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The Suppression of the African Slave-Trade to the United States of America, 1638-1870
Comprehensive, well-documented 1896 classic draws upon a wealth of primary source materials to examine the South's plantation economy and its influence on the slave trade, the role of Northern merchants in financing the slave trade during the 19th century, and much else.
352 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1896
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About the author
W.E.B. Du Bois
608 books1,499 followersIn 1868, William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (pronounced 'doo-boyz') was born in Massachusetts. He attended Fisk College in Nashville, then earned his BA in 1890 and his MS in 1891 from Harvard. Du Bois studied at the University of Berlin, then earned his doctorate in history from Harvard in 1894. He taught economics and history at Atlanta University from 1897-1910. The Souls of Black Folk (1903) made his name, in which he urged black Americans to stand up for their educational and economic rights. Du Bois was a founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and edited the NAACP's official journal, "Crisis," from 1910 to 1934. Du Bois turned "Crisis" into the foremost black literary journal. The black nationalist expanded his interests to global concerns, and is called the "father of Pan-Africanism" for organizing international black congresses.
Although he used some religious metaphor and expressions in some of his books and writings, Du Bois called himself a freethinker. In "On Christianity," a posthumously published essay, Du Bois critiqued the black church: "The theology of the average colored church is basing itself far too much upon 'Hell and Damnation'—upon an attempt to scare people into being decent and threatening them with the terrors of death and punishment. We are still trained to believe a good deal that is simply childish in theology. The outward and visible punishment of every wrong deed that men do, the repeated declaration that anything can be gotten by anyone at any time by prayer." Du Bois became a member of the Communist Party and officially repudiated his U.S. citizenship at the end of his life, dying in his adopted country of Ghana. D. 1963.
More: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/t...
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/stori...
http://www.math.buffalo.edu/~sww/0his...
http://www.americaslibrary.gov/aa/dub...
Although he used some religious metaphor and expressions in some of his books and writings, Du Bois called himself a freethinker. In "On Christianity," a posthumously published essay, Du Bois critiqued the black church: "The theology of the average colored church is basing itself far too much upon 'Hell and Damnation'—upon an attempt to scare people into being decent and threatening them with the terrors of death and punishment. We are still trained to believe a good deal that is simply childish in theology. The outward and visible punishment of every wrong deed that men do, the repeated declaration that anything can be gotten by anyone at any time by prayer." Du Bois became a member of the Communist Party and officially repudiated his U.S. citizenship at the end of his life, dying in his adopted country of Ghana. D. 1963.
More: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/t...
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/stori...
http://www.math.buffalo.edu/~sww/0his...
http://www.americaslibrary.gov/aa/dub...
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
November 18, 2016
This was du Bois' PhD thesis at Harvard. It is meticulously researched and footnoted. It covered many things I did not know before and I consider myself informed. The citizens of the northern states were as deeply implicated in the continuation of the slave trade as those in the south who owned slaves. Those with moral qualms were in a minority in all locations. The Federal legislature was as ineffective then as it is now. definitely worth a read.
April 28, 2013
THIS, ladies and gentlemen, IS American history. It is free online. Get it. "Here was a rich new land, the wealth of which was to be had in return for ordinary manual labor. Had the country been conceived of as existing primarily for the benefit of its actual inhabitants, it might have waited for natural increase or immigration to supply the needed hands; but both Europe and the earlier colonists themselves regarded this land as existing chiefly for the benefit of Europe, and as designed to be exploited, as rapidly and ruthlessly as possible, of the boundless wealth of its resources. This was the primary excuse for the rise of the African slave-trade to America."
December 20, 2021
A remarkable book that you should read for a number of reasons:
1. Du Bois. Period.
2. Black History: Du Bois was the first Black person to get a PhD from Harvard, and this was his thesis.
3. History: Du Bois's account is bracing, and upends the myth that white Americans like to tell themselves about how they "ended the slave trade"
4. Historiography: Du Bois is a model for careful documentation/receipts.
In a nutshell, Du Bois bursts the bubble of self-congratulatory wishful thinking on the part of Americans that their moral virtue, Christian or otherwise, resulted in the suppression of the slave trade. He does this, not in any mean-spirited way, but through the relentless presentation of documented facts, literally, the receipts. His title, read carefully, is indicative of the thesis--he is not examining the ending of *slavery* in America, just the attempts to suppress the *slave-trade* from Africa.
