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. Finally,
the series of filibustering expeditions against Cuba, Mexico, and
Central America were but the wilder and more irresponsible attempts to
secure both slave territory and slaves.

87. ~Increase of the Slave-Trade from 1850 to 1860.~ The long and open
agitation for the reopening of the slave-trade, together with the fact
that the South had been more or less familiar with violations of the
laws since 1808, led to such a remarkable increase of illicit traffic
and actual importations in the decade 1850-1860, that the movement may
almost be termed a reopening of the slave-trade.

In the foreign slave-trade our own officers continue to report "how
shamefully our flag has been used;"[37] and British officers write "that
at least one half of the successful part of the slave trade is carried
on under the American flag," and this because "the number of American
cruisers on the station is so small, in proportion to the immense extent
of the slave-dealing coast."[38] The fitting out of slavers became a
flourishing business in the United States, and centred at New York City.
"Few of our readers," writes a periodical of the day, "are aware of the
extent to which this infernal traffic is carried on, by vessels clearing
from New York, and in close alliance with our legitimate trade; and that
down-town merchants of wealth and respectability are extensively engaged
in buying and selling African Negroes, and have been, with comparatively
little interruption, for an indefinite number of years."[39] Another
periodical says: "The number of persons engaged in the s