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Article Excerpt
There had never been a day in U.S. history like August 8, 1860, when, within hours, the Africa Squadron of the U.S. Navy seized two slave ships within hours off the coast of Africa with more than 1,500 Africans aboard. On the Erie there were found 897 Africans crammed below deck. Approximately half were children; the youngest, six months of age. Another 130 women, 164 men, and 329 children were packed below in the slave deck of the Storm King. The seizure of the slavers Erie and Storm King constituted the largest number of Africans freed from slavers on a single day by the U.S. Navy. Equally remarkable, most of the U.S. vessels seized with Africans aboard were captured during the year 1860. Between April and October of that year, some 4,500 Africans were discovered aboard eight ships flying the U.S. flag. (1)
In numbers of slave ships captured and Africans freed, the year 1860 is in a category by itself. During the roughly two decades of operation, from 1843 to 1861, the Africa Squadron intercepted thirty-six slavers or suspected slavers. If vessels taken by the U.S. Navy off Brazil and Cuba are added in, the total number of slavers seized during this time increases to fifty-one, or an average of a little fewer than three vessels per year. (2) In 1860, however, the navy seized five times the average, capturing eight slavers off the coast of Africa and another seven in Cuban waters. (3) Much of this part of the story has been known. What has escaped greater attention, however, is the fate of the Africans seized, the involvement of the American Colonization Society (ACS), and the impact of their forced adoption on their new home, Liberia.
Surprisingly little attention has been written on the plight of the over six thousand Africans discovered aboard U.S. slave ships between 1842 and 1861 and how the U.S. government attempted to deal with them. (4) The few historians who have studied America's involvement in the illegal slave trade have scrutinized the slave-trade laws and its prosecution. Scholars have analyzed the politics of the slave trade, the economic pull of the slave trade, the actions of the navy and the Africa Squadron, and shipboard insurrections. There are books devoted to the story of slave ships that arrived in the United States after the legal end of the slave trade. There is a book devoted to Nathaniel Gordon, the only man executed for the crime of slave trading. On the topic of the recaptured Africans, however, scholarship is nearly silent. (5)
In one sense it is not surprising that historians have slighted the subject. The plight of the African was not a popular topic among many Americans at the time. Certainly, the disappointing record of the Africa Squadron helped keep the issue quiet. Before 1858, the U.S. Navy had rescued fewer than a thousand Africans aboard U.S. vessels, and nearly all of these individuals were discovered aboard one slave ship, the Pons, of Philadelphia, in 1845. In many ways, the African slave trade seemed a remote, if repulsive, criminal enterprise that could not compare to the ulcerating crisis of domestic slavery.
More than this, however, most people believed at the time there was nothing to talk about. For more than forty years the U.S. policy had been to send the few Africans discovered aboard U.S. vessels to Liberia, and there seemed little reason to question it. This does not mean individuals and groups were silent on the illegal slave trade, especially with the emergence of the pro-slave-trade crusade in the late 1850s. By this time, many Americans had registered their outrage over the illegal slave trade. The pro-slave-traders could muster only minority support even in areas where it was strongest. Efforts in southern state legislatures to repeal American suppression legislation were universally unsuccessful. The U.S. House of Representatives voted nearly unanimously on a resolution offered by Democrat James L. Orr of South Carolina that declared the repeal of the slave-trade laws would be "inexpedient, unwise, and contrary to the settled policy of the United States." (6) Although newspapers loved to retell the sensational and graphic stories of the plight of the "poor savages," very little public discussion went beyond imagery that objectified the recaptured Africans as ignorant, debased, and in great need of pity. Unlike abolitionist discourse that highlighted the humanity of black Americans, few wrote or spoke about the humanity of the recaptured African. Indeed, there was virtually no interest in discerning the desires of the Africans and only minor concern for the wishes of the Liberian government, which bore the responsibility for the future of the recaptured Africans.
In another sense, however, it is surprising that historians have not delved into the subject with more energy, in part because it was a topic of great concern earlier in the nineteenth century. In March 1807, when Congress passed legislation forbidding the importation of any further slaves after January 1, 1808, it was very concerned with the final disposition of illegally imported Africans. Forty of the sixty pages of officially reported debates on the legislation were devoted to the question of what to do with illegally imported Africans. Essentially, it centered on whether illegally imported Africans should be set free in the United States or sold as slaves. In the end, the legislation declared that "any Negro, mulatto, or person of color, brought into the United States, or territories thereof, in violation of law, shall remain subject to any regulations ... of the states or territories ... for disposing of any such Negro, mulatto, or person of color." In other words, it was up to the state in which the Africans were first brought to decide whether they would be set free, indentured, or sold into slavery. But this presented problems to both the North and the South. Clearly, allowing these individuals to be free set a dangerous precedent as far as the South was concerned. Most northerners thought it criminal to allow states to sell Africans into slavery, but they did not want to introduce Africans into their society either. The debate surrounding the Slave Trade Act of 1807 also recognized that the United States could not send recaptures back to Africa without some institutional support. The idea of sending Africans back to Africa was judged imprudent because it seemed unlikely they would find their way home and more likely they would be sold into slavery again. (7)
Within a few short years, renewed concerns surfaced about American involvement in the illegal slave trade, and the conviction arose among some that rescued Africans were inevitably ending up in domestic slavery under the provisions of the Slave Trade Act of 1807. In response, Congress easily passed the Slave Trade Act of 1819, which sanctioned the cruising along the African coast by the U.S. Navy and established a system of awarding prize money to naval personnel for the capture of slave ships. Most important, it authorized the president to make arrangements for the return of Africans rescued from U.S. vessels to Africa rather than state authorities. The act also provided for appointing an agent in Africa to facilitate the resettling of the Africans and $100,000 appropriation. Practically, this act allowed President Monroe to make the federal government a partner with the ACS and support its efforts to establish a settlement site for black Americans. (8)...
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