Extemporaneous musings, occasionally poetic, about life in its richly varied dimensions, especially as relates to history, theology, law, literature, science, by one who is an attorney, ordained minister, historian, writer, and African American.
Thursday, September 1, 2016
AFRICAN VISTA
The massive, illicit international slave trade that is documented so extensively and repeatedly in Dr. W.E.B. DuBois' book , THE SUPPRESSION OF THE AFRICAN SLAVE TRADE (1896, 1986), that occurred AFTER 1807, when federal law, supposedly abolished that practice, is further mocked by the Presidential Pardons to the owners and captains of the very few slaveships that were captured!
Presidents Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, and Andrew Jackson all pardoned those who did not obtain foreign papers and fly under foreign flags, as did the majority of others who were not caught, nor cargo ever returned to Africa, between 1808 and 1829.
(P.131)
So breaking its own law has long been the custom and policy of the United States government, whatever its law might say. If these prior profiteers could not stop huge slaveships, what chance do these have with drugs, illegal immigrants, flora and fauna, of other profiteers?