Du Bois analyzes state and national congressional records, statutes, speeches, and minutes. He analyzes international treaties, as the European powers tried, and failed, to get the Americans to cooperate in their efforts. He documents the meaninglessness of mere words on a page, divorced from action, and even from the funding to fuel any action.
This is a powerful book, an important corrective piece of American history.
(A note on editions: I read "The Oxford W. E. B. Du Bois" edition of the book, and I highly recommend it for its introduction by Saidiya Hartman, and its excellent bibliographies. I'm trying to read Oxford as I continue to read Du Bois.)
1. Du Bois. Period.
2. Black History: Du Bois was the first Black person to get a PhD from Harvard, and this was his thesis.
3. History: Du Bois's account is bracing, and upends the myth that white Americans like to tell themselves about how they "ended the slave trade"
4. Historiography: Du Bois is a model for careful documentation/receipts.
In a nutshell, Du Bois bursts the bubble of self-congratulatory wishful thinking on the part of Americans that their moral virtue, Christian or otherwise, resulted in the suppression of the slave trade. He does this, not in any mean-spirited way, but through the relentless presentation of documented facts, literally, the receipts. His title, read carefully, is indicative of the thesis--he is not examining the ending of *slavery* in America, just the attempts to suppress the *slave-trade* from Africa.
Du Bois analyzes state and national congressional records, statutes, speeches, and minutes. He analyzes international treaties, as the European powers tried, and failed, to get the Americans to cooperate in their efforts. He documents the meaninglessness of mere words on a page, divorced from action, and even from the funding to fuel any action.
This is a powerful book, an important corrective piece of American history.
(A note on editions: I read "The Oxford W. E. B. Du Bois" edition of the book, and I highly recommend it for its introduction by Saidiya Hartman, and its excellent bibliographies. I'm trying to read Oxford as I continue to read Du Bois.)
March 19, 2021
The title should probably more appropriately read: "Failed Efforts to Suppress the African Slave-Trade," as until the victory of the Union Army the United States government made no effective effort to end this abomination.
Although written over 125 years ago, it by no means reads that way. In many respects, it reminded me of a doctoral dissertation, so thorough is it coverage and so comprehensive its documentation of sources. Du Bois, one of the most distinguished intellectuals in American history, has written a scholarly work that is remarkably free of any invective or guilt accusations. Rather, it is a humbling record of how white America repeatedly balked at ending what everyone -- especially at the beginning of the Republic after the Revolution -- regarded as both wicked and unfitting for the United States.
Du Bois documents that the only time our ancestors really got close to fulfilling their oft-promised intent to end the slave trade was in the first and second decades of the 19th century. The trade was outlawed by the federal government, armed ships were sent to patrol the coast of Africa to catch slavers caught in the act (although never enough of them to do the job), and there were attempts -- all ultimately unsuccessful -- to cooperate with other countries, especially Great Britain, in ending the trade.
Du Bois identifies two factors that undermined these inadequate efforts: 1) The money to be made in the trade, a fact which tied many Northerners to supporting slavery because of their investment in shipping and the profits to be made; and 2) Rapid innovations in the harvesting and processing of cotton. The trade might have been ended by 1820 had not profit from the trade continually weakened the resolve of just enough people -- especially in the Senate, but after the 1820s when cotton indeed became "King Cotton" in the South, the trade actually increased. Shamefully, as the British, Dutch, and French all refused to carry slaves any longer, the vast bulk of slaves captured from Africa were increasingly carried in ships flying the American flag.
[BTW, a very contemporary note is appropriate here: the role of the Senate, then as now, in blocking progressive legislation has repeatedly served commercial and business interests over those involving human rights. The unbalanced power the composition of the Senate gives to the South -- an imbalance that has only grown much greater in our own time -- has consistently allowed people representing a minority of Americans to block legislation favored by the majority. The mechanism of the filibuster, by which a super-majority within the Senate is necessary to pass legislation, only serves to make this lock-down worse.]
Du Bois, in his concluding chapter, observes that the legislation that did pass the Congress were on the whole "poorly conceived, loosely drawn, and wretchedly enforced. The systemic violation of the provisions of many of them led to a widespread belief that enforcement was, in the nature of the case, impossible; and thus, instead of marking ground already won, they were too often sources of distinct moral deterioration."
