lty from the Senate
bill, February 12; and on the prohibition of the coasting trade in slaves
in vessels of under forty tons, February 26. In each case a majority of
the Northern members voted on one side of the question, and a yet larger
majority of Southerners voted on the other. Twenty-two members voted in
every case on the side which the North tended to adopt. These comprised
seven from Massachusetts, six from Pennsylvania, three from Connecticut,
and one or two from each of the other Northern states except Rhode Island
and Ohio. They comprised also Broom of Delaware, Bedinger of Kentucky, and
Morrow of Virginia; while Williams of North Carolina was almost equally
constant in opposing the policies advocated by the bulk of his fellow
Southerners. On the other hand the regulars on the Southern side comprised
not only ten Virginians, all of the six South Carolinians, except three of
their number on the punishment questions, all of the four Georgians, three
North Carolinians, two Marylanders and one Kentuckian, but in addition
Tenney of New Hampshire, Schuneman, Van Rensselaer and Verplanck of New
York on all but the punishment questions.

On the whole, sectional divergence was fairly pronounced, but only on
matters of detail. The expressions from all quarters of a common desire
to make the prohibition of importations effective were probably sincere
without material exception. As regards the Virginia group of states, their
economic interest in high prices for slaves vouches for the genuine purpose
of their representatives, while that of the Georgians and South Carolinians
may at the most be doubted and not disproved. The South in general
wished to prevent any action which might by implication stigmatize the
slaveholding regime, and was on guard also against precedents tending to
infringe state rights. The North, on the other hand, was largely divided
between a resolve to stop the sanction of slavery and a desire to enact
an effective law in the premises directly at issue. The outcome was a law
which might be evaded with relative ease wherever public sanction was weak,
but which nevertheless proved fairly effective in operation.

When slave prices rose to high levels after the war of 1812 systematic
smuggling began to prevail from Amelia Island on the Florida border, and on
a smaller scale on the bayous of the Barataria district below New Orleans;
but these operations were checked upon the passage of a congressional act