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During the 1790s post-Revolution American merchant shipping began to be harassed by France and thus America began thinking about constructing a force to defend her merchant marine fleets.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_Act_of_1794
Meanwhile across the seas in Britain, a contigent of anti-slavery men are lobbying and seeking an end ban to the practice of slavery.
But to speak of human rights in 1793, the year France declares war on Britain, is to risk being labeled a friend of the French Republic.
Virtually all abolitionist acts and activities were prohibited with Parliament's passage of severe civil liberties restrictions like the Seditious Meetings Act and the Treasonable and Seditious Practices Act of 1795.
Due to these acts, the organizing activities required for the abolition movement - meetings, debates, circulating petitions - were now viewed as seditious and subversive.
The anti-abolition lobby in Parliament was allowed to defend slavery by saying if the slave "trade" (Europe<->Africa<->West Indies) were abolished this would be like granting the French to have all the West Indies. i.e. Haiti
With ongoing hostilities with France, slavery was seen as essential to the empire.
Meanwhile on January 1, 1804, Haiti proclaimed its independence to became the second independent state in the Western Hemisphere (U.S. was the 1st) and the first free black republic in the world.
The accompanying losses of a major source of western revenue shook Napoleon's faith in the promise of the western world, encouraging him to unload other French assets in the region including the territory known as Louisiana. Many of the freed slaves of Saint-Domingue landed and settled in New Orleans.
It would have to be until 1806-07, when maritime lawyer and abolitionist James Stephen, recently returned from the Indies, suggested a (anti-French!) Bill, preventing and curtailing French commerce by prohibiting British slavers from selling their slaves to American or French planters with the Foreign Slave Trade Act which quickly passed and had the effect of prohibiting two thirds of the British slave trade.
The next year, a bill to abolish the slave trade altogether finally passed.
Ending the slave trade would lead to the abolition of slavery with
the Slavery Abolition Act in 1833.
source(s): Wik
http://www.bluemassgroup.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=6794
note: British captains who were caught continuing the trade were fined £100 for every slave found on board. However, this law did not stop the British slave trade. If slave-ships were in danger of being captured by the British navy, captains often reduced the fines they had to pay by ordering the slaves to be thrown into the sea.
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Posted by mach1231
at 12:00 AM PDT
Updated: Friday, June 13, 2008 12:45 AM PDT
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