SEC. 5. And be it further enacted, That if any citizen of the United States, being of the crew or ship’s company of any foreign ship or vessel engaged in the slave trade, or any person whatever, being of the crew or ship’s company of any ship or vessel owned wholly or in part, or navigated for or in behalf of, any citizen or citizens of the United States, shall forcibly confine or detain, or aid and abet in forcibly confining or detaining, on board such ship or vessel any Negro or Mulatto not held to service by the laws of either of the States or Territories of the United States, with intent to make such Negro or Mulatto a slave, or shall on board any such ship or vessel offer or attempt to sell as a slave any Negro or Mulatto not held to service as aforesaid, or shall on the high seas or anywhere on tide water transfer or deliver over to any other ship or vessel any Negro or Mulatto not held to service as aforesaid, with intent to make such Negro or mulatto a slave, or shall land or deliver on shore from on board any such ship or vessel any such Negro or mulatto, with intent to make sale of, or having previously sold such Negro or Mulatto as a slave, such citizen or person shall be adjudged a pirate, and on conviction thereof before the circuit court of the United States for the district wherein he may be brought or found shall suffer death.

And on the 28th February, 1823, the House of Representatives, by a majority of 131 to 9, passed a resolution to the following effect: 

Resolved, That the President of the United States be requested to enter upon and prosecute from time to time such negotiations with the several maritime powers of Europe and America as he may deem expedient for the effectual abolition of the African slave trade and its ultimate denunciation as piracy under the law of nations, by the consent of the civilized world.

By the act of Congress above referred to, whereby the most effectual means that could be devised were adopted for the extirpation of the slave trade, the wish of the United States was explicitly declared, that all nations might concur in a similar policy.  It could only be by such concurrence that the great object could be accomplished, and it was by negotiation and treaty alone that such concurrence could be obtained, commencing with one power and extending it to others.  The course, therefore, which the Executive, who had concurred in the act, had to pursue was distinctly marked out for it.  Had there, however, been any doubt respecting it, the resolution of the House of Representatives, the branch which might with strict propriety express its opinion, could not fail to have removed it.

By the tenth article of the treaty of peace between the United States and Great Britain, concluded at Ghent, it was stipulated that both parties should use their best endeavors to accomplish the abolition of the African slave trade.  This object has been accordingly pursued by both Governments with great earnestness, by separate acts of legislation, and by negotiation almost uninterrupted, with the purpose of establishing a conceit between them in some measure which might secure its accomplishment.