I found it disconcerting how literally he keeps to his topic. Not wrong for an academic, but misleading for a reader.
The article pretty much stops in 1808 as far as North America is concerned, stating that "both Britain (1807) and the United States (1808) finally ended their slave trades; the Danes had been first in 1802. By then, the US no longer needed imported Africans because North America’s slave population was expanding and provided enough slaves for local use."
True, but let's not forget the rest of the story.
"Virginia slaveowners won a major victory when Thomas Jefferson’s 1808 prohibition of the African slave trade protected the domestic slave markets for slave-breeding."
www.smithsonianmag.com
"After an 1808 act of Congress abolished the international slave trade, a domestic trade flourished. Richmond became the largest slave-trading center in the Upper South, and the slave trade was Virginia’s largest industry. It accounted for the sale of as many as two million people from Richmond to the Deep South, where the cotton industry provided a market for enslaved labor."
Virginia’s 550,000 slaves constituted one third of the state’s population in 1860.
www.virginiahistory.org
"During the 1820s, Virginia’s domestic slave trade evolved from a loosely organized network of itinerate traders into a leading example of America’s market revolution. Major trading centers emerged in Richmond, Washington, Baltimore, and Norfolk. From these centers, slaves could be shipped around Florida on specially outfitted sailing vessels and later on steamers that could reach New Orleans in 19 days. Large slave-trading organizations also emerged. Alexandria-based Franklin and Armfield, the biggest of these firms, kept its ships moving from November to April, picking up slaves in Richmond and Baltimore and taking them to depots in New Orleans and Natchez, Miss."
Mother of the Domestic Slave Trade
