224 : The Atlantic 



lose a part of their slave cargo it was expedient to overload the vessel 

 in the hope of arriving in the West Indies v^^ith something like a full 

 complement even after those who had died of disease and suffering 

 had been thrown overboard. 



Even in the colonial period there was a good deal of resistance and 

 resentment directed against the slave system. By 1760 there were 

 somewhat less than 400,000 slaves in the North American colonies 

 and the colonial legislators became alarmed at the rapid increase of 

 the Negro population. They imposed taxes on the traffic which were 

 intended to prohibit it or at least restrict it, but commercial interests 

 on both sides of the Atlantic had found the trade so profitable that 

 they succeeded in having these measures vetoed and nullified in Eng- 

 land. 



This was not the first time that England had taken a strong posi- 

 tion in supporting the slave traffic. Up to 1698 the Royal African 

 Company of England had had a monopoly on all slaves imported 

 into the North American colonies. She had also successfully invaded 

 the slave traffic between West Africa and the Spanish American colo- 

 nies. Her position was made a part of the Treaty of Utrecht of 1713. 

 Under this agreement the English enjoyed, for a period of thirty 

 years, the exclusive right of bringing Negroes into the Spanish pos- 

 sessions. This agreement, known as the Asiento, permitted them to 

 import 4,000 Negroes a year and also to keep a ship stationed at 

 Porto Bello. The Asiento was confirmed in the Treaty of Seville in 



1729- 

 Before the Revolution opposition to the slave traffic was fairly 



strong in the southern colonies where the slaves were most numer- 

 ous. The tobacco trade was no longer at its height and it became ap- 

 parent that the inefficiencies of the slave labor system were exhaust- 

 ing the soil, also that there was a kind of marginal competition 

 between slave labor and free white labor. After the Revolution many 

 important citizens in the south followed the lead of Washington and 

 Jefferson in freeing their slaves and in directing public attention to 

 the dangers of this institution. 



It is quite possible that at this time a gradual solution to the prob- 

 lem of slavery might have been arrived at had it not been for the 

 invention of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney in 1793. 



Forms of cotton were native in the American continents. The fiber 

 had been spun into thread and woven into cloth with a great degree 

 of skill by the Incas and had been used in lesser degree by other 

 American tribes. The production of cotton cloth had been developed 