He then addresses a larger theme. "No American can study the connection of slavery with United States history, and not devoutly pray that his country may never have a similar social problem to solve, until it shows more capacity for such work than it has shown in the past.... We must face the fact that this problem arose principally from the cupidity and carelessness of our ancestors. It was the plain duty of the colonies to crush the trade and the system in its infancy: they preferred to enrich themselves on its profits."
And "with this real, existent, growing evil before their eyes, a bargain largely of dollars and cents was allowed to open the highway that led straight to the Civil War.
"With the faith of the nation broken at the very outset, the system of slavery untouched, and twenty years' respite given to the slave-trade to feed and foster it, there began, with 1787, that system of bargaining, truckling, and compromising with a moral, political, and economic monstrosity, which makes the history of our dealing with slavery in the first half of the nineteenth century so discreditable to a great people. Each generation sought to shift its load upon the next, and the burden rolled on, until a generation came which was both too weak and too strong to bear it any longer.
"...a certain hard common-sense in facing the complicated phenomena of political life must be expected in every progressive people. In some respects we asa nation seem to lack this; we have the somewhat inchoate idea that we are not destined to be harassed with great social questions, and that even if we are, and fail to answer them, the fault is with the question and not with us. Consequently, we often congratulate ourselves more on getting rid of a problem than on solving it. Such an attitude is dangerous; we have and shall have, as other peoples have had, critical, momentous, and pressing questions to answer.
"It behooves the United States, therefore, in the interests both of scientific truth and of future social reform, carefully to study such chapters of her history as that of the suppression of the slave-trade. The most obvious question which this study suggests is: How far in a State can a recognized moral wrong safely be compromised? And although this chapter of history can give us no definite answer suited to the ever-varying aspects of political life, yet it would seem to warn any nation from allowing, through carelessness and moral cowardice, any social evil to grow. No persons would have seen the Civil War with more surprise and horror than the Revolutions of 1776; yet from the small and apparently dying institution of their day arose the walled and castled Slave-Power. From this we may conclude that it behooves nations as well as men to do things at the very moment when they ought to be done."
Although written over 125 years ago, it by no means reads that way. In many respects, it reminded me of a doctoral dissertation, so thorough is it coverage and so comprehensive its documentation of sources. Du Bois, one of the most distinguished intellectuals in American history, has written a scholarly work that is remarkably free of any invective or guilt accusations. Rather, it is a humbling record of how white America repeatedly balked at ending what everyone -- especially at the beginning of the Republic after the Revolution -- regarded as both wicked and unfitting for the United States.
Du Bois documents that the only time our ancestors really got close to fulfilling their oft-promised intent to end the slave trade was in the first and second decades of the 19th century. The trade was outlawed by the federal government, armed ships were sent to patrol the coast of Africa to catch slavers caught in the act (although never enough of them to do the job), and there were attempts -- all ultimately unsuccessful -- to cooperate with other countries, especially Great Britain, in ending the trade.
Du Bois identifies two factors that undermined these inadequate efforts: 1) The money to be made in the trade, a fact which tied many Northerners to supporting slavery because of their investment in shipping and the profits to be made; and 2) Rapid innovations in the harvesting and processing of cotton. The trade might have been ended by 1820 had not profit from the trade continually weakened the resolve of just enough people -- especially in the Senate, but after the 1820s when cotton indeed became "King Cotton" in the South, the trade actually increased. Shamefully, as the British, Dutch, and French all refused to carry slaves any longer, the vast bulk of slaves captured from Africa were increasingly carried in ships flying the American flag.
[BTW, a very contemporary note is appropriate here: the role of the Senate, then as now, in blocking progressive legislation has repeatedly served commercial and business interests over those involving human rights. The unbalanced power the composition of the Senate gives to the South -- an imbalance that has only grown much greater in our own time -- has consistently allowed people representing a minority of Americans to block legislation favored by the majority. The mechanism of the filibuster, by which a super-majority within the Senate is necessary to pass legislation, only serves to make this lock-down worse.]
Du Bois, in his concluding chapter, observes that the legislation that did pass the Congress were on the whole "poorly conceived, loosely drawn, and wretchedly enforced. The systemic violation of the provisions of many of them led to a widespread belief that enforcement was, in the nature of the case, impossible; and thus, instead of marking ground already won, they were too often sources of distinct moral deterioration."
