how did suppression of importation of slaves work in antebellum Gulf Coast?

[code_grey]

the importation of slaves was prohibited as part of the compromise that led to the Constitution. But how well could the antebellum federal government police the Gulf Coast coastline to prevent smugglers? Or was there a strong cultural dislike in the South for buying slaves who did not grow up in America? Or were prices for slaves in American South lower than in the Caribbean or Brazil so that it did not make sense to import them into America?

Are there traces of significant numbers imported despite the ban?

[Exapno_Mapcase]

Of course the illegal slave traffic continued.

The Legacy of 1808: Post-Abolition Slave Trade

It is difficult to explain why it was moralist sentiment was not strong enough to carry the day. One possible explanation is that even though there was strong sentiment to abolish the trade in Congress, constituencies in the South were able to exert sufficient pressure to weaken the force of the law. The delegates to the Constitutional Convention could not have forseen the effect that Ely Whitney’s cotton gin would have on Southern agriculture. The decades following the abolition of the slave trade show that United States did not have enough will to even enforce the laws they had passed. Illegal slave trade continued overland through Texas and Florida, while ships continued to smuggle slaves in through South Carolina. Even though Congress passed a law in 1820 making participation in the slave trade an act of piracy and punishable by death, it was not strongly enforced.

In the 1820’s, the nature of the illegal slave trade changed somewhat. US ships were now primarily involved in the transport of slaves from Africa to other countries in North and South America like Cuba and Brazil. The British wanted cooperation from the Americans in the form of the mutual right of search and seizure. The Americans opposed this principle, not so much out of a desire to continue the slave trade, but out of a sense of national pride and an appeal to the freedom of the seas. The US’s refusal to enforce its own anti-slave trade laws, as well as cooperate with other nations allowed the slave trade to continue for decades to come.

The decline in illegal imports of slaves came gradually, and more because it was cheaper and less risky to simply breed the slaves that were already there rather than find new ones. Slaves also lived longer and had lower death rates in the U.S. than in the Carribean and elsewhere, mainly because of lower rates of deadly tropical diseases, so there wasn’t the continual need to replenish a low population. The slave population appears to have increased from 500,000 to 4,000,000 by the time of the Civil War, a more than sufficient number.

[Freddy_the_Pig]

@code_grey

the importation of slaves was prohibited as part of the compromise that led to the Constitution.

Actually, the Constitution protected slave importation against federal interference, for twenty years. It allowed Congress to ban the trade after that time, which Congress in fact did as soon as the protection expired on January 1, 1808.

@code_grey

Or was there a strong cultural dislike in the South for buying slaves who did not grow up in America?

There was. Freeborn slaves were harder to control, harder to train (not speaking English), unfamiliar with American plantation work (obviously), and weakened by the ordeal of the Middle Passage. An imported slave could only command a fraction of the price of a native-born slave.

@code_grey

Or were prices for slaves in American South lower than in the Caribbean or Brazil so that it did not make sense to import them into America?

Even so, prices were usually higher in the US than in Cuba or Brazil. Neverthelesss, the fact that slave imports were nominally illegal in the US introduced a hassle factor.

The US-bound slaver had to sail a smaller-draft ship which could unload away from the customshouses at a major port, land and confine the slaves at an out-of-the-way place, and then arrange for them to be secretly sold in small lots. It was less hassle, generally, to sail to Cuba or Brazil instead.

@code_grey

Are there traces of significant numbers imported despite the ban?

Yes. The best modern estimates are that about 50,000 slaves were imported after the ban in 1808. To put this in perspective, there were 600,000 to 700,000 imports between 1619 and 1808, with the slave population growing by natural increase to four million in 1860. About two million slaves were imported into the Caribbean and South America during the Nineteenth Century.