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asked, therefore, for leave to bring in an explanatory bill. CHAPTER If the motion was rejected, he doubted if the House would ever again see any Southern delegates on its floor. He, 1807. for one, would say, let us secede and go home.

The North

This display of insolent bravado, so often since repeated, did not meet with so much success as it has done on some subsequent occasions. Smilie declared that he was not to be frightened by any such scarecrow. He might lament a secession, but he did not fear it. ern people could take care of themselves; it was the South that would suffer. Leave, however, was granted, and Randolph brought in his explanatory bill, disavowing in its preamble any right in Congress to abridge, modify, or affect the right of property in slaves not illegally imported into the United States, and declaring the prohibition as to the transportation of slaves in vessels under forty tons burden not to apply to any masters or owners, or to their agents, transporting slaves from one port to another of the United States. Randolph insisted upon instant action, without the customary reference to a committee of the whole, as otherwise the bill would fail to pass at the present session; in which case he hoped that the Virginia delegation would wait upon the presi dent to remonstrate against his signature of the bill already passed. In spite, however, of the fury of Randolph, the bill was referred in the usual way. Of course, it was not reached. It slept forever; yet the Union re

mained undissolved.

The importation of Africans into South Carolina during the four years from the reopening of the traffic up to the period when the law of the United States went into effect, amounted to about 40,000, of whom half were brought by English vessels. A very large proportion of the remainder seem to have been introduced by Rhode

CHAPTER Islanders. The English act for the abolition of the slave XIX. trade, and especially the commercial restrictions which 1807. went into operation simultaneously with the American act, contributed to give it an efficacy which otherwise it might not have had. At a subsequent period, after the re-establishment of trade, additional provisions, as we shall see, became necessary.

That spirit, twin-born with the struggle for liberty and independence, which had produced in three states (Massachusetts, Vermont, and Ohio) the total prohibition of slavery, and in six others provisions for its gradual abolition; and, in spite of the efforts of the people of Indiana for its temporary introduction-efforts renewed again at the present session, but again, notwithstanding the favorable report of a committee, without success-its continued prohibition in the territories northwest of the Ohio, culminating now in the total prohibition of the foreign slave trade, seems to have become, for a considerable interval, less active, or, at least, less marked in its manifestations.

The convention of delegates from the various abolition societies had continued, since its institution in 1793, to meet annually at Philadelphia; but of late the delegations from the South had greatly fallen off, and the convention of the present year resolved that its future meetings should be only triennial. The greater part of the societies whence the delegates came gradually died out, and even the triennial convention presently ceased. ferson, having much more about him of the politician than of the martyr, preserved, with all his zeal on this subject, a dead silence. In his private letters he sometimes alluded to the necessity of steps for getting rid of the evil of slavery; but he took good care not to hazard his popularity at the South by any public suggestions on the subject.

Jef

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That dread of and antipathy to free negroes which CHAPTER had been evinced in the debate on the slave trade prohibition act had not been without its influence upon the 1807. legislation of the states. Indeed, it had led to some serious infractions of these alleged rights of property, but a very distant approach to which by the general government had thrown Randolph into such excitement. In 1796 North Carolina had re-enforced and re-enacted her law prohibiting emancipations except for meritorious services and by allowance of the county courts. South Carolina, in 1800, had prohibited emancipations except by consent of a justice of the peace and of five indifferent freeholders. Another South Carolina act of the same year had declared it unlawful for any number of slaves, free negroes, mulattoes, or mestizoes to assemble together, even though in the presence of white persons, "for mental instruction or religious worship." The same influences were felt in Virginia, aggravated, perhaps, by two successive alarms of insurrection, one in 1799, the other in 1801. The freedom of emancipation allowed by the act of 1782 was substantially taken away in 1805, by a provision that thenceforward emancipated slaves remaining in the state for twelve months after obtaining their freedom should be apprehended and sold for the benefit of the poor of the county—a forfeiture given afterward to the literary fund. Overseers of the poor,

binding out black or mulatto orphans as apprentices, were forbidden to require their masters to teach them reading, writing, or arithmetic. Free blacks coming into the state were to be sent back to the places whence they came. The Legislature of Kentucky presently (1808) went so far as to provide that free negroes coming into that state should give security to depart within twenty days, and on failure to do so should be sold for a year

CHAPTER the same process to be repeated if, twenty days after the XIX. end of the year, they were still found within the state. 1807. "Such is the fate," exclaims Marshall, the historian of

Kentucky, indignant at this barbarous piece of legislation, "of men not represented, at the hands of law-makers, often regardless of the rights of others, and even of the first principles of humanity." Yet this barbarous and disgraceful statute remains in force to the present day, and many like ones, in other states, have been added to it. Whether the excessive dread of the increase of free negroes, which still prevails, and which seems every day to grow more and more rabid throughout the Southern States, has any better foundation than mere suspicion and fear, is not so certain. In Delaware and Maryland the free colored population is far greater in proportion than elsewhere; yet life and property are more secure in those than in many other slaveholding states, nor are they inferior in wealth and industry.

Next to the prohibition of the slave trade, the act of the session of the greatest permanent importance was that for a survey of the coasts of the United States-a great enterprise, continued from that time to this, and not yet entirely completed. This very important measure was introduced on the suggestion of Dana, who might be considered, since Griswold's retirement, as the leader of the Federalists. The first appropriation was $50,000; but the bill would hardly have passed had the adminis tration or its supporters entertained the least idea of the expense which the survey would ultimately involve.

Dana also called attention to the recent prosecutions for libels commenced under Pierrepont Edwards's auspices in the Federal Circuit Court of Connecticut. wished that some provision might be made securing to the defendants the right to give the truth in evidence.

He

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Nothing, however, came of this motion; nor, taking it CHAPTER for granted, as the Republican party had always maintained, that the Federal courts had no common law crim- 1807. inal jurisdiction, did there seem any occasion for Congress to interfere.

The death of Patterson having caused a vacancy on the bench of the Supreme Court, Brockholst Livingston had been appointed to fill it-an appointment not a lit tle mortifying to the Clintonians, who, in denouncing the Livingston or Lewisite party as little better than Federalists, had professed a very special zeal on behalf of the administration. An act of this session added a seventh judge to the Supreme bench of the United States, and created a seventh circuit, composed of the states of Kentucky, Tennessee, and Ohio. This appointment was given to Thomas Todd, of Kentucky, one of the secretaries of the Democratic Society at Lexington at the time Breckenridge had been president.

The place of attorney general, vacant by the death of Breckenridge, was given to Cæsar A. Rodney, who had acted for the government in the case of Bollman and Swartwout.

It was not, however, by domestic affairs, interesting and exciting as they were at this moment, that the public attention was entirely engrossed. On the representation of the president that the pending negotiation with Great Britain seemed likely to result in a treaty, an act had passed very soon after Congress came together (Dec. 19), suspending till the following July the operation of the act prohibiting the import of certain descriptions of British merchandise, remitting all penalties hitherto incurred, and authorizing the president to continue the sus pension, should he think proper, till the meeting of the next Congress.