Commercial Conventions of 1857–1858 in the United States
Commercial Conventions of 1857–1858 and the Slave Final Crisis (1850–1870)
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 first piece of regular business that came before the Commercial Convention at Knoxville, Tennessee, August 10, 1857, was a proposal to recommend the abrogation of the 8th Article of the Treaty of Washington, on the slave-trade. An amendment offered by Sneed of Tennessee, declaring it inexpedient and against settled policy to reopen the trade, was voted down, Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Virginia refusing to agree to it. The original motion then passed; and the radicals, satisfied with their success in the first skirmish, again secured the appointment of a committee to report at the next meeting on the subject of reopening the slave-trade.7 This next meeting assembled May 10, 1858, in a Gulf State, Alabama, in the city of Montgomery. Spratt of171 South Carolina, the slave-trade champion, presented an elaborate majority report from the committee, and recommended the following resolutions:—
1. Resolved, That slavery is right, and that being right, there can be no wrong in the natural means to its formation.
2. Resolved, That it is expedient and proper that the foreign slave trade should be re-opened, and that this Convention will lend its influence to any legitimate measure to that end.
3. Resolved, That a committee, consisting of one from each slave State, be appointed to consider of the means, consistent with the duty and obligations of these States, for re-opening the foreign slave-trade, and that they report their plan to the next meeting of this Convention.
Yancey, from the same committee, presented a minority report, which, though it demanded the repeal of the national prohibitory laws, did not advocate the reopening of the trade by the States.
Much debate ensued. Pryor of Virginia declared the majority report “a proposition to dissolve the Union.” Yancey declared that “he was for disunion now. [Applause.]” He defended the principle of the slave-trade, and said: “If it is right to buy slaves in Virginia and carry them to New Orleans, why is it not right to buy them in Cuba, Brazil, or Africa, and carry them there?” The opposing speeches made little attempt to meet this uncomfortable logic; but, nevertheless, opposition enough was developed to lay the report on the table until the next convention, with orders that it be printed, in the mean time, as a radical campaign document. Finally the convention passed a resolution:—
That it is inexpedient for any State, or its citizens, to attempt to re-open the African slave-trade while that State is one of the United States of America.8