A slave could not hold property, and anything acquired by him belonged to his master. The testimony of a slave would not be received in a civil action in which a white person was a party. However, slaves could testify in a criminal suit in which other slaves were defendants, or in ac tions to secure their freedom. The right of an owner to give a slave his freedom was recognized, and a free negro could bold property.
Sentiment against the increase of the negro population and the slave trade early developed in America. English colonies by numerous stat utes from 1695 imposed duties to discourage or prohibit slave traffic, but British merchants and commercial policy defeated these efforts. The enforced slave trade appears in State constitu tions, and in the first draft of the Declaration of Independence as a justification of the American Revolution. Virginia by protest in 1772, Con necticut by statute in 1774, and Delaware by her Constitution in 1776 attempted to stop the trade, and Virginia, by an act of 1778, was the first political community to prohibit it with efficient penalties. Similar action in nine other States during 1783-1789; abolition of slavery in Massa chusetts and Pennsylvania in 1780; the desire of John Jay to make prohibition a feature of the Treaty of Paris of 1783; the struggle for prohibi tion in the Federal Convention. resulting in the compromise limiting the duration of the trade to twenty years, at the end of which period the United States passed the act of 1807 abolishing it, show the priority and force of American sen timent against the slave trade. Similar senti ment developed in Europe. Denmark by royal order prohibited the trade after 1802 in her pos sessions. France, following the doctrine of her Revolution, abolished her colonial slavery and slave trade in 1793, hut Napoleon soon undid the work of the Convention. Napoleon's decree of March 29, 1815, however, confirmed by the Treaty of Paris and a law of 1818, made the trade illegal. In England Dellwyn, Sharpe, Clarkson, and Wilberforce began to organize anti slave trade opinion in 1787. In 1788 Dolben and Pitt moved bills for its regulation or suppression. But mercantile interests repressed the movement until 1806, when the Grenville-Fox Ministry secured the of acts for the partial aboli tion of the slave trade, which were followed by an act on March 25, 1807, for total abolition.
The Jay-Fox entente of 1783 paved the way for the joint pledge of England and the United States, in 1806, to strive for international abo lition. This object appears in treaties of Eng land with Denmark, Portugal, and Sweden, during 1810-1814. France then pledged aid to British ad vocacy of abolition in the Congress of Vienna. The Netherlands, by royal decree in 1814. abol ished the traffic. Spain restricted it, and Portu gal in 1815 agreed to prohibit it in the Northern Hemisphere. In the Treaty of Ghent the United States and Great Britain again pledged their endeavors for suppression. The United States by supplementary acts in ISIS and 1819 en deavored to enforce her prohibition. From this time to 1S40 England's chief efforts were bent on establishing an international right of search in time of peace to stop the illicit slave traffic, which increased from 40,000 a year in 1820 to 200,000 in 1837. In 1827 Portu
gal and Brazil promised to abolish the trade in 1829. A second time England interested a Eu ropean congress, that of Verona in 1822, against the trade, now carried on with 352 ships. land urged a declaration in international law making the trade piracy, but secured, as at Vi enna, only a general denunciation of the traffic. The United States and other Powers opposed right of search in time of peace as dishonor to the flag and a means of securing England's naval supremacy. (See SEArten, RIGHT OF.) Though not a party at Verona, the United States prompt ly favored international declaration of the slave trade as piracy, and prepared a treaty with Eng land to this effect in 1824. But, as England was unwilling to yield her claim to search in Ameri can waters, the Senate rejected the treaty and the United States could only urge the international declaration. By 1833 Sweden, France, Denmark, the Manse Towns, and some Italian States bad agreed in part to England's contention for mutual search, but slavery had become such a delicate question in American politics at this time that the United States refused England's proposed concessions. In 1842 the United States and England agreed on joint naval cruising on the African coast to repress the trade. English statutes in 1824 and 1837 made the slave trade piracy punishable by death or life transportation. Conferees of England. France, Austria, and Prus sia. in London, in 1838, proposed the Quintuple Treaty of December 29. 1841, declaring the trade piracy and admitting mutual right of search. On account of this admission France refused to ratify, and 'Lewis Cass (q.v.), the American Minister at Paris, denied its application as in ternational law to the United States. Belgium joined, in 1845, in the Quintuple Treaty, and the United States, though refusing England's in vitation to an international conference in 1860, completely changed attitude with the advent of Lincoln and Seward, admitted mutual right of search in 1862, and imposed the death penalty on smugglers of slaves. Suppression was organized, but until 1866 required a United States naval squadron on the African coast. The French, Spanish, Portuguese, and United States flags had protected slavers. Northerners sold to South erners in Florida, Texas, and Cuba, but the Con federacy in 1861 declared against the trade. The Civil War and the Thirteenth Amendment practically and legally completed the extinction of slavery and the slave trade in the United States. The English, inspired by Livingstone, sought to put an end to the slave trade in the Sudan, but the efforts of Baker and Gordon proved ineffective in the face of the Mandist con vulsions. Tewfik, however, prohibited the Egyp tian slave trade in 1884. The Powers in the Berlin COD ferenee in 1884-85 promised their efforts for repression, and in 1S90 an act for this purpose resulted from the international confer ence, including Turkey, Persia, Zanzibar, and the United States, invited by Leopold of Belgium. Enforcement of the General Act of Brussels is encouraging if slow, but if conscientiously done will end a trade now connived at even by officials of the Congo Free State.