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October 9

Why was no American executed for slave trading besides Nathaniel Gordon?

Reading the article Nathaniel Gordon brought some obvious questions to mind.

Gordon was prosecuted, sentenced to death, and executed, for slave trading... but nobody else ever was, in the U.S.

How did this situation occur? Slave trading after 1820 was obviously a capital offense, but it was also highly lucrative, and (to my understanding), not all that uncommon. So why was Gordon, and only Gordon, ever sentenced to hang for this horrible crime? Was he just unlucky?

I see from our article regarding the law in question (Act to Protect the Commerce of the United States and Punish the Crime of Piracy), that a certain James Smith was prosecuted (ultimately unsuccessfully) in 1854. Were there no other prosecutions, and if not, do we have any idea (in terms of the historical record) as to why not? Have historians had any hypotheses to offer on this question? Eliyohub (talk) 13:31, 9 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

You can read a lot about this in two chapters of "The Slaveholding Republic" by Don E. Fehrenbacher. The short and simplified answer is that the larger purpose of anti-slave-importation laws was to prevent a large-scale continuation or revival of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, more than punishing individuals. If the flow was reduced from the pre-1808 flood down to a relative trickle, then the laws were basically working in the minds of many. Fehrenbacher says "It is true that after the War of 1812, conditions in the Gulf and Caribbean region growing out of the Spanish American revolutions stimulated a burst of slave smuggling into Georgia and Louisiana, but the volume never approached that of the preceding decade, and from about 1820 onward, importation of Africans into the United States was negligible if not nonexistent". Fehrenbacher also insists that "it is less than accurate to characterize the law as a 'dead letter' for forty-two years preceding the execution of Gordon", since it had a significant deterrent effect. AnonMoos (talk) 13:44, 9 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Why do you say "obviously" a capital offense? <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 13:52, 9 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Because it says so in Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves, which mentions the punishment of Nathaniel Gordon. --jpgordon^{𝄢𝄆𝄐𝄇} 17:32, 9 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The OP asked why - and could it be because he was prosecuted in the North? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:53, 9 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

New York was not exactly a bastion of Republican sentiment. fiveby(zero) 00:02, 10 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Were they proponents of slavery? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 05:08, 10 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Some certainly were. By the 1850s, the city was dominating the illegal international slave trade to the American South, Brazil, and Cuba. New York benefited much from slavery and the slave trade: southern cotton and sugar sailed to Europe from its harbor.[1] --jpgordon^{𝄢𝄆𝄐𝄇} 14:38, 10 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Depends on whether you are talking about New York City, or the entire State. The shipping interests in the City certainly benefited from slavery, and turned a blind eye to it. Abolitionist sentiment was much stronger in the upstate regions. Blueboar (talk) 14:57, 10 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

There were other prosecutions. Between 1837 and 1860, seventy-four cases relating to the slave trade had been tried in the United States, but very few men were convicted, and even then they received only light sentences. Only one other slave trader had been sentenced to death, but he received a full pardon from President James Buchanan in 1857.[2] Gordon's supporters used this fact to try to convince Lincoln to commute Gordon's sentence. Lincoln wrote that it was his duty to refuse. --jpgordon^{𝄢𝄆𝄐𝄇} 19:13, 9 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Mikorenda, Jerry. "How the Slave Trade Died on the Streets of New York".
Soodalter, Ron (2006). Hanging Captain Gordon. p. 234.