He then addresses a larger theme. "No American can study the connection of slavery with United States history, and not devoutly pray that his country may never have a similar social problem to solve, until it shows more capacity for such work than it has shown in the past.... We must face the fact that this problem arose principally from the cupidity and carelessness of our ancestors. It was the plain duty of the colonies to crush the trade and the system in its infancy: they preferred to enrich themselves on its profits."
And "with this real, existent, growing evil before their eyes, a bargain largely of dollars and cents was allowed to open the highway that led straight to the Civil War.
"With the faith of the nation broken at the very outset, the system of slavery untouched, and twenty years' respite given to the slave-trade to feed and foster it, there began, with 1787, that system of bargaining, truckling, and compromising with a moral, political, and economic monstrosity, which makes the history of our dealing with slavery in the first half of the nineteenth century so discreditable to a great people. Each generation sought to shift its load upon the next, and the burden rolled on, until a generation came which was both too weak and too strong to bear it any longer.
"...a certain hard common-sense in facing the complicated phenomena of political life must be expected in every progressive people. In some respects we asa nation seem to lack this; we have the somewhat inchoate idea that we are not destined to be harassed with great social questions, and that even if we are, and fail to answer them, the fault is with the question and not with us. Consequently, we often congratulate ourselves more on getting rid of a problem than on solving it. Such an attitude is dangerous; we have and shall have, as other peoples have had, critical, momentous, and pressing questions to answer.
"It behooves the United States, therefore, in the interests both of scientific truth and of future social reform, carefully to study such chapters of her history as that of the suppression of the slave-trade. The most obvious question which this study suggests is: How far in a State can a recognized moral wrong safely be compromised? And although this chapter of history can give us no definite answer suited to the ever-varying aspects of political life, yet it would seem to warn any nation from allowing, through carelessness and moral cowardice, any social evil to grow. No persons would have seen the Civil War with more surprise and horror than the Revolutions of 1776; yet from the small and apparently dying institution of their day arose the walled and castled Slave-Power. From this we may conclude that it behooves nations as well as men to do things at the very moment when they ought to be done."
February 27, 2017
The 1969 introduction by Norman Klein gives an interesting overview of the strengths, weaknesses, and unique contributions, particularly by raising awareness of then-to-fore undiscussed issues, in DuBois' original thesis.
DuBois' own Apologia to his work, written in 1954 (some 60 years after initial publication of his thesis?), is a fascinating read, given his insights into his own early work as a young man, and thoughts on that work, viewed from the distance of those years. Very nice read.
The work itself, because the research is now both dated and superseded by other work, I did not read in detail, but skimmed for correlation if needed later, with the Slavery sub-project on Wikitree.
Shira
27 Feb. 12017 HE
(the Holocene Calendar)
DuBois' own Apologia to his work, written in 1954 (some 60 years after initial publication of his thesis?), is a fascinating read, given his insights into his own early work as a young man, and thoughts on that work, viewed from the distance of those years. Very nice read.
The work itself, because the research is now both dated and superseded by other work, I did not read in detail, but skimmed for correlation if needed later, with the Slavery sub-project on Wikitree.
Shira
27 Feb. 12017 HE
(the Holocene Calendar)
August 2, 2023
I got this book for twenty-five cents at the thrift store but imagined it would be a dry read and one I would probably never get to, but then one night I flipped through the first pages. There was no turning back. To be honest I was shocked by how little I knew about the enterprise. This book was Du Bois Harvard thesis and what a brilliant thesis it is. If you’re an American, you’ve been fed an over simplified and emotional version of the history of slavery without a single bit of worldly context. It’s as if America invented slavery and was the last to end it.
After reading Thomas Sowell’s Black Rednecks and White Liberals it was so interesting to read the work of a black man educated under the Yankee system of education in post-Civil War America. As mentioned in Sowell’s book almost every successful black person of note was educated by that system (for a deeper breakdown of that subject read my review here). The education system instituted by Northern Yankees was rigorous and moral. Not emotional. Meritocracy, morality, and hard work were the driving themes.
Du Bois’ book is dense with information, but even more impressive for its nuanced take on all the factors that kept the slave trade going for as long as it did in the new country of America. This is no emotional diatribe about the evil white man. Its not an apologist’s take either. Du Bois does not hesitate to put blame where it’s deserved, but he also sees (maybe because he was closer to the time he wrote about) the very human problems of fear and self-interest and how they are human not specifically American problems.
