May 17, 1775, Congress resolved unanimously “That all exportations to Quebec, Nova-Scotia, the Island of St. John’s, Newfoundland, Georgia, except the Parish of St. John’s, and to East and West Florida, immediately cease."[23] These measures brought the refractory colony to terms, and the Provincial Congress, July 4, 1775, finally adopted the “Association,” and resolved, among other things, “That we will neither import or purchase any Slave imported from Africa, or elsewhere, after this day."[24]

The non-importation agreement was in the beginning, at least, well enforced by the voluntary action of the loosely federated nation.  The slave-trade clause seems in most States to have been observed with the others.  In South Carolina “a cargo of near three hundred slaves was sent out of the Colony by the consignee, as being interdicted by the second article of the Association."[25] In Virginia the vigilance committee of Norfolk “hold up for your just indignation Mr. John Brown, Merchant, of this place,” who has several times imported slaves from Jamaica; and he is thus publicly censured “to the end that all such foes to the rights of British America may be publickly known ... as the enemies of American Liberty, and that every person may henceforth break off all dealings with him."[26]

29. Results of the Resolution. The strain of war at last proved too much for this voluntary blockade, and after some hesitancy Congress, April 3, 1776, resolved to allow the importation of articles not the growth or manufacture of Great Britain, except tea.  They also voted “That no slaves be imported into any of the thirteen United Colonies."[27] This marks a noticeable change of attitude from the strong words of two years previous:  the former was a definitive promise; this is a temporary resolve, which probably represented public opinion much better than the former.  On the whole, the conclusion is inevitably forced on the student of this first national movement against the slave-trade, that its influence on the trade was but temporary and insignificant, and that at the end of the experiment the outlook for the final suppression of the trade was little brighter than before.  The whole movement served as a sort of social test of the power and importance of the slave-trade, which proved to be far more powerful than the platitudes of many of the Revolutionists had assumed.

The effect of the movement on the slave-trade in general was to begin, possibly a little earlier than otherwise would have been the case, that temporary breaking up of the trade which the war naturally caused.  “There was a time, during the late war,” says Clarkson, “when the slave trade may be considered as having been nearly abolished."[28] The prices of slaves rose correspondingly high, so that smugglers made fortunes.[29] It is stated that in the years 1772-1778 slave merchants of Liverpool failed for the sum of L710,000.[30] All this, of course, might have resulted from the war, without the “Association;” but in the long run the “Association” aided in frustrating the very designs which the framers of the first resolve had in mind; for the temporary stoppage in the end created an extraordinary demand for slaves, and led to a slave-trade after the war nearly as large as that before.