56. The First Question:  How shall illegally imported Africans be disposed of? The dozen or more propositions on the question of the disposal of illegally imported Africans may be divided into two chief heads, representing two radically opposed parties:  1.  That illegally imported Africans be free, although they might be indentured for a term of years or removed from the country. 2.  That such Africans be sold as slaves.[4] The arguments on these two propositions, which were many and far-reaching, may be roughly divided into three classes, political, constitutional, and moral.

The political argument, reduced to its lowest terms, ran thus:  those wishing to free the Negroes illegally imported declared that to enslave them would be to perpetrate the very evil which the law was designed to stop.  “By the same law,” they said, “we condemn the man-stealer and become the receivers of his stolen goods.  We punish the criminal, and then step into his place, and complete the crime."[5] They said that the objection to free Negroes was no valid excuse; for if the Southern people really feared this class, they would consent to the imposing of such penalties on illicit traffic as would stop the importation of a single slave.[6] Moreover, “forfeiture” and sale of the Negroes implied a property right in them which did not exist.[7] Waiving this technical point, and allowing them to be “forfeited” to the government, then the government should either immediately set them free, or, at the most, indenture them for a term of years; otherwise, the law would be an encouragement to violators.  “It certainly will be,” said they, “if the importer can find means to evade the penalty of the act; for there he has all the advantage of a market enhanced by our ineffectual attempt to prohibit."[8] They claimed that even the indenturing of the ignorant barbarian for life was better than slavery; and Sloan declared that the Northern States would receive the freed Negroes willingly rather than have them enslaved.[9]

The argument of those who insisted that the Negroes should be sold was tersely put by Macon:  “In adopting our measures on this subject, we must pass such a law as can be executed."[10] Early expanded this:  “It is a principle in legislation, as correct as any which has ever prevailed, that to give effect to laws you must not make them repugnant to the passions and wishes of the people among whom they are to operate.  How then, in this instance, stands the fact?  Do not gentlemen from every quarter of the Union prove, on the discussion of every question that has ever arisen in the House, having the most remote bearing on the giving freedom to the Africans in the bosom of our country, that it has excited the deepest sensibility in the breasts of those where slavery exists?  And why is this so?  It is, because those who, from experience, know the extent of the evil, believe that the most formidable aspect in which it can present itself, is by making these