ope of suppressing
the traffic.[130] Sergeant of Pennsylvania declared: "It is notorious
that, in spite of the utmost vigilance that can be employed, African
negroes are clandestinely brought in and sold as slaves."[131] Plumer of
New Hampshire stated that "of the unhappy beings, thus in violation of
all laws transported to our shores, and thrown by force into the mass of
our black population, scarcely one in a hundred is ever detected by the
officers of the General Government, in a part of the country, where, if
we are to believe the statement of Governor Rabun, 'an officer who would
perform his duty, by attempting to enforce the law [against the slave
trade] is, by many, considered as an officious meddler, and treated with
derision and contempt;' ... I have been told by a gentleman, who has
attended particularly to this subject, that ten thousand slaves were in
one year smuggled into the United States; and that, even for the last
year, we must count the number not by hundreds, but by thousands."[132]
In 1821 a committee of Congress characterized prevailing methods as
those "of the grossest fraud that could be practised to deceive the
officers of government."[133] Another committee, in 1822, after a
careful examination of the subject, declare that they "find it
impossible to measure with precision the effect produced upon the
American branch of the slave trade by the laws above mentioned, and the
seizures under them. They are unable to state, whether those American
merchants, the American capital and seamen which heretofore aided in
this traffic, have abandoned it altogether, or have sought shelter under
the flags of other nations." They then state the suspicious circumstance
that, with the disappearance of the American flag from the traffic, "the
trade, notwithstanding, increases annually, under the flags of other
nations." They complain of the spasmodic efforts of the executive. They
say that the first United States cruiser arrived on the African coast in
March, 1820, and remained a "few weeks;" that since then four others had
in two years made five visits in all; but "since the middle of last
November, the commencement of the healthy season on that coast, no
vessel has been, nor, as your committee is informed, is, under orders
for that service."[134] The United States African agent, Ayres, reported
in 1823: "I was informed by an American officer who had been on the
coast in 1820, that he had boarded 20 American vessel