If the import of slaves was banned earlier in America's history, could abolition happen earlier?

One of the first acts of the new constitutionalized United States, the banning of the importation of slavery was prohibited for twenty years. The year it became available, the United States banned the import of slaves. What if that constitutional protection was never added? What if the Federalists were able to ban the importation of slavery, in, say, 1800 instead of 1808? What would that entail for Abolition?
 
Nothing much. I don't think that all that many slaves were imported during that time period, at least compared to the number that existed already and their natural rate of increase.
 
Nothing much. I don't think that all that many slaves were imported during that time period, at least compared to the number that existed already and their natural rate of increase.

A quick check of the wiki article indicates that a very large number of slaves were imported in the period. About 75,000 were imported into South Carolina alone between 1800 and 1808, if it's to be believed. So Congress prohibiting the slave trade would eliminate a substantial number of slaves in the short term. However, I don't see this as having a huge impact. The demand for slaves will still be there so you'd see the historical boost the internal slave trade and increase in the value of slaves about a decade earlier than OTL. Interestingly though, it might actually bind the border slave states to the deep south sooner. If they can't import slaves, the Deep South planters will be forced to purchase them from the border state planters, who IOTL ran a very progoitable business of selling "excess" slaves down south. In effect they were sort of like breeding factories who deliberately sought to increase their slave populations so that they could meet their own needs and sell slaves to the South.
 
A quick check of the wiki article indicates that a very large number of slaves were imported in the period. About 75,000 were imported into South Carolina alone between 1800 and 1808, if it's to be believed. So Congress prohibiting the slave trade would eliminate a substantial number of slaves in the short term. However, I don't see this as having a huge impact. The demand for slaves will still be there so you'd see the historical boost the internal slave trade and increase in the value of slaves about a decade earlier than OTL. Interestingly though, it might actually bind the border slave states to the deep south sooner. If they can't import slaves, the Deep South planters will be forced to purchase them from the border state planters, who IOTL ran a very progoitable business of selling "excess" slaves down south. In effect they were sort of like breeding factories who deliberately sought to increase their slave populations so that they could meet their own needs and sell slaves to the South.
Interesting. That's more than I had believed. Still, there were 1,377,808 blacks in the US by 1810 according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_United_States (which I suspect is the article you refer to), so 100,000 imports would decrease that by ~10% or likely a bit more. So, that's not a huge change. Bigger than I thought, admittedly, but probably not enough to seriously impact the Abolition debate.

(100,000 is, of course, far less than 10% of 1.3M, but natural increase needs to taken into account.)
 
Interesting. That's more than I had believed. Still, there were 1,377,808 blacks in the US by 1810 according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_United_States (which I suspect is the article you refer to), so 100,000 imports would decrease that by ~10% or likely a bit more. So, that's not a huge change. Bigger than I thought, admittedly, but probably not enough to seriously impact the Abolition debate.

(100,000 is, of course, far less than 10% of 1.3M, but natural increase needs to taken into account.)

Yup, that's the article I was talking about. It seems decently cited too, so I think we can go with the numbers provided in it. I agree that it likely won't affect Abolition. The Free States will still be free and the Slaves States will still be slave. I think the biggest effect will be an earlier concentration of slaves in the Deep South and in cotton, since that region/industry has the greatest demand and greatest return on investment. So I think you'll see greater concentration of slaves both in terms of geographic area and economic activity.

I wonder if the earlier prohibition would be enough to get some of the Deep South states to go through with the "apprenticeship" programs they proposed IOTL?
 
Nothing much. I don't think that all that many slaves were imported during that time period, at least compared to the number that existed already and their natural rate of increase.
A very large number of slaves were imported into the US of A during that twenty year period. I'm not close to my hard copy sources at the moment, but from memory it was a significantly large percentage of the slave population of the US of A, somewhere between one-third and one-half of the 1808 total.

That said, 8 years early is not going to make that much difference to abolition. Smaller numbers of slaves in the Deep South, but nothing that would make any difference to abolition. The border states are where things might change, but from 1810 onwards about as many slaves were being sold from there anyway as the owners were interested in selling (so higher slave prices in the Deep South would not change much), and those were not the regions importing many slaves between 1800-1808 anyway.

So at a macro level, not much change to abolition timeframes, although the reduction in the slave workforce will have knock-on effects such as slowing the pace of industrialisation in Britain (less cotton to work with) and in the Northeast of the US of A (same reason).
 
I though that, by the time the US stopped importing slaves was that they had reached natural growth, and therefore didn't need to import more.
 
I though that, by the time the US stopped importing slaves was that they had reached natural growth, and therefore didn't need to import more.
Oh, they were still importing lots of slaves right up until the moment it was outlawed. (And smaller numbers since, presumably, though it's harder to get records on that). Importing slaves was cheaper than buying or raising them at home. But cutting off the imports ~8 years earlier isn't going to do much to bring about abolition in itself.
 
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