pular because it was an immediate stimulus to
the foreign slave trade, partly because at the North that excited but
little interest, and partly because at the South it excited a great
deal. The abolition societies, it is true, asked that the importation of
slaves from Africa into the annexed territory should be forbidden; and
an act was passed prohibiting their introduction, except by those
persons from other parts of the United States who intended to be actual
settlers, and were, therefore, permitted to bring slaves imported
previous to 1798. But the law might properly have been entitled An Act
for the Encouragement of the Trade in Negroes; and so it seems to have
been regarded by the older slave States. South Carolina reopened the
trade to Africa, and, as Congress failed to levy the constitutional tax
of ten dollars a head, the raw material, so to speak, came in free. The
rest could be safely left to the law of supply and demand. Neither
South Carolina nor any other State had imported slaves since 1798. The
whole slave population, therefore, could be legally taken into Louisiana
by actual settlers, and its place supplied in the old States by new
importations. The demand regulated the supply, and the supply came from
Africa as truly as if the importation had been direct to New Orleans.
This was the legal course of trade till 1808; thenceforward it
flourished, without the protection of law but in spite of it, so long as
it was profitable,--so long, that is, as the natural increase of the
eastern negro was insufficient to answer the demand of the south-western
market.

But, besides the peaceful extension of the national domain, there was
much else in the first four or five years of Jefferson's administration
to commend it to his countrymen. His party had nothing to complain of,
despite that genial and generous assurance of the inaugural which could
not be forgotten,--"we are all Republicans; we are all Federalists;" and
the other party had reason to be thankful that, considering, as he said,
"a Federalist seldom died, and never resigned," the number was not large
who were reminded, by their removal from office, of their unreasonable
delay in doing either the one thing or the other. It was only the
politicians, however, a class much smaller then than it is now, who were
concerned in such matters; the people at large were influenced by other
considerations. Credit was given to the President for things that he
did not do, a