On Tuesday, October 3, 1783, a deputation from the Yearly Meeting of the Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware Friends asked leave to present a petition.  Leave was granted the following day,[37] but no further minute appears.  According to the report of the Friends, the petition was against the slave-trade; and “though the Christian rectitude of the concern was by the Delegates generally acknowledged, yet not being vested with the powers of legislation, they declined promoting any public remedy against the gross national iniquity of trafficking in the persons of fellow-men."[38]

The only legislative activity in regard to the trade during the Confederation was taken by the individual States.[39] Before 1778 Connecticut, Vermont, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Virginia had by law stopped the further importation of slaves, and importation had practically ceased in all the New England and Middle States, including Maryland.  In consequence of the revival of the slave-trade after the War, there was then a lull in State activity until 1786, when North Carolina laid a prohibitive duty, and South Carolina, a year later, began her series of temporary prohibitions.  In 1787-1788 the New England States forbade the participation of their citizens in the traffic.  It was this wave of legislation against the traffic which did so much to blind the nation as to the strong hold which slavery still had on the country.

FOOTNOTES: 

  [1] These figures are from the Report of the Lords of the
      Committee of Council, etc. (London, 1789).

  [2] Sheffield, Observations on American Commerce, p. 28;
      P.L.  Ford, The Association of the First Congress, in
      Political Science Quarterly, VI. 615-7.

  [3] Cf., e.g., Arthur Lee’s letter to R.H.  Lee, March 18,
      1774, in which non-intercourse is declared “the only advisable
      and sure mode of defence”:  Force, American Archives, 4th
      Ser., I. 229.  Cf. also Ibid., p. 240; Ford, in Political
      Science Quarterly, VI. 614-5.

  [4] Goodloe, Birth of the Republic, p. 260.

  [5] Staples, Annals of Providence (1843), p. 235.

  [6] Force, American Archives, 4th Ser., I. 735.  This was
      probably copied from the Virginia resolve.

  [7] Force, American Archives, 4th Ser., I. 600.

  [8] Ibid., I. 494, 530.  Cf. pp. 523, 616, 641, etc.

  [9] Ibid., I. 687.

 [10] Ibid., I. 511, 526.  Cf. also p. 316.

 [11] Journals of Cong., I. 20.  Cf.  Ford, in Political
      Science Quarterly, VI. 615-7.

 [12] John Adams, Works, II. 382.

 [13] Journals of Cong., I. 21.

 [14] Ibid., I. 24; Drayton; Memoirs of the American
      Revolution, I. 147; John Adams, Works, II. 394.