Massachusetts, after many fruitless attempts, finally
took advantage of an unusually bold case of kidnapping, and passed a
similar act in 1788.[17] "This," says Belknap, "was the utmost which
could be done by our legislatures; we still have to regret the
impossibility of making a law _here_, which shall restrain our citizens
from carrying on this trade _in foreign bottoms_, and from committing
the crimes which this act prohibits, _in foreign countries_, as it is
said some of them have done since the enacting of these laws."[18]
Thus it is seen how, spurred by the tragedy in the West Indies, the
United States succeeded by State action in prohibiting the slave-trade
from 1798 to 1803, in furthering the cause of abolition, and in
preventing the fitting out of slave-trade expeditions in United States
ports. The country had good cause to congratulate itself. The national
government hastened to supplement State action as far as possible, and
the prophecies of the more sanguine Revolutionary fathers seemed about
to be realized, when the ill-considered act of South Carolina showed the
weakness of the constitutional compromise.
44. ~First Debate in Congress, 1789.~ The attention of the national
government was early directed to slavery and the trade by the rise, in
the first Congress, of the question of taxing slaves imported. During
the debate on the duty bill introduced by Clymer's committee, Parker of
Virginia moved, May 13, 1789, to lay a tax of ten dollars _per capita_
on slaves imported.
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