ebooks Freebooters and Smugglers: The Foreign Slave Trade in the United States after 1808 by Ernest Obadele-starks in History

Review

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful. FreebootersBy Rebecca L. MorrisErnest Obadele-Starks. Freebooters and Smugglers: The Foreign Slave Trade in the United States after 1808. Arkansas: The University of Arkansas Press; 2007. In this book; Ernest Obadele-Starks examines what propagated the foreign slave trade in America after the Abolition Act of 1808 outlawed it. Starks discovers that freebooters and smugglers of the slave trade were not just pirates or renegades bent on breaking the law. They also included a wide range of federal marshalls; customs agents; merchants; military personnel; and sympathetic juries who routinely handed out light sentences for offenders. Initially; the Abolition Act had little political or social enforcement due to the financial profits from slave trading. Even free slaves worked the slave ships in hopes of a big financial payoff; compared to other occupations open to free slaves. Starks demonstrates that the foreign slave trade was not confined to a localized area or to a target merchant. This was an institution that pervaded America from the Gulf Coast to New York.Starks argues that the political; social; and economic reasons behind slave trading were a significant force in American history. He implies that if proper steps were taken to root out the importation; slave trading may have prevented the Civil War. Starks; like other historians; has the tendency to look at the quantitative numbers; but he goes farther by analyzing the methods and strategies of the slave trade participants. Starks relies on Philip D. Curtin's importation statistics and builds on other primary court records and ship documents to conclude that over 786;000 slaves were introduced into America between 1809 and 1863. This could not have been accomplished without the coordination and collaboration of a diverse audience willing to subvert the law for individual economic gain. Starks' examination of the political and social culture which prevented the enforcement of the act begins with the fact that much of America's wealth came from the work of slaves in the cotton and sugar fields. With continued United States expansion; like the Louisiana Purchase of 1803; new territory needed settling; which was a labor intensive activity. The new remote areas of territory; like Texas and all the southwest often lacked judicial authority and controls which allowed the slave trade to prosper. American leaders like Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson owned slaves. James Madison pardoned any slave smuggler who was involved in the Battle of New Orleans and helped defeat the British in the War of 1812. In addition; slave trading was a lucrative business capable of bribing judiciary officials and customs agents. Starks shows how the foreign slave trade was better funded than the navy; which was incapable of enforcing the law because it had too much area to defend from potential foreign threats; let alone time to look for smugglers; who normally obtained false documentation to support their slave cargo. Starks shows that policing the foreign slave trade faced many challenges; including the lawful distribution of domestic slaves and the trouble distinguishing between domestic and new foreign slaves. These difficulties proved beneficial for smugglers. The judicial system was unbalanced in favor of slave traders as they were not only presumed innocent; but routinely judged innocent even with overwhelming evidence against them. Starks has written a very good book; aside from the small print; which uncovers some of the more complicated issues involved in the international issue of foreign slave trading. This book adds to the number of complex events taking place in America during the nineteenth century; to include the Gold Rush; the war with Mexico; and ultimately the Civil War; which Starks links to the foreign slave trade. The title leads readers to believe that this was a limited enterprise between a handful of rebellious law-breakers; but Starks demonstrates the opposite and does it well.1 of 1 people found the following review helpful. Informative Well WrittenBy curtis10of10Freebooters and Smugglers is very well written and filled with information that is very difficult to come by otherwise. I tried to do a lot of online research on the subject of slave smuggling; but wasn't getting a complete story. Mr. Obadele-Starks provides a well rounded; well documented account of the illegal slave trade; and wrote it with personality and ancedotal detail in order to keep the reader fully engaged.1 of 1 people found the following review helpful. Good Premise; Informative; But PloddingBy Jim SchmidtDr. Obadele Starks chose an important and (suprisingly) neglected topic for this book and it is well-researched. However; it suffers from two things: 1) an overly-academic tone; 2) choppy organization; and 3) too much anecdotal evidence which dilutes some of his arguments and/or makes them trivial or unconvincing.The book does do a great job of explaining the "what": that despite the passing of the Abolition Ac of 1808; the foreign slave trade continued to thrive in the United States. Except for pointing to greed due to the large amounts of money to be made in the trade; and the corruption concommitant to that greed; he never fully explains *why* efforts to stopping the trade were unsuccessful.As a good one-third o one-half of the book deals with the foreign slave trade in Texas; and half or more concerns the Gulf Coast; I'd recommend Randolph Campbell's "An Empire for Slavery" as a better source.The book is at its best when discussing the (to me; anyway) surprising fact that New York and New England continued to be a center of the illegal foeign slave trade due to the surreptitious outfitting of whalers into slave ships. The last chapter; indeed the last section - on the conviction and execution of Captain Nathaniel Gordon for illegal slave trading - was excellent; likewise his very brief discussion of William Powell's abolitionist activities in New York was very good; had the whole book been written this way I'd happily give it 4 or even 5 stars.Unfortunately; the better part of the book consists of paragraphs with a thesis sentence; a couple more sentences of explanation; and then a catalog of anecdotal evidence from his research that is somehow supposed to support his point but often trivializes it or does not satisfactorily support the argument; in other cases; he admits other explanations and "abandons" the argument he just tried to make. It makesa for hefty back matter with copious endnotes and bibliography; but not necessarily good history.I'm indebted to the good professor for making otherwise hard-to-find research accessible and especially for inspiring me to further pursue some of the interesting thread noted above (i.e.; Gordon and Powell) but I think an opportunity for a more readable expose of the continued foreign slave trade in America still exists.Perhaps "Hanging Captain Gordon: The Life and Trial of an American Slave Trader" by Ron Soodalter will satisfy mu curiosity.