Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 18.djvu/276

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SLAVERY. 230 SLAVERY. sessions. France, following the doctrine of her Revolution, abolished her colonial slavery and slave trade in 1793, but Napoleon soon undid the work of the Convention. Napoleon's decree of March 29, 1815, however, confirmed by the Treaty of Paris and a law of 1818, made the trade illegal. In England Dellwyn, Sharpe, Clarkson, and Wilberforce began to organize anti- slave trade opinion in 1787. In 1788 Dolben and Pitt moved bills for its regulation or suppression. But mercantile interests repressed the movement until 1800, when the Grenville-Fox Ministry secured the passage of acts for the partial aboli- tion of the slave trade, which were followed by an act on March 25, 1807, for total abolition. The Jay-Fox entente of 1783 paved the way for the joint pledge of England and the United States, in 1806, to strive for international abo- lition. This object appears in treaties of Eng- land with Denmark, Portugal, and Sweden, during 1810-1814. France then pledged aid to British ad- A'ocacy of abolition in the Congress of Vienna. The Netherlands, by royal decree in 1814, abol- ished the traffic. Spain restricted it, and Portu- gal in 1815 agreed to prohibit it in the Northern Hemisphere. In the Treaty of Ghent the United States and Great Britain again pledged their endeavors for suppression. The United States by supplementary acts in 1818 and 1819 en- deavored to enforce her prohibition. From this time to 1840 England's chief eft'orts were bent on establishing an international right of search in time of peace to stop the illicit slave traffic, which increased from 40,000 a year in 1820 to 200,000 in 1837. In 1827 Portu- gal and Brazil promised to abolish the trade in 1829. A second time England interested a Eu- ropean congress, that of Verona in 1822. against the trade, now carried on with 352 ships. Eng- land urged a declaration in international law making the trade piracy, but secured, as at Vi- enna, only a general denunciation of the traffic. The United States and other Powers opposed right of search in time of peace as dishonor to the flag and a means of securing England's naval supremacy. (See Search, Right of.) Though not a party at Verona, the United States prompt- ly favored international declaration of the slave trade as piracy, and prepared a treaty with Eng- land to this eifect in 1824. But, as England was unwilling to yield her claim to search in Ameri- can waters, the Senate rejected the treaty and the United States could only urge the international declaration. By 1833 Sweden. France. Denmark, the Hanse Towns, and some Italian States had agreed in part to England's contention for mutual search, but slavery had become such a delicate question in American politics at this time that the United States refused England's proposed concessions. In 1842 the United States and England agreed on joint naval cruising on the African coast to repress the trade. English statutes in 1824 and 1837 made the slave trade piracy punishable by death or life transportation. Conferees of England. France, Aiistria, and Prus- sia, in London, in 1838, proposed the Quintuple Treaty of December 29. 1841, declaring the trade piracy and admitting nnitual right of search. On account of this admission France refused to ratify, and -Lewis Cass (q.v.), the American Minister at Paris, denied its application as in- ternational law to the United States. Belgium joined, in 1845, in the Quintuple Treaty, and the United States, though refusing England's in- vitation to an international conference in 1860, completely changed attitude with the advent of Lincoln and Seward, admitted mutual right of search in 1862, and imposed the death penalty on smugglers of slaves. Suppression was organized, but until 1806 required a United States naval squadron on the African coast. The French, Spanish, Portuguese, and United States flags had protected slavers. Northerners sold to Soutli- erners in Florida, Texas, and Cuba, but the Con- federacy in 1861 declared against the trade. The Civil War and the Thirteenth Amendment practically and legally completed the extinction of slavery and the slave trade in the United States. The English, inspired by Livingstone, sought to put an end to the slave trade in the Sudan, but the efl'orts of Baker and Gordon proved ineffective in the face of the Mahdist con- vulsions. Tewfik, however, prohibited the Egyp- tian slave trade in 1884. The Powers in the Berlin Conference in 1884-85 promised their efforts for repression, and in 1890 an act for this purpose resulted from the international confer- ence, including Turkey, Persia, Zanzibar, and the United States, invited by Leopold of Belgium. Enforcement of the General Act of Brussels is encouraging if slow, but if conscientiously done will end a trade now connived at even by officials of the Congo Free State. The anti-slavery sentiment and the movement aimed against the existence of the institution of slavery followed and in many cases coincided with, or were affected by, those against the slave trade from early colonial duties and taxes to steps for repression and emancipation. Promoted by the same, though a more limited and some- times excitable public, including distinguished statesmen, authors, humanitarians, and sectari- ans, the movement originated and first rose to importance in North America and England. Eighteenth-century Christian sentiment, particu- larly among Friends, encouraged customary and legal manumission and the mitigation of slave codes. Justice Lord Mansfield's decision in 1772 freed slaves, like the negro Sommerset, brought to the soil of Great Britain. English emancipation societies arose in 1783, and French in 1788, Slaveholders like Washington, Jefferson, Henry, Mason, and Madison, and other statesmen, such as Franklin, Hamilton, and Adams, condemned slavery in principle, and emancipation was accomplished or in progress in every Northern State except New .Jersey by 1799. Jefferson proposed in 1784 to prohibit slavery in the Northwest Territory, and he also advocated emancipation for Virginia in 1779. Tucker prepared another Virginia emancipa- tion plan in 1796, New Jersey emancipated her slaves in 1804, and Congress limited the slave trade in Louisiana. The movement in its first stage rested chiefly on a moral or an economic basis, but soon became political. American anti-slavery organizations began from Pennsylvania petitioning Congress for Federal interference with slavery. Congress denied its constitutional competency to regulate the do- mestic institution beyond the slave trade: but petitions continued, and the sentiment of the North and South, united in the Ordinance of 1787 (see Northwest Territory), but divided