Date of Award
2020
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelors
Department
Social Sciences
First Advisor
Goff, Brendan
Area of Concentration
General Studies
Abstract
This thesis argues that the suppression of the illegal transatlantic slave trade in the nineteenth century failed because the policy was never pursued in good faith and had only limited support among the population of the United States. Citizens from the southern slave states continuously violated federal law over the course of the nineteenth century. The extensive role played by citizens in the northern states, and by Britain and France, in the illegal trade has been subsumed by narratives that emphasize northern anti-slavery movements and civil protests against the Fugitive Slave Acts. Chapter one traces the evolution of anti-slave trade treaties and legislation with a focus on the United States and Great Britain and attempts to explain why, after years of little success, the illegal slave trade began to face significant pressure not just from the Royal Navy but also from the U.S. Navy. Chapter two deals with the controversy of the Africans at Key West in newspapers and in the U.S. Congress in the summer of 1860. Chapter three is a study of the ways that Fugitive-Slave Cases and Slave-Ship Cases were used by judges and juries to voice their opinions about justice in a period increasingly fraught with sectional and societal tensions in the leadup to the Civil War.
Recommended Citation
Girard d'Albissin, Alexis, "DIPLOMACY, STEAMSHIPS, AND JURIES: THE FAILED SUPPRESSION OF THE SLAVE TRADE DURING THE NINETEENTH CENTURY" (2020). Theses & ETDs. 5941.
https://digitalcommons.ncf.edu/theses_etds/5941