Meantime the government opened negotiations with Great Britain, and the treaty of 1862 was signed June 7, and carried out by Act of Congress, July 11.[95] Specially commissioned war vessels of either government were by this agreement authorized to search merchant vessels on the high seas and specified coasts, and if they were found to be slavers, or, on account of their construction or equipment, were suspected to be such, they were to be sent for condemnation to one of the mixed courts established at New York, Sierra Leone, and the Cape of Good Hope.  These courts, consisting of one judge and one arbitrator on the part of each government, were to judge the facts without appeal, and upon condemnation by them, the culprits were to be punished according to the laws of their respective countries.  The area in which this Right of Search could be exercised was somewhat enlarged by an additional article to the treaty, signed in 1863.  In 1870 the mixed courts were abolished, but the main part of the treaty was left in force.  The Act of July 17, 1862, enabled the President to contract with foreign governments for the apprenticing of recaptured Africans in the West Indies,[96] and in 1864 the coastwise slave-trade was forever prohibited.[97] By these measures the trade was soon checked, and before the end of the war entirely suppressed.[98] The vigilance of the government, however, was not checked, and as late as 1866 a squadron of ten ships, with one hundred and thirteen guns, patrolled the slave coast.[99] Finally, the Thirteenth Amendment legally confirmed what the war had already accomplished, and slavery and the slave-trade fell at one blow.[100]

FOOTNOTES: 

  [1] British and Foreign State Papers, 1854-5, p. 1156.

  [2] Cluskey, Political Text-Book (14th ed.), p. 585.

  [3] De Bow’s Review, XXII. 223; quoted from Andrew Hunter of
      Virginia.

  [4] Ibid., XVIII. 628.

  [5] Ibid., XXII. 91, 102, 217, 221-2.

  [6] From a pamphlet entitled “A New Southern Policy, or the
      Slave Trade as meaning Union and Conservatism;” quoted in
      Etheridge’s speech, Feb. 21, 1857:  Congressional Globe, 34
      Cong. 3 sess., Appendix, p. 366.

  [7] De Bow’s Review, XXIII. 298-320.  A motion to table the
      motion on the 8th article was supported only by Kentucky,
      Tennessee, North Carolina, and Maryland.  Those voting for
      Sneed’s motion were Georgia, Maryland, North Carolina, and
      Tennessee.  The appointment of a slave-trade committee was at
      first defeated by a vote of 48 to 44.  Finally a similar motion
      was passed, 52 to 40.

  [8] De Bow’s Review, XXIV. 473-491, 579-605.  The Louisiana
      delegation alone did not vote for the last resolution, the
      vote of her delegation being evenly divided.