s a bill providing for the
forfeiture of any ship which should bring into States prohibiting the
same "any negro, mulatto, or other person of color;" the captain of the
ship was also to be punished. After some opposition[46] the bill became
a law, February 28, 1803.[47]

50. ~State of the Slave-Trade from 1789 to 1803.~ Meantime, in spite of
the prohibitory State laws, the African slave-trade to the United States
continued to flourish. It was notorious that New England traders carried
on a large traffic.[48] Members stated on the floor of the House that
"it was much to be regretted that the severe and pointed statute against
the slave trade had been so little regarded. In defiance of its
forbiddance and its penalties, it was well known that citizens and
vessels of the United States were still engaged in that traffic.... In
various parts of the nation, outfits were made for slave-voyages,
without secrecy, shame, or apprehension.... Countenanced by their
fellow-citizens at home, who were as ready to buy as they themselves
were to collect and to bring to market, they approached our Southern
harbors and inlets, and clandestinely disembarked the sooty offspring of
the Eastern, upon the ill fated soil of the Western hemisphere. In this
way, it had been computed that, during the last twelve months, twenty
thousand enslaved negroes had been transported from Guinea, and, by
smuggling, added to the plantation stock of Georgia and South Carolina.
So little respect seems to have been paid to the existing prohibitory
statute, that it may almost be considered as disregarded by common
consent."[49]

These voyages were generally made under the flag of a foreign nation,
and often the vessel was sold in a foreign port to escape confiscation.
South Carolina's own Congressman confessed that although the State had
prohibited the trade since 1788, she "was unable to enforce" her laws.
"With navigable rivers running into the heart of it," said he, "it was
impossible, with our means, to prevent our Eastern brethren, who, in
some parts of the Union, in defiance of the authority of the General
Government, have been engaged in this trade, from introducing them into
the country. The law was completely evaded, and, for the last year or
two [1802-3], Africans were introduced into the country in numbers
little short, I believe, of what they would have been had the trade been
a legal one."[50] The same tale undoubtedly might have been told of
Geor