On May 9, 1803, President Thomas Jefferson wrote to political ally Senator Christopher Ellery of Rhode Island to explain why he would not pardon a convicted slave trader. Despite a petition signed by what must have seemed every person of note in that state, the individual in question would have to serve at least two years in prison “as a terror to others meditating the same crime.”

Jefferson’s forceful condemnation of this enslaver was indicative of a larger campaign waged by his administration against the slave trade. Andrew Fagal examines an understudied aspect of Jeffersonian governance in the early American republic: the ways in which the federal government acted to suppress the slave trade prior to 1808. Beginning in 1801, the Jefferson administration waged a vigorous campaign against the international slave trade by strictly enforcing anti-slave trading laws passed in 1794 and 1800. Additionally, the administration utilized an 1803 act that made it a federal crime to violate state laws prohibiting the slave trade and ramped up prosecutions in 1803, which eventually contributed to South Carolina reopening its trade in December 1803. This governance required the active participation of customs officers, revenue cutter captains, consuls, and U.S. district attorneys. Together, these institutions acting under direct orders from Jefferson were able to secure several important legal victories spanning the eastern seaboard from Massachusetts to Georgia.

About the Speaker:

Andrew J. B. Fagal is an associate editor with The Papers of Thomas Jefferson at Princeton University. He has served as an editor since 2014 and has participated in compiling volumes No. 42, onward. A political historian, he completed his Ph.D. in 2013 at Binghamton University, State University of New York.