egro Toussaint, called L'Ouverture, played in the history of the United
States has seldom been fully appreciated. Representing the age of
revolution in America, he rose to leadership through a bloody terror,
which contrived a Negro "problem" for the Western Hemisphere,
intensified and defined the anti-slavery movement, became one of the
causes, and probably the prime one, which led Napoleon to sell Louisiana
for a song, and finally, through the interworking of all these effects,
rendered more certain the final prohibition of the slave-trade by the
United States in 1807.

From the time of the reorganization of the Pennsylvania Abolition
Society, in 1787, anti-slavery sentiment became active. New York, New
Jersey, Rhode Island, Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia had strong
organizations, and a national convention was held in 1794. The terrible
upheaval in the West Indies, beginning in 1791, furnished this rising
movement with an irresistible argument. A wave of horror and fear swept
over the South, which even the powerful slave-traders of Georgia did not
dare withstand; the Middle States saw their worst dreams realized, and
the mercenary trade interests of the East lost control of the New
England conscience.

41. ~Legislation of the Southern States.~ In a few years the growing
sentiment had crystallized into legislation. The Southern States took
immediate measures to close their ports, first against West India
Negroes, finally against all slaves. Georgia, who had had legal slavery
only from 1755, and had since passed no restrictive legislation, felt
compelled in 1793[1] to stop the entry of free Negroes, and in 1798[2]
to prohibit, under heavy penalties, the importation of all slaves. This
provision was placed in the Constitution of the State, and, although
miserably enforced, was never repealed.

South Carolina was the first Southern State in which the exigencies of a
great staple crop rendered the rapid consumption of slaves more
profitable than their proper maintenance. Alternating, therefore,
between a plethora and a dearth of Negroes, she prohibited the
slave-trade only for short periods. In 1788[3] she had forbidden the
trade for five years, and in 1792,[4] being peculiarly exposed to the
West Indian insurrection, she quickly found it "inexpedient" to allow
Negroes "from Africa, the West India Islands, or other place beyond sea"
to enter for two years. This act continued to be extended, although with
lessening pe