5fish
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Yes, this was a thing starting around 1839 for many reason like the cost of slaves and shortage of slaves for new territories. It had a political following up and until 1861 when the Confederate Constitution banned the importation of slaves from outside its borders.
It was an issue in Lincoln's famed "House Divided" speech in 1858. He(Lincoln) implied Douglas would not stop the revival of the African slave trade for Douglas voted to allowed slavery into the territories.
The movement never caught fire in the South because it divided the south along many fault lines that this paper I found will show.
Here is a concise paper on the topic and a easy good read read,
link: http://abolition.nypl.org/print/revival_of_slave_trade/
Snips...
The reopening was first advocated in 1839 in the New Orleans Courier, but the campaign to make that wish a reality started in earnest in the early 1850s. Within a few years, the cry for the revival of the transatlantic slave trade had reached the Southern Commercial Conventions, the Houses of Representatives, and the Congress of the United States and had come to dominate the southern discourse.
Snips... advocates...
William Lowndes Yancey, a former U.S. senator from Alabama
Mississippi senator Jefferson Davis was all for it but only in Texas and the western territories; he was firmly against the introduction of Africans into his own state, where the enslaved population was large enough, he asserted, although it was not well distributed.
Snips... one reasons...
They were also concerned that the Free states were expanding, while the South could not claim new lands due to the scarcity of enslaved labor to work them. In addition, they saw their region as losing political power within the nation, due in part to a strong demographic increase in the North fed by European immigrants, while the South was cut off from its traditional supply of manpower: deported Africans. Spratt calculated that–if allowed to do so–each time the South were to introduce 50,000 Africans, it would gain 30,000 federal votes, according to the "3/5 clause."
Snips.. cost...
To those preoccupied with cheaper labor rather than politics, the revival advocates had a ready argument: the domestic slave trade that had uprooted more than a million African Americans from the Upper South had cost too much to the Deep South. Enslaved labor had become too expensive, as one commentator explained: "The old rule of pricing a negro by the price of cotton by the pound—that is to say, if cotton is worth twelve cents, a negro man is worth twelve hundred dollars, if at fifteen cents, then fifteen hundred dollars—does not seem to be regarded. Negroes are twenty-five per cent higher now, with cotton at ten and a half cents, than they were two or three years ago, when it was worth fifteen and sixteen cents. Men are demented upon the subject. A reverse will surely come." In the 1850s, a male "prime hand" in the Gulf States could cost $2,400, or about $48,000 in today's dollars. A newly arrived African, on the other hand, could be purchased for less than $800 ($16,000), or a third of the cost.
Snips...
Southern slaveholders had become wary of the poor, who did not own slaves and thus had little economic stake in the system. Moreover, as the cost of purchasing enslaved labor increased dramatically, this group was hopelessly locked out of the market. Wealthy planters feared that the lower classes might support the Yankees, and so the revival propagandists tried to establish a solid white front across social classes. With more and cheaper Africans available, more people could have slaves, they argued, and the peculiar institution would thus have more supporters.
Finally, all revivalists agreed that banning the international slave trade on moral grounds made slavery itself look bad. Slavery was good and fair for all, including the enslaved, they maintained, and the banning of the international slave trade while the domestic slave trade was still legal not only did not make any sense, but it tarnished the slave system as a whole. By reviving it, the stain would be lifted from the institution.
Snip...
In the end, the revival never took place. It was too divisive an issue at a time when the South, on the verge of secession, needed unity. The Confederacy also wanted support from Great Britain and France in its upcoming war with the Union, and its leaders understood that they would never get it if they did reopen the international slave trade.
Well, I did leave off plenty of information so read the links and more more details on the South opponents to the revival of the slave trade and other details...
It was an issue in Lincoln's famed "House Divided" speech in 1858. He(Lincoln) implied Douglas would not stop the revival of the African slave trade for Douglas voted to allowed slavery into the territories.
The movement never caught fire in the South because it divided the south along many fault lines that this paper I found will show.
Here is a concise paper on the topic and a easy good read read,
link: http://abolition.nypl.org/print/revival_of_slave_trade/
Snips...
The reopening was first advocated in 1839 in the New Orleans Courier, but the campaign to make that wish a reality started in earnest in the early 1850s. Within a few years, the cry for the revival of the transatlantic slave trade had reached the Southern Commercial Conventions, the Houses of Representatives, and the Congress of the United States and had come to dominate the southern discourse.
Snips... advocates...
William Lowndes Yancey, a former U.S. senator from Alabama
Mississippi senator Jefferson Davis was all for it but only in Texas and the western territories; he was firmly against the introduction of Africans into his own state, where the enslaved population was large enough, he asserted, although it was not well distributed.
Snips... one reasons...
They were also concerned that the Free states were expanding, while the South could not claim new lands due to the scarcity of enslaved labor to work them. In addition, they saw their region as losing political power within the nation, due in part to a strong demographic increase in the North fed by European immigrants, while the South was cut off from its traditional supply of manpower: deported Africans. Spratt calculated that–if allowed to do so–each time the South were to introduce 50,000 Africans, it would gain 30,000 federal votes, according to the "3/5 clause."
Snips.. cost...
To those preoccupied with cheaper labor rather than politics, the revival advocates had a ready argument: the domestic slave trade that had uprooted more than a million African Americans from the Upper South had cost too much to the Deep South. Enslaved labor had become too expensive, as one commentator explained: "The old rule of pricing a negro by the price of cotton by the pound—that is to say, if cotton is worth twelve cents, a negro man is worth twelve hundred dollars, if at fifteen cents, then fifteen hundred dollars—does not seem to be regarded. Negroes are twenty-five per cent higher now, with cotton at ten and a half cents, than they were two or three years ago, when it was worth fifteen and sixteen cents. Men are demented upon the subject. A reverse will surely come." In the 1850s, a male "prime hand" in the Gulf States could cost $2,400, or about $48,000 in today's dollars. A newly arrived African, on the other hand, could be purchased for less than $800 ($16,000), or a third of the cost.
Snips...
Southern slaveholders had become wary of the poor, who did not own slaves and thus had little economic stake in the system. Moreover, as the cost of purchasing enslaved labor increased dramatically, this group was hopelessly locked out of the market. Wealthy planters feared that the lower classes might support the Yankees, and so the revival propagandists tried to establish a solid white front across social classes. With more and cheaper Africans available, more people could have slaves, they argued, and the peculiar institution would thus have more supporters.
Finally, all revivalists agreed that banning the international slave trade on moral grounds made slavery itself look bad. Slavery was good and fair for all, including the enslaved, they maintained, and the banning of the international slave trade while the domestic slave trade was still legal not only did not make any sense, but it tarnished the slave system as a whole. By reviving it, the stain would be lifted from the institution.
Snip...
In the end, the revival never took place. It was too divisive an issue at a time when the South, on the verge of secession, needed unity. The Confederacy also wanted support from Great Britain and France in its upcoming war with the Union, and its leaders understood that they would never get it if they did reopen the international slave trade.
Well, I did leave off plenty of information so read the links and more more details on the South opponents to the revival of the slave trade and other details...