The Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves of 1807 (2 Stat. 426, enacted March 2, 1807) is a United States federal law that stated that no new slaves were permitted to be imported into the United States. It took effect in 1808, the earliest date permitted by the United States Constitution.
This act, a part of the general trend toward abolishing the slave trade (led by Great Britain), ended the legality of the U.S.-based transatlantic slave trade. However, it was not always well enforced, and slavery itself continued in the United States until the end of the Civil War and the adoption of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution.
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Famous quotes containing the words act, prohibiting, importation and/or slaves:
“Dangerous conceits are in their natures poisons,
Which at the first are scarce found to distaste,
But with a little act upon the blood
Burn like the mines of sulphur.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
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“Art is not a treasure in the past or an importation from another land, but part of the present life of all living and creating peoples.”
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“I rejoice that America has resisted. Three millions of people, so dead to all the feelings of liberty, as voluntarily to submit to be slaves, would have been fit instruments to make slaves of the rest.”
—William Pitt, The Elder, Lord Chatham (1708–1778)