit out any vessel for the purpose of carrying on any traffic in slaves to a foreign country, or for procuring from any foreign country the inhabitants thereof, to be disposed of as slaves. In 1800, it was declared to be unlawful for my citizen of the United States to have property in my vessel employed in transporting slaves from one foreign country to another, or to serve on board such a vessel.
A more stringent law was passed in 1807, to take effect on the first of January, 1808, declaring that no one should bring into the United States, or the territories thereof, from any foreign country, any negro, mulatto, or person of color, with the intention of holding him or selling him as a slave; and heavy penalties were imposed on the violators of this law.
As an evidence of the progress of public sentiment, and the general and deep-seated abhorrence of the slave trade in the American mind at that time, the traffic, in 1820, was pronounced piracy, and
- ↑ Encyclopædia Americana, vol. xi. p. 433.