While Sowell writes more specifically about the “redneck” cultural inheritance of the South, Du Bois starts his thesis with an overview of the various regions of the young country and how their interests, religious beliefs and landscapes affected their stances on slavery and the trade. No region comes off perfectly innocent.
We have to remember that the slave trade was a huge worldwide business and in the age of exploration there was also a great need for labor. The South was founded more as colonies to supply the Od World with resources than some kind of religious experiment. the new England colonies were founded on a religious ideal, but over the course of time the lure of vast profits in outfitting the slaver ships and trading in rum and slves became too much for those less enlightened by the new ideals of freedom.
The middle states were influenced by the Dutch who were slave traders and businesspeople. Pennsylvania had Quakers who were some of the first to put into practice strong and enforced anti-slavery practices, but the really interesting part to me was how there was never a time where the debate wasn’t going on all throughout the colonies and states both north and south.
Virginia (who had a glut of slaves and a more paternalistic sense of the practice) was mostly for ending the slave trade and believed as most people did before and right after the American revolution, that slavery was becoming obsolete and would die a death in the not-too-distant future. While New England puritan stock remained firmly against slavery (partially for religious reasons but also because the nature of their farming did not make slavery a good proposition), still had merchants on the coast who were getting rich on their participation in the slave trade. So, while we like to think it was always a North/South issue from the start that was not completely the case until after the Constitutional compromise after the Revolution.
This book is so dense with information it’s hard to encapsulate it all here but a few important takeaways:
The founding fathers were not all-knowing. Their compromise with the South (mostly South Carolina and Georgia (who were hungry for labor and of a more lawless bent see Thomas Sowell) over the issue of the slave trade was a disaster that led directly to the deaths of 600,000 young men (show the percentage), yet it was a mistake and very human. It was important to keep unity in the new country. It’s hard for us moderns to understand sometimes the risks these people had taken with their lives.
New Englanders believed strongly in the rule of law so when the laws against the slave trade were passed, the average person believed (or wanted to believe) that the slave trade was over. But what really happened was that the trade went underground and became a vast criminal enterprise luring in all the worst sorts of people who were quite willing to break laws. It did not help that some of these people were involved in government (does this sound familiar?). While the government talked about enforcing the anti-slavery laws with severe penalties for the traffickers (death sentence) no one was hung for the offence until Lincoln became president. Britain ruled the seas and was on a big anti-slave trafficking crusade. U.S. politicians (with the memories of war with England not so far away as they are now) refused to enter into agreement about ‘right-to-search’ policies. As an unintended consequence criminal slave traders from all over the world began flying the American flag to get around British cruisers who were supposed to be enforcing the trafficking laws.
The slave trade was a criminal enterprise openly approved of by the Deep South, quietly approved of by the upper South, disapproved of by the North, but going on all around them if they had eyes to see. New York, Boston and especially Newport continued to outfit slave ships. The local governments looked the other way corrupt as city governments are today.
One of the most interesting and terrible developments in this history was the pro-slavery ideology that rationalized the South’s growing desire to re-open the slave trade (this as illegally gotten slaves poured across the southern borders into the Deep South by cover of darkness—at first and then openly). The militancy that infected the South from the time 1807 onward made civil war inevitable. In fact Southern politicians began threatening civil war in the late 1700s.
This book solidified my belief that the Civil War was truly about slavery with solid evidence. While it was disheartening to read about people involved in criminal enterprises, it was good to read about the many people who were constantly advocating for the abolition of slavery. One might be tempted to say they should have fought harder. Eventually they did. Look at the rows and rows of sun-bleached tombstones at the national cemeteries. Entire gene pools snuffed out.
One last point of interest was the importance of the Haitian massacre of whites after emancipation of the Haitian slaves on the American psyche. We know now how freed slaves behaved in the United States after emancipation and how Northern soldiers and educators stepped in to help the freedmen, but back then, no one knew what would happen if vast amounts of uneducated and impoverished people were freed. News of the Haitian Revolution troubled many in the South. The border states wanting to restrict the importation of slaves and newly freed Haitian immigrants to keep any revolutionary thoughts from filtering into the slave population even as the Deep South became more desperate in their desire to accumulate more African slaves.
