The court, however, freed
the Negroes, on the ground that under Spanish law they were not legally
slaves; and although the Senate repeatedly tried to indemnify the
owners, the project did not succeed.[48]
Such proceedings well illustrate the new tendency of the pro-slavery
party to neglect the enforcement of the slave-trade laws, in a frantic
defence of the remotest ramparts of slave property. Consequently, when,
after the treaty of 1831, France and England joined in urging the
accession of the United States to it, the British minister was at last
compelled to inform Palmerston, December, 1833, that "the Executive at
Washington appears to shrink from bringing forward, in any shape, a
question, upon which depends the completion of their former object--the
utter and universal Abolition of the Slave Trade--from an apprehension
of alarming the Southern States."[49] Great Britain now offered to sign
the proposed treaty of 1824 as amended; but even this Forsyth refused,
and stated that the United States had determined not to become "a party
of any Convention on the subject of the Slave Trade."[50]
Estimates as to the extent of the slave-trade agree that the traffic to
North and South America in 1820 was considerable, certainly not much
less than 40,000 slaves annually. From that time to about 1825 it
declined somewhat, but afterward increased enormously, so that by 1837
the American importation was estimated as high as 200,000 Negroes
annually.
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