In the book The Wrong of Slavery, the Right of Emancipation, and the future of the African race in the United States (Recently released as an open source public domain audiobook), the following is written: (page 85)
Since so small a proportion out of the whole export was directed to the United States, it is evident that the demand for slaves at that time could not have been great. Nor do we find, throughout the Report, any allusion to a direct trade by slavers from the African coast to the Continental colonies. Of course it existed, but evidently not to a large extent. The public opinion, as well as the legislation, of the colonies had uniformly been against it. (footnote 1)(footnote 1) The agency of the British Government in fastening slavery upon the Continental colonies is well known. Bancroft has placed it distinctly on record: —"The inhabitants of Virginia were controlled by the central authority on a subject of vital importance to themselves and their posterity. Their halls of legislation had resounded with eloquence directed against the terrible plague of negro slavery. Again and again they had passed laws restraining the importation of negroes from Africa; but their laws were disallowed. How to prevent them from protecting themselves against the increase of the overwhelming evil was debated by the King in Council, and on the 10th day of December, 1770, he issued an instruction, under his own hand, commanding the governor, 'under pain of the highest displeasure, to assent to no law by which the importation of slaves should be, in any respect, prohibited or obstructed.' In April, 1772, this rigorous order was solemnly debated in the Assembly of Virginia. They were very anxious for an Act to restrain the introduction of people the number of whom already in the colony gave them just cause to apprehend the most dangerous consequences. * * * Virginia resolved to address the King himself, who in Council had cruelly compelled the toleration of the nefarious traffic. They pleaded with him for leave to protect themselves against the nefarious traffic, and these were the words: —
"The importation of slaves into the colonies from the coast of Africa hath long been considered as a trade of great inhumanity, and, under its present encouragement, we have too much reason to fear, will endanger the very existence of your Majesty's American dominions. We are sensible that some of your Majesty's subjects in Great Britain may reap emolument from this sort of traffic; but, when we consider that it greatly retards the settlement of the colonies with more useful inhabitants, and may, in time, have the most destructive influence, we presume to hope that the interest of a few will be disregarded when placed in competition with the security and happiness of such numbers of your Majesty's dutiful and loyal subjects.
Deeply impressed with these sentiments, we most humbly beseech your Majesty to remove all those restraints on your Majesty's governors of this colony which inhibit their assenting to such laws as might check so very pernicious a commerce."
"In this manner Virginia led the host who alike condemned slavery and opposed the slave-trade. Thousands in Maryland and in New Jersey were ready to adopt a similar petition; so were the Legislatures of North Carolina, of Pennsylvania, of New York. Massachusetts, in its towns and in its Legislature, unceasingly combated the condition, as well as the sale, of slaves. There was no jealousy among one another in the strife against the crying evil; Virginia harmonized all opinions, and represented the moral sentiment and policy of them all. When her prayer reached England, Franklin, through the press, called to it the sympathy of the people. Again and again it was pressed upon the attention of the Ministers. But the Government of that day was less liberal than the tribunals; and, while a question respecting a negro from Virginia led the courts of law to an axiom that as soon as any slave sets his foot on English ground he becomes free, the King of England stood in the path of humanity, and made himself the pillar of the slave-trade. Wherever in the colonies a disposition was shown for its restraint, his servants were peremptorily ordered to maintain it without abatement." — Bancroft's History of the United States, vol. vi. pp. 413, 414, 415.
"The English Continental colonies," says Bancroft, "were, in the aggregate, always opposed to the African slave-trade. Maryland, Virginia, even Carolina, alarmed at the excessive production, and consequent low price, of their staples, at the heavy debts incurred by the purchase of slaves on credit, and at the dangerous increase of the colored population, each showed an anxious preference for the introduction of white men; and laws designed to restrict importations of slaves are scattered copiously along the records of colonial legislation. The first Continental Congress which took to itself powers of legislation gave a legal expression to the well-formed opinion of the country by resolving (April 6, 1776) that "no slaves be imported into any of the thirteen United Colonies."
This used to be more widely known, hence why the race card couldn't have been played against the country until the progressives succeeded in removing the entire Founding from the history books. George Bancroft was a prominent and well-known historian in his day with his books widely read.
Relegated to the dust bin by historians with a seething hatred, Bancroft is exactly the kind of historian we all need resurrected and taught once more. Not really for this one item, but for the larger body of his work that seeks to accurately capture the Founding Fathers for who they really were instead of denegrating them at every opportunity.
George Bancroft is the anti-Zinn.
