The United States v. The Young Ralph (1802): Initial Attempts by the Jefferson Administration to Suppress the Slave Trade

Abstract: This article examines previously unstudied federal prosecutions during the first years of the nineteenth century which concerned the transatlantic slave trade. A 1794 law prohibited Americans from fitting out ships to engage in the slave trade between foreign ports, i.e. ships departing the U.S. for Africa, and then landing their human cargo in the West Indies. Far from ignoring this law as previous historians have suggested, the Jefferson administration took active steps in late 1801 and early 1802 to prosecute slavers engaged in this commerce. Even as these legal cases may have deterred certain slave voyages, the prosecutors were unsuccessful due to the precise wording of the law. Thus, despite real executive interest in suppressing the slave trade, judicial decisions hampered the federal government’s early attempts to enforce its anti-slave trading statue.