Developing Conflict over American Slavery

On March 13, 1824, articles of convention between the United States and Great Britain were signed at London, by diplomatists appointed for the purpose, providing for the adoption of measures to suppress the African slave-trade. The first article provided that the commanders and commissioned officers of each of the two contracting powers, duly authorized to cruise on the coast of Africa, of America, and of the West Indies, for the suppression of the slave-traffic, were empowered, under certain restrictions, to detain, examine, capture, and deliver over for trial and adjudication by some competent tribunal, any ship or vessel concerned in the illicit traffic in slaves, and carrying the flag of either nation. This convention was signed by Richard Rush for the United States, and by W. Huskisson and Sir Stratford Canning for Great Britain.

On March 6, 1857, Roger B. Taney, chief-justice of the United States, and a majority of his associates in the Supreme Court, uttered an extra-judicial opinion, that any person who had been a slave, or was a descendant of a slave, could not enjoy the rights of citizenship in the United States.

Five years afterwards (1862) Secretary Seward issued a passport to a man who had been a slave to travel abroad as " a citizen of the United States." Six years later still (July 20, 1868) the national Constitution was so amended that all persons, of whatever race or color, born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.

By the same amendment every civil right was given to every such person. And by a subsequent amendment (1869) it was decreed that " the rights of any of the citizens of the United States, or any State, on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude should not be abridged."