Post-1808 importation of slaves to the United States

The importation of slaves from overseas to the United States was prohibited in 1808, but criminal trafficking of enslaved people on a smaller scale likely continued for many years.

The most intensive periods of piracy were in the 1810s, before the U.S. Congress passed laws with massive fines and penalties including execution for illegal importers, and in the 1850s, when pro-slavery activists decided that the solution to rapid inflation in slave prices was simply to flood the market with humans abducted from across the ocean.

Despite the patrols and legal strictures on slave shipments from outside the United States, officials believed that trafficking of enslaved people from Africa, South America, and the Caribbean continued to at least some extent.

Reasons for this varied; some politicians wished to avoid repeating the impressment controversy which had been a cause of the War of 1812, while others, such as diplomat Nicholas Trist, covertly supported the trade.

"[7] Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story and Secretary of the Navy Paul Hamilton also asserted in public declarations that human trafficking from overseas continued.

Ward Lee, Tucker Henderson, and Romeo—born Cilucängy, Pucka Gaeta, and Tahro in the Congo River basin—were trafficked to the United States in 1859 on the Wanderer (1908 photograph by Charles J. Montgomery for the journal American Anthropologist )
Following the discovery of 18 enslaved people from Jamaica who were deposited along the Mississippi River at a spot between Fort St. Philip and English Turn , U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Louisiana John W. Smith published this notice reminding the public that the importation of enslaved people from overseas was illegal and would be prosecuted ( Louisiana State Gazette , December 8, 1825)
Jim may have been trafficked from Africa three or four years after the 1808 ban went into effect ("Fifteen Dollars Reward" National Banner and Nashville Whig , December 19, 1829)
There was a practical resurgence in American piracy in tandem with the political movement to reopen to the Atlantic slave trade ; by August 1860, the Houston Petrel claimed "native Africans are becoming quite a common thing, even in interior markets"
Debarking the cargo of William at Key West
In 1821, Gilbert C. Russell was offering US$1,000 (equivalent to $22,890 in 2023) for the recovery of Majo, Kiah, Fungi, Buna, Sanga, Yaza, Farma, Seramaghs, Buuga, and Glewa, all of whom had been part of a captured cargo of 109 illegally imported African-born slaves and who had been dispersed and resold illegally ( Natchez Gazette , April 28, 1821)