~ The strain of war at last proved too
much for this voluntary blockade, and after some hesitancy Congress,
April 3, 1776, resolved to allow the importation of articles not the
growth or manufacture of Great Britain, except tea. They also voted
"That no slaves be imported into any of the thirteen United
Colonies."[27] This marks a noticeable change of attitude from the
strong words of two years previous: the former was a definitive promise;
this is a temporary resolve, which probably represented public opinion
much better than the former. On the whole, the conclusion is inevitably
forced on the student of this first national movement against the
slave-trade, that its influence on the trade was but temporary and
insignificant, and that at the end of the experiment the outlook for the
final suppression of the trade was little brighter than before. The
whole movement served as a sort of social test of the power and
importance of the slave-trade, which proved to be far more powerful than
the platitudes of many of the Revolutionists had assumed.
The effect of the movement on the slave-trade in general was to begin,
possibly a little earlier than otherwise would have been the case, that
temporary breaking up of the trade which the war naturally caused.
"There was a time, during the late war," says Clarkson, "when the slave
trade may be considered as having been nearly abolished.
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