The
object of the association was "to promote the supply of African
labor."[31] In 1857 the committee of the South Carolina legislature to
whom the Governor's slave-trade message was referred made an elaborate
report, which declared in italics: _"The South at large does need a
re-opening of the African slave trade."_ Pettigrew, the only member who
disagreed to this report, failed of re-election. The report contained an
extensive argument to prove the kingship of cotton, the perfidy of
English philanthropy, and the lack of slaves in the South, which, it was
said, would show a deficit of six hundred thousand slaves by 1878.[32]
In Georgia, about this time, an attempt to expunge the slave-trade
prohibition in the State Constitution lacked but one vote of
passing.[33] From these slower and more legal movements came others
less justifiable. The long argument on the "apprentice" system finally
brought a request to the collector of the port at Charleston, South
Carolina, from E. Lafitte & Co., for a clearance to Africa for the
purpose of importing African "emigrants." The collector appealed to the
Secretary of the Treasury, Howell Cobb of Georgia, who flatly refused to
take the bait, and replied that if the "emigrants" were brought in as
slaves, it would be contrary to United States law; if as freemen, it
would be contrary to their own State law.
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