Page 295 - American Stories, A History of the United States

Explore the Internal
11.1

Slave Trade on
11.2
MyHistoryLab

11.3
WHAT FUELED THE
DOMESTIC SLAVE TRADE
bEFORE THE CIVIL WAR?

In 1808, Congress made the Trans-
Atlantic slave trade in the United SLAVERY in the early nineteenth century, the U.S. Congress and individual states banned
States illegal. However, this did not the importation of slaves from Africa. The demand for slaves had to be primarily met by
a highly profitable internal slave trade that included new slave ships that plied domestic
end the slave trade within the United waters between the ports of slave states. Smuggling was also common, too.
States. Indeed, the demand for slaves
only grew as southerners expanded SLAVES ARRIVING IN MAINLANd NoRTH
west into new states in the first half AMERICA fRoM AfRICA, 1776–1807
of the 1800s. In these lands, the State Number of Slaves
percentage of the total population
as slaves grew quite high as white Rhode island 158
settlers carried the institution of Pennsylvania 134
slavery with them. These settlers Virginia 30
brought along slaves with them
or bought from masters living back North Carolina 81
East. As a result, the internal slave South Carolina 56,406
trade boomed as eastern slaveholders Georgia 10,269
often broke up families to sell Florida 1,360
slaves to be sent to slave states and
territories further west. As the table Gulf coast 4,089
below shows, nearly 73,000 slaves Rest of North America 218
were brought to North America from Total Number of Slaves, 1776—1807 72,744
Africa before 1808. However, the total
number of slaves in the United States SOURCe: U.S. Census bureau
in 1860 was 3,953,761.

K e y Q u e S T i O NS Use MyHistoryLab Explorer to answer these questions:

Comparison How did Cause In what ways did Consequence How did
the size of a slave-holder’s farm the distribution of U.S. slave the closing of the Trans-Atlantic
often relate to the number of population change between slave trade affect the price of
enslaved? 1808 and the 1860s? slaves?
Chart this relationship. Conceptualize the reasons for Theorize the resulting impacts on
such trends. the institution of slavery in the
United States.

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