1826 Lieutenant McKeever urgently petitions Congress for his prize-money of $4,415.15, which he has not yet received.[106] The “Constitution” was for some inexplicable reason released from bond, and the whole case fades in a very thick cloud of official mist.  In 1831 Congress sought to inquire into the final disposition of the slaves.  The information given was never printed; but as late as 1836 a certain Calvin Mickle petitions Congress for reimbursement for the slaves sold, for their hire, for their natural increase, for expenses incurred, and for damages.[107]

64. The Supplementary Acts, 1818-1820. To remedy the obvious defects of the Act of 1807 two courses were possible:  one, to minimize the crime of transportation, and, by encouraging informers, to concentrate efforts against the buying of smuggled slaves; the other, to make the crime of transportation so great that no slaves would be imported.  The Act of 1818 tried the first method; that of 1819, the second.[108] The latter was obviously the more upright and logical, and the only method deserving thought even in 1807; but the Act of 1818 was the natural descendant of that series of compromises which began in the Constitutional Convention, and which, instead of postponing the settlement of critical questions to more favorable times, rather aggravated and complicated them.

The immediate cause of the Act of 1818 was the Amelia Island scandal.[109] Committees in both Houses reported bills, but that of the Senate finally passed.  There does not appear to have been very much debate.[110] The sale of Africans for the benefit of the informer and of the United States was strongly urged “as the only means of executing the laws against the slave trade as experience had fully demonstrated since the origin of the prohibition."[111] This proposition was naturally opposed as “inconsistent with the principles of our Government, and calculated to throw as wide open the door to the importation of slaves as it was before the existing prohibition."[112] The act, which became a law April 20, 1818,[113] was a poorly constructed compromise, which virtually acknowledged the failure of efforts to control the trade, and sought to remedy defects by pitting cupidity against cupidity, informer against thief.  One-half of all forfeitures and fines were to go to the informer, and penalties for violation were changed as follows:—­

    For equipping a slaver, instead of a fine of $20,000, a fine of
    $1000 to $5000 and imprisonment from 3 to 7 years.

    For transporting Negroes, instead of a fine of $5000 and
    forfeiture of ship and Negroes, a fine of $1000 to $5000 and
    imprisonment from 3 to 7 years.

    For actual importation, instead of a fine of $1000 to $10,000
    and imprisonment from 5 to 10 years, a fine of $1000 to
    $10,000, and imprisonment from 3 to 7 years.

    For knowingly buying illegally imported Negroes, instead of a
    fine of $800 for each Negro and forfeiture, a fine of $1000 for
    each Negro.