After reading Thomas Sowell’s Black Rednecks and White Liberals it was so interesting to read the work of a black man educated under the Yankee system of education in post-Civil War America. As mentioned in Sowell’s book almost every successful black person of note was educated by that system (for a deeper breakdown of that subject read my review here). The education system instituted by Northern Yankees was rigorous and moral. Not emotional. Meritocracy, morality, and hard work were the driving themes.
Du Bois’ book is dense with information, but even more impressive for its nuanced take on all the factors that kept the slave trade going for as long as it did in the new country of America. This is no emotional diatribe about the evil white man. Its not an apologist’s take either. Du Bois does not hesitate to put blame where it’s deserved, but he also sees (maybe because he was closer to the time he wrote about) the very human problems of fear and self-interest and how they are human not specifically American problems.
While Sowell writes more specifically about the “redneck” cultural inheritance of the South, Du Bois starts his thesis with an overview of the various regions of the young country and how their interests, religious beliefs and landscapes affected their stances on slavery and the trade. No region comes off perfectly innocent.
We have to remember that the slave trade was a huge worldwide business and in the age of exploration there was also a great need for labor. The South was founded more as colonies to supply the Od World with resources than some kind of religious experiment. the new England colonies were founded on a religious ideal, but over the course of time the lure of vast profits in outfitting the slaver ships and trading in rum and slves became too much for those less enlightened by the new ideals of freedom.
The middle states were influenced by the Dutch who were slave traders and businesspeople. Pennsylvania had Quakers who were some of the first to put into practice strong and enforced anti-slavery practices, but the really interesting part to me was how there was never a time where the debate wasn’t going on all throughout the colonies and states both north and south.
Virginia (who had a glut of slaves and a more paternalistic sense of the practice) was mostly for ending the slave trade and believed as most people did before and right after the American revolution, that slavery was becoming obsolete and would die a death in the not-too-distant future. While New England puritan stock remained firmly against slavery (partially for religious reasons but also because the nature of their farming did not make slavery a good proposition), still had merchants on the coast who were getting rich on their participation in the slave trade. So, while we like to think it was always a North/South issue from the start that was not completely the case until after the Constitutional compromise after the Revolution.
This book is so dense with information it’s hard to encapsulate it all here but a few important takeaways:
The founding fathers were not all-knowing. Their compromise with the South (mostly South Carolina and Georgia (who were hungry for labor and of a more lawless bent see Thomas Sowell) over the issue of the slave trade was a disaster that led directly to the deaths of 600,000 young men (show the percentage), yet it was a mistake and very human. It was important to keep unity in the new country. It’s hard for us moderns to understand sometimes the risks these people had taken with their lives.
New Englanders believed strongly in the rule of law so when the laws against the slave trade were passed, the average person believed (or wanted to believe) that the slave trade was over. But what really happened was that the trade went underground and became a vast criminal enterprise luring in all the worst sorts of people who were quite willing to break laws. It did not help that some of these people were involved in government (does this sound familiar?). While the government talked about enforcing the anti-slavery laws with severe penalties for the traffickers (death sentence) no one was hung for the offence until Lincoln became president. Britain ruled the seas and was on a big anti-slave trafficking crusade. U.S. politicians (with the memories of war with England not so far away as they are now) refused to enter into agreement about ‘right-to-search’ policies. As an unintended consequence criminal slave traders from all over the world began flying the American flag to get around British cruisers who were supposed to be enforcing the trafficking laws.
The slave trade was a criminal enterprise openly approved of by the Deep South, quietly approved of by the upper South, disapproved of by the North, but going on all around them if they had eyes to see. New York, Boston and especially Newport continued to outfit slave ships. The local governments looked the other way corrupt as city governments are today.
One of the most interesting and terrible developments in this history was the pro-slavery ideology that rationalized the South’s growing desire to re-open the slave trade (this as illegally gotten slaves poured across the southern borders into the Deep South by cover of darkness—at first and then openly). The militancy that infected the South from the time 1807 onward made civil war inevitable. In fact Southern politicians began threatening civil war in the late 1700s.
This book solidified my belief that the Civil War was truly about slavery with solid evidence. While it was disheartening to read about people involved in criminal enterprises, it was good to read about the many people who were constantly advocating for the abolition of slavery. One might be tempted to say they should have fought harder. Eventually they did. Look at the rows and rows of sun-bleached tombstones at the national cemeteries. Entire gene pools snuffed out.
