The Early Imperial Republic by Michael A. Blaakman;Emily Conroy-Krutz;Noelani Arista;

Author:Michael A. Blaakman;Emily Conroy-Krutz;Noelani Arista;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lightning Source Inc. (Tier 2)

Migration and Jurisdiction on Slavery’s Frontier

The familiar connection between expanding slavery and expanding U.S. borders played out not only when plantations pushed onto fresh soil but also when the slave trade brought U.S. interests into borderland regions. In the early nineteenth century, the United States received comparably very few slaves from Africa relative to its peer slave societies in Cuba and Brazil. Still, slavers did sell in mainland North America.35 From the 1810s to the 1830s, two of the major landing sites for the slave trade sat on the borders of the United States, in northern Florida and in east Texas. As slavers sold their human cargo in these two regions, the traffic allowed U.S. planters to exert power in territory beyond U.S. borders. This coerced movement of people to Texas and Florida in turn helped set the stage for U.S. expansion into those regions and the making of plantation societies on Native lands.

Northern Florida, notably Amelia Island, served as a key spot for the transatlantic slave trade in mainland North America. Situated on the Eastern Seaboard, the Florida coast was well suited to receive transatlantic voyages. Moreover, northern Florida was a borderland, with Spanish, Seminole, and U.S. interests vying for control.36 Starting in 1812, and again in later decades, warfare marked the region as would-be U.S. invaders waged war against the Indigenous Creeks and Seminoles. As the U.S. Army sought to cement this land grab, the invaders also had to contend with the long-standing Spanish colonial interests in the region. In 1812, a group of men from Georgia began a rebellion against Spanish rule. Starting first on Amelia Island, they in time occupied a strip of the Florida panhandle and ratified a constitution to establish the Republic of East Florida. The breakaway republic lasted scarcely a year. Still, across the first decades of the nineteenth century, identities within and allegiance to empires remained fluid and contested, with Spanish and U.S. settlers making and breaking alliances with the Seminole and Creek Nations.37

In such a setting, it would be a challenge to enforce U.S. laws, let alone those as complex as anti–slave trade provisions. Sitting just beyond nominal U.S. borders, slavers could avoid U.S. jurisdiction by landing at Amelia Island and then transporting their hostages to nearby Savannah, Georgia. This system exploited a loophole in U.S. law: before the 1820s, when U.S. officials captured illegal slavers, the captive Africans would be turned over to the governor of the state they were in, as if they were any other cargo. The governor of Georgia, then, could elect to auction off any slaves illegally brought to the state, effectively sidestepping the prohibition on importing new slaves.38 Even if slavers were caught taking captives into Georgia, U.S. planters would still benefit from the trade, and U.S. interests in this border region would only grow stronger. With an approving nod from Washington, D.C., slave traders landed captives beyond U.S. borders and brought them into Georgia, one way or another, feeding the growing cotton revolution and expanding U.

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