View of the Port at New Orleans circa 1855 by Scattergood

The coastwise slave trade existed along the southern and eastern coastal areas of the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

in the antebellum years prior to 1861. Hundreds of vessels of various capacities domestically traded loads of slaves along

waterway A waterway is any Navigability, navigable body of water. Broad distinctions are useful to avoid ambiguity, and disambiguation will be of varying importance depending on the nuance of the equivalent word in other ways. A first distinction is ...

s, generally from the

Upper South The Upland South and Upper South are two overlapping cultural and geographic subregions in the inland part of the Southern United States. They differ from the Deep South and Atlantic coastal plain by terrain, history, economics, demographics, ...

which had a surplus of slaves to the

Deep South The Deep South or the Lower South is a cultural and geographic subregion of the Southern United States. The term is used to describe the states which were most economically dependent on Plantation complexes in the Southern United States, plant ...

where new

cotton Cotton (), first recorded in ancient India, is a soft, fluffy staple fiber that grows in a boll, or protective case, around the seeds of the cotton plants of the genus '' Gossypium'' in the mallow family Malvaceae. The fiber is almost pure ...

plantations created high demand for labor. International tensions developed when ships were forced by weather or incident into ports in

Bermuda Bermuda is a British Overseas Territories, British Overseas Territory in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean. The closest land outside the territory is in the American state of North Carolina, about to the west-northwest. Bermuda is an ...

and the

British West Indies The British West Indies (BWI) were the territories in the West Indies under British Empire, British rule, including Anguilla, the Cayman Islands, the Turks and Caicos Islands, Montserrat, the British Virgin Islands, Bermuda, Antigua and Barb ...

, as the British freed the slaves as part of the banned trade on the high seas, even before its abolition of slavery in its territories in 1834. There were several cases: ''Comet'' (1830), ''Encomium'' (1833), ''

Enterprise Enterprise (or the archaic spelling Enterprize) may refer to: Business and economics Brands and enterprises * Enterprise GP Holdings, an energy holding company * Enterprise plc, a UK civil engineering and maintenance company * Enterpris ...

'' (1835), '' Hermosa'' (1840), and, most notably, the ''Creole'' case of 1841, the result of a ship

slave revolt A slave rebellion is an armed uprising by slaves, as a way of fighting for their freedom. Rebellions of slaves have occurred in nearly all societies that practice slavery or have practiced slavery in the past. A desire for freedom and the dream o ...

that forced the vessel into

Nassau, Bahamas Nassau ( ) is the capital and largest city of The Bahamas. It is on the island of New Providence, which had a population of 246,329 in 2010, or just over 70% of the entire population of The Bahamas. As of April 2023, the preliminary results of ...

. British officials freed the 128 slaves who chose to stay in the Bahamas.

Legal rights

Prior to 1807, the 1787

United States Constitution The Constitution of the United States is the Supremacy Clause, supreme law of the United States, United States of America. It superseded the Articles of Confederation, the nation's first constitution, on March 4, 1789. Originally includi ...

and the 1793 Fugitive Slave Act were the only national United States laws on slavery. Individual states had enacted laws authorizing and regulating slavery within their boundaries. The multi-faceted 1807

Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves The Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves of 1807 (, enacted March 2, 1807) is a United States federal law that prohibited the importation of slaves into the United States. It took effect on January 1, 1808, the earliest date permitted by the U ...

abolished the "importation of slaves" from Africa, effective in 1808. The United States and Great Britain patrolled to create an international

Blockade of Africa The Blockade of Africa began in 1808 after the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, United Kingdom outlawed the Atlantic slave trade, making it illegal for British ships to transport slaves. The Royal Navy immediately established a pr ...

, trying to suppress the slave trade. In addition, American and British ships patrolled the Caribbean, where illegal slaves were generally brought for sale to the sugar plantations and smuggling into the United States. The 1807 Act also regulated the United States' "coastwise slave trade"; it protected shipping by domestic slave traders between markets along the other slave trading coasts. Attorneys argued that ships at sea were an extension of United States sovereignty, which permitted domestic slave trade among the states.

