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The African Slave-Trade.

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rivers push out their deltas, or form lagoons by their conflict with the fierce surge upon the shore. The sea does not deal kindly with Africa, for it wastes or guards the shores with an almost unconquerable surf. Tides are small, and rivers are not safely penetrable. The ocean offered to the negro nothing but a little food, procured with some trouble and much danger. Hence ocean commerce was unknown to them."

But it is time that the real business should be spoken of which the commander of the little brig Perry took in hand to do.

After the great European war, when, in the language of Lieutenant Foote, "the matured villainy of the world" was assembled on the African coast to re-establish the slave-trade, England commenced a vigorous system of cruising by her warships to suppress the trade. In 1839 the corrective was still more stringently applied. Permission had then been wrung from the slave-trading powers to capture vessels outward bound for Africa when fitted for the slave-trade. The treaties provided that vessels equipped for the traffic might be captured. A slaver was to be taken because she was a slaver: just as it is better to shoot the wolf before he has killed the sheep than afterward. If a vessel, therefore, were found on the African coast with slave-irons, water in sufficient quantity for a slave-cargo, with a slave-deck laid for packing slaves, she was seized and condemned before committing the overt act. Under this arrangement double the number of captures was made during the next ten years than in the twenty years previous. The efforts of the English squadron were conjoined with those of France and the United States, although England took the laboring oar, and was, it must be confessed, the most in earnest in this business. A treaty with Great Britain was signed at Washington in the year 1842, stipulating that each nation should maintain on the African coast a force of naval vessels of suitable numbers and description, to carry in all not less than eighty guns, to enforce, separately and respectively,

the laws, rights, and obligations of each of the two countries, for the suppression of the slave-trade. These, together with other subsidiary means (such as the substitution of legal trade, the conversion of old slave-factories and forts into positions. defensive against their former purpose, etc.), reduced the export of slaves in 1849 from one hundred and five thousand to about thirty-seven thousand. Still the evil was great, and the laxity on the part of the American government to fulfill its portion of the treaty was sorely felt; and since the American flag was inviolable to any foreign nation, in the case of falling in with a British cruiser, an American slaver, on presenting her register, or sea-letter, as a proof of nationality, could not be searched nor detained. The American flag came thus to be greatly abused, and was deeply involved in the slave-traffic. This was further aided by the artful device of legal trading with a cargo corresponding to the manifest, and all the ship's papers being made out in form. American slavers, under the disguise of doing a legal business, swarmed on the African coast, and escaped almost with impunity. There was sometimes a pretended sale when the slaver was ready to start from the African coast: the American captain and his crew going on shore as the slaves were coming off, while the Portuguese or Italian passengers, who came out in her, all at once, as by a kind of devilish jugglery, became the master and crew of the vessel. There is evidence in the records of the Consulate of slaves having started from the shore, and at the same time the master and crew from the vessel, carrying with them the flag and ship's papers; when, the parties becoming frightened, both pulled back; the slaves were returned to the shore, and the American master and crew went on board the vessel. The stars and stripes were again hoisted over her, and kept flying until the cause of the alarm (an English cruiser) departed from the coast, and the embarkation was safely effected. The American minis

Abuse of the American Flag.

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ter at the court of Brazil in 1844 wrote to the Secretary of State:

"I regret to say this, but it is a fact not to be disguised nor denied that the slave-trade is almost entirely carried on under our flag in Americanbuilt vessels, sold to slavers here, chartered for the coast of Africa, and there sold, or sold here-delivered on the coast. And, indeed, the scandalous traffic could not be carried on to any great extent were it not for the use made of our flag, and the facilities given for the chartering of American vessels to carry to the coast of Africa the outfit for the trade and the material for purchasing slaves."

The question as to the deplorable effects arising from the abuse of the American flag was brought into discussion in 1842 between England and America, and the treaty before referred to was established; but the question was still left unsettled-How is a vessel to be ascertained to be American? The plea that any vessel hoisting any flag is thereby secured against all interference in all circumstances never could be seriously maintained as a principle of international law. Neither the United States nor any other power has ever acted on a dogma of this breadth. The United States government, while asserting the inviolability of its flag (this very question being the origin of the War of 1812), did not claim that its flag should give immunity to those who were not American; for such a claim would render it a cover to piracy, and to acts of the greatest atrocity. "But any vessel which hoists the American flag claims to be American, and therefore, while she may be boarded and examined by an American cruiser, this right is not conceded to a foreign cruiser; for the flag is prima facie evidence, although not conclusive proof of nationality; and if such vessel be really American, the boarding officer will be regarded in the light of a trespasser, and the vessel will have all the protection which that flag supplies. If, on the other hand, the vessel prove not to be American, the flag illegally worn will afford her no protection. Therefore a for

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eign officer boarding a vessel under the flag of the United States, does it on his own responsibility for all consequences."*

Thus complicated and unsatisfactory was the condition of things; and although after the treaty the United States government sent an organized naval force to the coast of Africa, which was the means of capturing many slavers and of releasing hundreds of wretched negroes, yet the evil was not checked; and at the time the Perry came on the coast the trade was at its height, and perhaps was never more brisk. A kind of immunity was given to British cruisers to search American vessels by this implied permission to do so on the responsibility of the searching party. Blundering mistakes and arrogant assumptions on the part of British war - vessels not unfrequently occurred; while the greater evil still remained, that the slavers themselves continued to escape in great numbers even from British vigilance and determination to root out the infamous traffic carried on under the protection of the banner of the United States.

* 66 Africa and the American Flag,” p. 233.

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THERE is reason to think that Lieutenant Foote, after so much hard sea-service, did not greatly desire to go to this harassing post of duty on the African coast, but he was always ready for honest work; and where there was a disagreeable piece of work to do, or a difficult post to fill, it was quite the custom of the Navy Department, instead of sending a reluctant officer, or of running the risk of an absolute refusal, to say, "Why, send Foote; he will go." When Foote did go, it was to do good work, putting heart and soul into it. Thus it fell out that a great deal of the hard service of the Navy in his day came upon this energetic officer; and perhaps, in the end, though full of labor and care, no work that he ever did gave him more satisfaction than the effective part he performed in the suppression of the African slave-trade, for it was directly in the line of his own character and convictions as a fighter against every form of evil. The following letter, dated October 15, 1849, was written to him before sailing, by his old commodore, Joseph Smith:

"I have your two letters of the 12th instant. I have done my best with the Secretary for your brig and for your own convenience, but I can't make a dent upon him. He says he will order a purser this day; but no person whatever, and nothing not on the allowance-book, will be granted to you. I wished to have Kelly-you remember him in the Cumberland as quartermaster-ordered to you as acting-boatswain. He was in the Perry when she was stranded, and never let go the helm for twenty-nine hours. He has been through the Gulf war as acting-boatswain of a small craft. I am a little selfish in your orders to the Perry, for I wished to hold you back on shore duty till I went to sea; but the

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