40.  Influence of the Haytian Revolution. 41.  Legislation of the Southern States. 42.  Legislation of the Border States. 43.  Legislation of the Eastern States. 44.  First Debate in Congress, 1789. 45.  Second Debate in Congress, 1790. 46.  The Declaration of Powers, 1790. 47.  The Act of 1794. 48.  The Act of 1800. 49.  The Act of 1803. 50.  State of the Slave-Trade from 1789 to 1803. 51.  The South Carolina Repeal of 1803. 52.  The Louisiana Slave-Trade, 1803-1805. 53.  Last Attempts at Taxation, 1805-1806. 54.  Key-Note of the Period.

40. Influence of the Haytian Revolution. The role which the great Negro Toussaint, called L’Ouverture, played in the history of the United States has seldom been fully appreciated.  Representing the age of revolution in America, he rose to leadership through a bloody terror, which contrived a Negro “problem” for the Western Hemisphere, intensified and defined the anti-slavery movement, became one of the causes, and probably the prime one, which led Napoleon to sell Louisiana for a song, and finally, through the interworking of all these effects, rendered more certain the final prohibition of the slave-trade by the United States in 1807.

From the time of the reorganization of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, in 1787, anti-slavery sentiment became active.  New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia had strong organizations, and a national convention was held in 1794.  The terrible upheaval in the West Indies, beginning in 1791, furnished this rising movement with an irresistible argument.  A wave of horror and fear swept over the South, which even the powerful slave-traders of Georgia did not dare withstand; the Middle States saw their worst dreams realized, and the mercenary trade interests of the East lost control of the New England conscience.

41. Legislation of the Southern States. In a few years the growing sentiment had crystallized into legislation.  The Southern States took immediate measures to close their ports, first against West India Negroes, finally against all slaves.  Georgia, who had had legal slavery only from 1755, and had since passed no restrictive legislation, felt compelled in 1793[1] to stop the entry of free Negroes, and in 1798[2] to prohibit, under heavy penalties, the importation of all slaves.  This provision was placed in the Constitution of the State, and, although miserably enforced, was never repealed.

South Carolina was the first Southern State in which the exigencies of a great staple crop rendered the rapid consumption of slaves more profitable than their proper maintenance.  Alternating, therefore, between a plethora and a dearth of Negroes, she prohibited the slave-trade only for short periods.  In 1788[3] she had forbidden the trade for five years, and in 1792,[4] being peculiarly exposed to the West Indian insurrection, she quickly found it “inexpedient” to allow Negroes “from Africa, the West India