One last point of interest was the importance of the Haitian massacre of whites after emancipation of the Haitian slaves on the American psyche. We know now how freed slaves behaved in the United States after emancipation and how Northern soldiers and educators stepped in to help the freedmen, but back then, no one knew what would happen if vast amounts of uneducated and impoverished people were freed. News of the Haitian Revolution troubled many in the South. The border states wanting to restrict the importation of slaves and newly freed Haitian immigrants to keep any revolutionary thoughts from filtering into the slave population even as the Deep South became more desperate in their desire to accumulate more African slaves.
March 4, 2022
Just last night I was in a restaurant in Florida and I overheard a large, drunk white man at the adjoining table rail loudly about how "America is the LEAST racist country in the world!" This was accompanied by some semi-predictable rhetoric on how "no one owes anyone anything" and a bizarre story in which this young army veteran claimed to have feared for his life when his car broke down "in the ghetto." It's common knowledge that at least white self-segregation has persisted throughout much of the U.S., and it was my distinct impression that this character had very limited experience with seeing African-Americans as anything other than a frightening (and possibly guilt-provoking) reminder of the evils of slavery, Jim Crowe, and now the prison-industrial complex. But maybe I'm giving him too much credit.
W.E.B. DuBois was the first African-American to receive a Ph.D. from Harvard University and this book was his thesis. It's off copyright and free to read. You can get it from Project Gutenberg, Internet Archive or just by advance search googling the title and author and specifying a .pdf file type. Half of the book is the supporting material, which is not necessary to understand the thesis, but which provides incontrovertible evidence for it.
In clear and unsensationalized prose, this book presents the history and motivations behind all the legal attempts to limit the slave trade in the U.S. Starting with the first European settlers to the Americas (including the Caribbean, or "West Indies") it includes responses to the English, Dutch, French, Spanish and Portuguese slave trade, as well as to the West Indian, inter-state, and domestic "coast-side" trade. Motivations ranged from religious abhorrence, to fear of insurrection, to fear of miscegenation (race-mixing), to fear of being out-populated, to fear of revenge. The hypocrisy and ineffectual nature of many of the laws is often staggering, as is the explicit racism of some of the Southern Congressmen who unashamedly advocated for the continuation of the slave trade.
A real eye-opener that should be required reading in all U.S. high schools, public or private. Probably especially private.
W.E.B. DuBois was the first African-American to receive a Ph.D. from Harvard University and this book was his thesis. It's off copyright and free to read. You can get it from Project Gutenberg, Internet Archive or just by advance search googling the title and author and specifying a .pdf file type. Half of the book is the supporting material, which is not necessary to understand the thesis, but which provides incontrovertible evidence for it.
In clear and unsensationalized prose, this book presents the history and motivations behind all the legal attempts to limit the slave trade in the U.S. Starting with the first European settlers to the Americas (including the Caribbean, or "West Indies") it includes responses to the English, Dutch, French, Spanish and Portuguese slave trade, as well as to the West Indian, inter-state, and domestic "coast-side" trade. Motivations ranged from religious abhorrence, to fear of insurrection, to fear of miscegenation (race-mixing), to fear of being out-populated, to fear of revenge. The hypocrisy and ineffectual nature of many of the laws is often staggering, as is the explicit racism of some of the Southern Congressmen who unashamedly advocated for the continuation of the slave trade.
A real eye-opener that should be required reading in all U.S. high schools, public or private. Probably especially private.
March 28, 2025
The Supression of the African Slave Trade documents the actual congressional votes, for and against slave laws, during the mid-1600s to the mid-1800s, along with the arguments made in favor and against the legislation.
This book proves the complicity of all states in America, Northern and Southern, during this 200 year period, through their votes to support and maintain slavery and the slave trade.
My own grandfather, in the very early 1900s, was sent by his family from Austria to the United States as an endentured child laborer 13 years old, traveling by boat in "steerage class," to work 66 hours a week in factories in Holyoke, MA. His life was difficult, and he never saw his parents again. However, his endentured labor term ended and he became a free man and a citizen with voting rights--because he was White.
How starkly different than the 200 years of enslavement, murder, torture, rape, terror, and oppression that Africans suffered under legislation voted by White legislators.
