Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Federal Judiciary Blogs -> Supreme Dicta

Federal Judiciary

: Supreme Dicta

An overlooked bicentennial

Last year, there was great fanfare celebrating the 200th anniversary of the United Kingdom's ban on the slave trade. The movie Amazing Grace chronicled the story of William Wilberforce, the parliamentarian who championed the cause of abolition.

But January 1, 2008 marked another bicentennial that most people did not notice - a ban on the importation of slaves into the United States. According to a New York Times op-ed by Professor Eric Foner of Columbia University:

The slave trade was a major source of disagreement at the Constitutional Convention of 1787. South Carolina?s delegates were determined to protect slavery, and they had a powerful impact on the final document. They originated the three-fifths clause (giving the South extra representation in Congress by counting part of its slave population) and threatened disunion if the slave trade were banned, as other states demanded.

The result was a compromise barring Congress from prohibiting the importation of slaves until 1808. Some Anti-Federalists, as opponents of ratification were called, cited the slave trade clause as a reason why the Constitution should be rejected, claiming it brought shame upon the new nation.

Congress passed an importation ban in 1807, and it took effect on January 1, 1808, the first date eligible under the Constitution. This caused many African-Americans to celebrate January 1 as an alternative to July 4.

Of course the importation ban did not stop slavery. Slaves were still smuggled into this country, and the children of slaves provided new generations of servitude. But it still served an important purpose, according to Professor Foner:

More slaves would also have meant heightened fear of revolt and ever more stringent controls on the slave population. It would have reinforced Southerners? demands to annex to the United States areas suitable for plantation slavery in the Caribbean and Central America. Had the importation of slaves continued unchecked, the United States could well have become the hemispheric slave-based empire of which many Southerners dreamed.

That is an accomplishment worthy of remembrance.

Full post as published by Supreme Dicta on January 03, 2008 (boomark / email).