From 1501 to 1867 more than 12.5 million Africans were brought to the
Americas in chains, and many millions died as a result of the slave
trade. The US constitution set a 20-year time limit on US participation
in the trade, and on January 1, 1808, it was abolished. And yet, despite
the spread of abolitionism on both sides of the Atlantic, despite
numerous laws and treaties passed to curb the slave trade, and despite
the dispatch of naval squadrons to patrol the coasts of Africa and the
Americas, the slave trade did not end in 1808. Fully 25 percent of all
the enslaved Africans to arrive in the Americas were brought after the
US ban - 3.2 million people.
This breakthrough history, based on years of research into private
correspondence; shipping manifests; bills of laden; port, diplomatic,
and court records; and periodical literature, makes undeniably clear how
decisive illegal slavery was to the making of the United States. US
economic development and westward expansion, as well as the growth and
wealth of the North, not just the South, was a direct result and driver
of illegal slavery. The Monroe Doctrine was created to protect the
illegal slave trade.
In an engrossing, elegant, enjoyably readable narrative, Stephen M.
Chambers not only shows how illegal slavery has been wholly overlooked
in histories of the early Republic, he reveals the crucial role the
slave trade played in the lives and fortunes of figures like John Quincy
Adams and the "generation of 1815," the post-revolution cohort that
shaped US foreign policy. This is a landmark history that will forever
revise the way the early Republic and American economic development is
seen.