I wish that reading "The Suppression of the African Slave Trade" would be required in every High School history class.
This book proves the complicity of all states in America, Northern and Southern, during this 200 year period, through their votes to support and maintain slavery and the slave trade.
My own grandfather, in the very early 1900s, was sent by his family from Austria to the United States as an endentured child laborer 13 years old, traveling by boat in "steerage class," to work 66 hours a week in factories in Holyoke, MA. His life was difficult, and he never saw his parents again. However, his endentured labor term ended and he became a free man and a citizen with voting rights--because he was White.
How starkly different than the 200 years of enslavement, murder, torture, rape, terror, and oppression that Africans suffered under legislation voted by White legislators.
I wish that reading "The Suppression of the African Slave Trade" would be required in every High School history class.
July 4, 2023
"Here it was that the fatal mistake of compromising with slavery in the beginning, and of the policy of laissez-faire pursued thereafter, became painfully manifest" W.E.B. Du Bois explains, "for, instead now of a healthy, normal, economic development along proper industrial lines, we have the abnormal and fatal rise of a slave-labor large-farming system, which, before it was realized, had so intertwined itself with and braced itself upon the economic forces of an industrial age, that a vast and terrible civil war was necessary to displace it." With that stain on history's register, let us heed Du Bois' final conclusion: "it behooves nations as well as men to do things at the very moment when they ought to be done."
October 10, 2022
Important History
Understanding the rise and decline of the slave trade, as well as the perspective of those impacted by it is crucial to understand both our own times and to assess claims and assertions made over 150 years later. DuBois covers the laws in each colony and later state, as well as foreign and domestic impacts on the slave trade, and how the trade and importation of slaves was inexorably linked to slavery itself. An important look at a blemish on our collective history.
Understanding the rise and decline of the slave trade, as well as the perspective of those impacted by it is crucial to understand both our own times and to assess claims and assertions made over 150 years later. DuBois covers the laws in each colony and later state, as well as foreign and domestic impacts on the slave trade, and how the trade and importation of slaves was inexorably linked to slavery itself. An important look at a blemish on our collective history.
September 29, 2024
The first book written by WEB DuBois and the first one I will read, but not the last. So many interesting sources he references that I did not know about as well as a very powerful conclusion that is so relevant for the issues we are facing in the US today.
June 9, 2017
Not the easiest book to read but well worth the effort and time. Lots of details that you will not find anywhere else.
September 11, 2024
This was a snooze. Great last lines though.
"From this we may conclude that it behooves nations as well as men to do things at the very moment when they ought to be done."
"From this we may conclude that it behooves nations as well as men to do things at the very moment when they ought to be done."
January 16, 2025
I didn’t know there were so many people opposed to the slave trade and much of it was done secretly, even in states where it was abolished or limited in one way or another.
June 4, 2016
W.E.B. DuBois’s PhD dissertation reminds that progress does not move in a linear fashion, particularly in the American context or narrative. The book speaks about the importing and exporting of enslaved Africans by the 13 colonies, later known as the United States. This international trade was deemed to be separate from the institution of slavery WITHIN the United States. With thorough research, DuBois starts with the individual states’ motives (or lack thereof) for slowing or abolishing the trade, such as lack of economic use for slaves or a replication of the Haitian Revolution on American soil, why the trade sped back up after the American Revolution, and how the gradual move towards abolition of the international trade was constantly hindered or undermined.
May 26, 2016
A fascinating look at the slave trade from a perspective far closer than intellectual studies written later. Du Bois is undoubtedly a great writer. The subject is studied with a seemingly dispassionate relating of relevant facts. A good book with which to gain greater understanding (though hardly any sympathy) of the political climate of the age.
Want to read
July 13, 2012This is not the 2009 edition. It is a 1970 reprint edition by Corner House Publishers of Massachusetts.
April 12, 2017
The best coverage of the slave trade I've read so far.
Perhaps it is the approach, a Sociological view, rather than a history. I found it dispassionate, extremely well researched and specific in scope. All sides of the issue were covered, including the international interests of the time. I haven't found a modern book that has done as good a job. Read it!!!
Perhaps it is the approach, a Sociological view, rather than a history. I found it dispassionate, extremely well researched and specific in scope. All sides of the issue were covered, including the international interests of the time. I haven't found a modern book that has done as good a job. Read it!!!
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