The
development of a vast internal slave-trade, and the consequent rise in
the South of vested interests strongly opposed to slave smuggling, led
to a falling off in the illicit introduction of Negroes after 1825,
until the fifties; nevertheless, smuggling never entirely ceased, and
large numbers were thus added to the plantations of the Gulf States.
Monroe had various constitutional scruples as to the execution of the
Act of 1819;[124] but, as Congress took no action, he at last put a fair
interpretation on his powers, and appointed Samuel Bacon as an agent in
Africa to form a settlement for recaptured Africans. Gradually the
agency thus formed became merged with that of the Colonization Society
on Cape Mesurado; and from this union Liberia was finally evolved.[125]
Meantime, during the years 1818 to 1820, the activity of the
slave-traders was prodigious. General James Tallmadge declared in the
House, February 15, 1819: "Our laws are already highly penal against
their introduction, and yet, it is a well known fact, that about
fourteen thousand slaves have been brought into our country this last
year."[126] In the same year Middleton of South Carolina and Wright of
Virginia estimated illicit introduction at 13,000 and 15,000
respectively.[127] Judge Story, in charging a jury, took occasion to
say: "We have but too many proofs from unquestionable sources, that it
[the slave-trade] is still carried on with all the implacable rapacity
of former times.
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