The North as well as the South became financially interested.

It was not generally perceived before it actually happened that
the border States would take the place of Africa in furnishing
the required supply of laborers for Southern plantations. The
interstate slave-trade gave to the system a solidarity of
interest which was new. All slave-owners became partakers of a
common responsibility for the system as a whole. It was the newly
developed trade quite as much as the system of slavery itself
which furnished the ground for the later anti-slavery appeal. The
consciousness of a common guilt for the sin of slavery grew with
the increase of actual interstate relations.

The abolition of the African slave-trade was an act of the
general Government. Congress passed the prohibitory statute in
1807, to go into effect January, 1808. At no time, however, was
the prohibition entirely effective, and a limited illegal trade
continued until slavery was eventually abolished. This
inefficiency of restraint furnished another point of attack for
the abolitionists. Through efforts to suppress the African
slave-trade, the entire country became conscious of a common
responsibility. Before the Revolutionary War, Great Britain had
been censured for forcing cheap slaves from Africa upon her
unwilling colonies. After the Revolution, New England was blamed
for the activity of her citizens in this nefarious trade both
before and after it was made illegal. All of this tended to
increase the sense of responsibility in every section of the
country. Congress had made the foreign slave-trade illegal; and
citizens in all sections gradually became aware of the
possibility that Congress might likewise restrict or forbid