Item #47522 Slave Ships in Alabama: Message from the President of the United States, Transmitting the Proceedings of the Court and Marshal of the U. States for the District of Alabama, in Relation to the Cargoes of Certain Slave Ships, &c.; March 8, 1826.; Read, and Laid Upon the Table. [Secretarial Inscription on behalf of John Quincy Adams]. John Quincy Adams, Slave Trade, 1st Session 19th United States Congress, Document No. 121, Department of State House of Representatives.
Slave Ships in Alabama: Message from the President of the United States, Transmitting the Proceedings of the Court and Marshal of the U. States for the District of Alabama, in Relation to the Cargoes of Certain Slave Ships, &c.; March 8, 1826.; Read, and Laid Upon the Table. [Secretarial Inscription on behalf of John Quincy Adams]
Slave Ships in Alabama: Message from the President of the United States, Transmitting the Proceedings of the Court and Marshal of the U. States for the District of Alabama, in Relation to the Cargoes of Certain Slave Ships, &c.; March 8, 1826.; Read, and Laid Upon the Table. [Secretarial Inscription on behalf of John Quincy Adams]

Slave Ships in Alabama: Message from the President of the United States, Transmitting the Proceedings of the Court and Marshal of the U. States for the District of Alabama, in Relation to the Cargoes of Certain Slave Ships, &c.; March 8, 1826.; Read, and Laid Upon the Table. [Secretarial Inscription on behalf of John Quincy Adams]

Washington, DC: Gales & Seaton, 1826. Very Good. Item #47522

Washington, DC: Gales & Seaton, 1826. First Edition. Octavo (22cm); original publisher's cloth over blue paper-covered boards; 77pp.; one fold-out plate. Collated complete. Boards rubbed with some spotting and dampstains; cloth on spine fraying. Front cloth joint splitting but holding; pages foxed; endpapers dampstained. Unidentified numerical ex-library stamp on top of p. 3, else free of institutional markings. Overall, a Very Good copy. Inscribed on front cover: "From the Honble. John Q. Adams," who served as U.S. President at the time of publication and contributed the introductory comment published on p. 3. This inscription written on behalf of the President, whose hand suffered from a tremor later in his career.

Volume documenting the challenges the U.S. government faced trying to enforce an 1808 ban on the international slave trade which involved a complicated six-year-long case in which three American slave ships (the Constitution, the Louisa and the Merino) were seized for transporting enslaved people between Havana, Cuba, Pensacola, Florida, and Mobile, Alabama. More than 100 enslaved people were seized in the capture of the ships. At the conclusion of the case in 1825, only 65 of them were accounted for (the others died, escaped or were simply lost in the broader institution of slavery). The 65 remaining humans were sold at auction, and the slave traders were not punished, other than the financial loss of their ships and cargo. While the enforcement of the 1808 ban may have been a deterrent for some slave traders, the National Archives estimates that 1.2 million slaves were brought into the U.S. illegally during the first half of the 19th century. 

Provenance: We have been unable to establish which library this came out of, though we have checked each copy-specific description of the examples listed in OCLC, none of which are described as being inscribed by or for Adams. The previous owner states that he purchased this copy from a Parisian dealer in the 1980s. 

References:

"Traveling the Beaten Trail: Charles Tait’s Charges to Federal Grand Juries, 1822-1825" published in the Occasional Publications of the Bounds Law Library, No. 8. Alabama Law Scholarly Commons, 2013.

National Archives and Records Administration, Southeast Region, Atlanta

Shoemaker 27399.

Price: $3,000.00

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