Suppression of the African Slave-Trade to the United States of America: 1638-1870

Nearly half of the book that I have is made up of appendices, indicating the degree to which DuBois thoroughly, painstakingly researched this essential aspect of American history. While written by an African-American, it is all the more powerful because of the way DuBois lets the evidence speak for itself. There is no ranting or raving, not even much editorializing. Its calm, even, measured tone is remarkable, hypnotic. And the most powerful aspect of his study may be in the reader's natural tendency to apply its insights into American government as it relates to current unresolved issues, say global warming for example, or our political and/or military involvement outside our boundaries. On slavery, we were very slow to react to the issue, and did so with weak-hearted half-measures, until the national calmaity of the Civil War resolved the issue for once and for all -- but at what a risk, and what a cost! In the end, as Dubois says, it took a "fortuitous commingling of moral, political, and economic motives" to end the slave trade and slavery itself once and for all. I was so disappointed when I reached the appendices and realized that the book was over! I found it a gripping read that has fundamentally changed the way I look at America and its governmental processes.

W.E.B. Du Bois, in this 1896 doctoral thesis, uses primarily economic rationales to explain the United States government's lack of suppression of the African slave-trade even after outlawing it in 1808. Du Bois shows how state and federal laws written to suppress the slave trade either lacked enforcement or were eventually repealed to a point at which "the American slave-trade finally came to be carried on principally by United States capital, in United States ships, offered by United States citizens, and under the United States flag." The political efforts to suppress the slave trade are depicted as futile attempts to go against prevalent laissez-faire economic attitudes. The objective way Du Bois writes makes this survey of the American slave trade relevant and shocking, and may explain Du Bois' eventual embrace of socialism due to his focus on economic rationales and disenchantment with what is portrayed as systemic institutional promotion of slavery by a United States government more interested in laissez-faire forces than doing what was right.