Slavery Punitions in the United States
The Second Question: How shall Violations be punished? (the Period of Attempted Suppression of Slavery)
In the book “The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America 1638-1870” (1), W. E. B. Du Bois explained the following: The half-dozen specific propositions reduce themselves to two: 1. A violation should be considered a crime or felony, and be punished by death; 2. A violation should be considered a misdemeanor, and be punished by fine and imprisonment.33
Advocates of the severer punishment dwelt on the enormity of the offence. It was “one of the highest crimes man could 105commit,” and “a captain of a ship engaged in this traffic was guilty of murder.”34 The law of God punished the crime with death, and any one would rather be hanged than be enslaved.35 It was a peculiarly deliberate crime, in which the offender did not act in sudden passion, but had ample time for reflection.36 Then, too, crimes of much less magnitude are punished with death. Shall we punish the stealer of $50 with death, and the man-stealer with imprisonment only?37 Piracy, forgery, and fraudulent sinking of vessels are punishable with death, “yet these are crimes only against property; whereas the importation of slaves, a crime committed against the liberty of man, and inferior only to murder or treason, is accounted nothing but a misdemeanor.”38 Here, indeed, lies the remedy for the evil of freeing illegally imported Negroes,—in making the penalty so severe that none will be brought in; if the South is sincere, “they will unite to a man to execute the law.”39 To free such Negroes is dangerous; to enslave them, wrong; to return them, impracticable; to indenture them, difficult,—therefore, by a death penalty, keep them from being imported.40 Here the East had a chance to throw back the taunts of the South, by urging the South to unite with them in hanging the New England slave-traders, assuring the South that “so far from charging their Southern brethren with cruelty or severity in hanging them, they would acknowledge the favor with gratitude.”41 Finally, if the Southerners would refuse to execute so severe a law because they did not consider the offence great, they would probably refuse to execute any law at all for the same reason.42
The opposition answered that the death penalty was more than proportionate to the crime, and therefore “immoral.”43 “I 106cannot believe,” said Stanton of Rhode Island, “that a man ought to be hung for only stealing a negro.”44 It was argued that the trade was after all but a “transfer from one master to another;”45 that slavery was worse than the slave-trade, and the South did not consider slavery a crime: how could it then punish the trade so severely and not reflect on the institution?46 Severity, it was said, was also inexpedient: severity often increases crime; if the punishment is too great, people will sympathize with offenders and will not inform against them. Said Mr. Mosely: “When the penalty is excessive or disproportioned to the offence, it will naturally create a repugnance to the law, and render its execution odious.”47 John Randolph argued against even fine and imprisonment, “on the ground that such an excessive penalty could not, in such case, be constitutionally imposed by a Government possessed of the limited powers of the Government of the United States.”48
The bill as passed punished infractions as follows:—
For equipping a slaver, a fine of $20,000 and forfeiture of the ship.
For transporting Negroes, a fine of $5000 and forfeiture of the ship and Negroes.
For transporting and selling Negroes, a fine of $1000 to $10,000, imprisonment from 5 to 10 years, and forfeiture of the ship and Negroes.
For knowingly buying illegally imported Negroes, a fine of $800 for each Negro, and forfeiture.