The crime of trading in human beings has been for many years branded by the reprobation of all civilized nations.
W.E.B. Du Bois
The Public Record
William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was an American sociologist, writer, historian, and Pan-Africanist civil rights activist. Born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, Du Bois grew up in a relatively tolerant and integrated community. He completed graduate work at Harvard University, where he was the first African American to earn a doctorate. He was a professor at Atlanta University and over the course of his life wrote many books and articles. He spent the last years of his life in Ghana and died in Accra on August 27, 1963.
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It is a subject of gratulation that the efforts which have been made for the suppression of this inhuman traffic have been recently attended with unusual success.
It is with great satisfaction I communicate the fact that since the date of my last annual message not a single slave has been imported into the United States in violation of the laws prohibiting the African slave trade.
As long as this market shall remain open, there can be no hope for the civilization of benighted Africa....
If we cannot supply the demand for slave labor, then we must expect to be supplied with a species of labor we do not want, and which is, from the very nature of things, antagonistic to our institutions.
The cry there is, want of labor, notwithstanding capital has the pauperism of the old world to press into its grinding service.
It is a sufficient answer to point to the fact, that unrestricted immigration has not diminished the value of labor in the Northwestern section of the confederacy.
Resolved, That all attempts to re-enslave them are unconstitutional, etc.
Resolved, That those slaves by resuming their natural liberty violated no laws of the United States.
Resolved, That the slaves in the brig Creole are amenable only to the laws of the United States.
They would prepare themselves with apprehension, indeed, but without dismay--with regret, but with firmness--for one of those desperate struggles which have sometimes occurred in the history of the world.
Should slavery be further permitted, an immense new market for slaves would be opened.