Conflict between the United States and Britain in the Caribbean

Complications developed between the United States and Great Britain from their differing interpretations of the application of laws against the slave trade in the

Caribbean The Caribbean ( , ; ; ; ) is a region in the middle of the Americas centered around the Caribbean Sea in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, mostly overlapping with the West Indies. Bordered by North America to the north, Central America ...

colonies. When American merchant ships were forced by weather or incident into ports in

and the

, the British freed the slaves as part of the banned trade on the high seas, even before its abolition of slavery in its territories in 1834. As early as 1825, the Home Office in London had ruled that "any slave brought to

the Bahamas The Bahamas, officially the Commonwealth of The Bahamas, is an Archipelagic state, archipelagic and island country within the Lucayan Archipelago of the Atlantic Ocean. It contains 97 per cent of the archipelago's land area and 88 per cent of ...

from outside the

would be manumitted, which led to 300 slaves owned by U.S. nationals being freed."Gerald Horne, ''Negro Comrades of the Crown: African Americans and the British Empire Fight the U.S. Before Emancipation''
New York University (NYU) Press, 2012, p. 103 In addition, slaves who escaped to the Bahamas from Florida became free. Several cases occurred as anti-slavery agitation increased and abolition was passed: ''Comet'' (1830), ''Encomium'' (1833), ''

'' (1835), and ''Hermosa'' (1840) In each case, the British freed the slaves from the ships that had put into ports in Bermuda and the Bahamas, whether by weather or accident.Horne (2012), pp. 107-108 The most notable case was the 1841 ''Creole'', the result of a ship

that forced the vessel into

. One of the slave leaders had heard of slaves being freed from the ''Hermosa'' there the previous year.Jervey, Edward D. and Huber, C. Harold. "The ''Creole'' Affair"
''The Journal of Negro History'', Vol. 65, No. 3 (Summer 1980), pp. 196–211, accessed 8 April 2013 Holding that the slaves were free persons illegally detained in slavery, British officials ultimately freed the 128 of 135 slaves from the ''Creole'' who chose to stay in the Bahamas. It has been termed the "most successful slave revolt in U.S. history". The US slaveholders feared this would encourage other slave ship revolts.

Selected list of laws and court rulings

The following are generally considered the most important United States

statutory law A statute is a law or formal written enactment of a legislature. Statutes typically declare, command or prohibit something. Statutes are distinguished from court law and unwritten law (also known as common law) in that they are the expressed wi ...

s and

case law Case law, also used interchangeably with common law, is a law that is based on precedents, that is the judicial decisions from previous cases, rather than law based on constitutions, statutes, or regulations. Case law uses the detailed facts of ...

s on slavery, in the order of their enactment: :1787:

:1793: Fugitive Slave Act :1807:

:1841: '' United States v. The Amistad''Dudley T. Cornish, ''Mutiny on the Amistad: The Saga of a Slave Revolt and Its Impact on American Abolition, Law, and Diplomacy'' (review)
''Civil War History'', Volume 34, Number 1, March 1988, pp. 79-80, Project Muse 10.1353/cwh.1988.0011, accessed 30 March 2013. Note: The historian

Samuel Eliot Morison Samuel Eliot Morison (July 9, 1887 – May 15, 1976) was an American historian noted for his works of maritime history and American history that were both authoritative and popular. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1912, and tau ...

in 1965 described the ''Amistad'' case as the most important court case involving slavery before being eclipsed by that of

Dred Scott Dred Scott ( – September 17, 1858) was an enslaved African American man who, along with his wife, Harriet, unsuccessfully sued for the freedom of themselves and their two daughters, Eliza and Lizzie, in the '' Dred Scott v. Sandford'' case ...

. :1850: Fugitive Slave Act :1857: '' Dred Scott v. Sandford'' :1865: 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution

Cabotage

The act of sailing along a coast and using landmarks for guidance is called ''cabotage'', from the French word ''caboter'' ("to coast," "go from cape to cape"). When slaves were the merchandise being transported by ''cabotage'', the practice was called the ''coastwise slave trade''.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Coastwise Slave Trade Slavery in the United States Pre-emancipation African-American history British West Indies History of Bermuda Slave trade in the United States

Legal rights

Conflict between the United States and Britain in the Caribbean

Selected list of laws and court rulings

Cabotage

See also

References