Meantime, news came from the seas southeast of Carolina and Georgia which influenced Congress more powerfully than humanitarian arguments had done.  The wild revolt of despised slaves, the rise of a noble black leader, and the birth of a new nation of Negro freemen frightened the pro-slavery advocates and armed the anti-slavery agitation.  As a result, a Quaker petition for a law against the transport traffic in slaves was received without a murmur in 1794,[35] and on March 22 the first national act against the slave-trade became a law.[36] It was designed “to prohibit the carrying on the Slave Trade from the United States to any foreign place or country,” or the fitting out of slavers in the United States for that country.  The penalties for violation were forfeiture of the ship, a fine of $1000 for each person engaged, and of $200 for each slave transported.  If the Quakers thought this a triumph of anti-slavery sentiment, they were quickly undeceived.  Congress might willingly restrain the country from feeding West Indian turbulence, and yet be furious at a petition like that of 1797,[37] calling attention to “the oppressed state of our brethren of the African race” in this country, and to the interstate slave-trade.  “Considering the present extraordinary state of the West India Islands and of Europe,” young John Rutledge insisted “that ‘sufficient for the day is the evil thereof,’ and that they ought to shut their door against any thing which had a tendency to produce the like confusion in this country.”  After excited debate and some investigation by a special committee, the petition was ordered, in both Senate and House, to be withdrawn.

48. The Act of 1800. In the next Congress, the sixth, another petition threw the House into paroxysms of slavery debate.  Waln of Pennsylvania presented the petition of certain free colored men of Pennsylvania praying for a revision of the slave-trade laws and of the fugitive-slave law, and for prospective emancipation.[38] Waln moved the reference of this memorial to a committee already appointed on the revision of the loosely drawn and poorly enforced Act of 1794.[39] Rutledge of South Carolina immediately arose.  He opposed the motion, saying, that these petitions were continually coming in and stirring up discord; that it was a good thing the Negroes were in slavery; and that already “too much of this new-fangled French philosophy of liberty and equality” had found its way among them.  Others defended the right of petition, and declared that none wished Congress to exceed its powers.  Brown of Rhode Island, a new figure in Congress, a man of distinguished services and from a well-known family, boldly set forth the commercial philosophy of his State.  “We want money,” said he, “we want a navy; we ought therefore to use the means to obtain it.  We ought to go farther than has yet been proposed, and repeal the bills in question altogether, for why should we see Great Britain getting all the slave trade to themselves; why may