End of the American transatlantic slave trade '', . The laws that ultimately abolished the
Atlantic slave trade came about as a result of the efforts of
British abolitionist Christian groups such as the
Society of Friends, known as Quakers, and
Evangelicals led by
William Wilberforce, whose efforts through the
Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade led to the passage of the
1807 Slave Trade Act by the
British parliament in 1807. However it was not until 1937 that the trade of slaves was made illegal throughout the British Empire, with
Nigeria and
Bahrain being the last British territories to abolish slavery. This led to increased calls for
abolition in America, supported by members of the
U.S. Congress from both the North and the South, as well as President
Thomas Jefferson. At the same time that the importation of enslaved Africans was being restricted or eliminated, the United States was undergoing a rapid expansion of
cotton,
sugarcane, and
rice production in the
Deep South and the West. The invention of the
cotton gin enabled the profitable cultivation of short-staple cotton, which could be produced more widely than other types; this led to
the economic preeminence of cotton throughout the Deep South. Enslaved people were treated as a
commodity by owners and traders alike, and were regarded as the crucial labor for the production of lucrative cash crops that fed the
triangular trade. The enslaved people were treated as
chattel assets, similar to the legal treatment of farm animals. Enslavers passed laws regulating slavery and the slave trade, designed to protect their financial investments. The enslaved workers had no more rights than a cow or a horse, or as infamously put by the
U.S. Supreme Court in the case of
Dred Scott v. Sandford, "they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect". On large plantations, enslaved families were separated for different types of labor. Men tended to be assigned to large field gangs. Workers were assigned to the task for which they were best physically suited, in the judgment of the
overseer.
Breeding in response to end of slave imports The
prohibition on the importation of slaves into the United States after 1808 limited the supply of slaves in the United States. This came at a time when the invention of the cotton gin enabled the expansion of cultivation in the uplands of short-staple cotton, leading to clearing lands cultivating cotton through large areas of the Deep South, especially the
Black Belt. The demand for labor in the area increased sharply and led to an expansion of the internal slave market. At the same time, the
Upper South had an excess number of enslaved people because of a shift to mixed-crops agriculture, which was less labor-intensive than tobacco. To add to the supply of enslaved people, enslavers looked at the fertility of enslaved women as part of their productivity, and intermittently forced the women to have large numbers of children. During this time period, the terms "breeders", "breeding slaves", "child bearing women", "breeding period", and "too old to breed" became familiar. Planters in the Upper South states started selling enslaved people to the Deep South, generally through slave traders such as
Franklin and Armfield. Louisville, Kentucky, on the
Ohio River was a major slave market and port for shipping slaves downriver by the Mississippi to the South.
New Orleans had the largest slave market in the country and became the fourth largest city in the US by 1840 and the wealthiest, mostly because of its slave trade and associated businesses. ==Accounts of slaves==