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1 Report of Special Committee on So Much of Gov. Adams' Message as Relates to the Slave Trade 1 (1858)

handle is hein.slavery/rscsmgva0001 and id is 1 raw text is: 











                            REPORPT

 OF  SPECIAL     COLIITTEE        ON   SO  MUCH     OF   GOV.   ADAMS'
        MESSAGE AS RELATES TO THE SLAVE TRADE.


   The  Special Committe   to whom  was referred so much  of the first Mes-
 sage of Governor Adams,  .comunieated   to the General Assembly  at their
 last session, as relates to the slave trade, haxe considered the subject with
 the care and attention which its importance demanded, and  now ask leave
 to submit the following Report:
   There  are two facts in the condition of nearly all of the slavohohling
States of this Confederacy, which can scarcely escape the nutice of even the
most  cursot'y observer. These  are, first, that their productive industry is
almost  exclusively agricultural; aid, second, that the manual labor  oen-
ployed  in their agriculture, is, with very little exception, that of negro
slaves.  It is, to say the least, not a rash or unreasonable conclu-ion, that
facts so general and uniform, are the results of natural causes existing in
the soil and climate, and, perhaps, other inherent poeuliarities of the coun-
try, less obvious to  the senses.  When   the Englih   beman to  establish
settlements on the North  American  Continent, most of the principal mari-
time nations of Europe  had been, for many years, actively antd extensively
carrying  on the trade in  negro slaves, purchased on the western coast of
Africa, and transported to the European Colonies in the West India Islands,
and on  the continent of South America.   The  first importations into Vir-
ginia are said to have taken place in 1620, about half a century before the
settlement of South Carolina, and slaves must have been brouglht into this
colony very soon after its organization, for we find among the Legislative
Acts, passed in 1683, only one year later than the earliest Acts of which
any  record remains,  An   Act  inhibiting the trading with  servants or
slaves, and 1An Act  to prevent runaways.  From  that time the importa-
tion of negroes from Africa was  continued with  little or no interruption,
until the year 1808, when  it was prohibited by an Act of Congress. Dur-
ing the same  period the ingress and settlement of emigrants from Europe
were perfectly free and unrestricted, and so they have continued to be ever
since the importation of slaves was forbidden by law, and entirely arrested.
Yet, notwithstanding that, during the whole period of forty years which in.

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