[34] In Louisiana a still more
radical movement was attempted, and a bill passed the House of
Representatives authorizing a company to import two thousand five
hundred Africans, "indentured" for fifteen years "at least." The bill
lacked but two votes of passing the Senate.[35] It was said that the
_Georgian_, of Savannah, contained a notice of an agricultural society
which "unanimously resolved to offer a premium of $25 for the best
specimen of a live African imported into the United States within the
last twelve months."[36]
It would not be true to say that there was in the South in 1860
substantial unanimity on the subject of reopening the slave-trade;
nevertheless, there certainly was a large and influential minority,
including perhaps a majority of citizens of the Gulf States, who favored
the project, and, in defiance of law and morals, aided and abetted its
actual realization. Various movements, it must be remembered, gained
much of their strength from the fact that their success meant a partial
nullification of the slave-trade laws. The admission of Texas added
probably seventy-five thousand recently imported slaves to the Southern
stock; the movement against Cuba, which culminated in the "Ostend
Manifesto" of Buchanan, Mason, and Soule, had its chief impetus in the
thousands of slaves whom Americans had poured into the island.
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