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From Dixiepedia: The PC-Free Encyclopedia

Southern Opposition to the Slave Trade

With the short-lived exception of Georgia and South Carolina, no Southern colony or State was ever a willing participant in the slave trade, which traffic most Southerners viewed with abhorrence. The English Crown was the leader in the trade throughout the Eighteenth Century, it having been declared by Parliament in 1749 "to be very advantageous to Great Britain, and necessary for supplying the plantations and colonies thereunto belonging with a sufficient number of negroes at reasonable rates." On the other hand, the colonial legislature of Virginia attempted on several occasions to stem the importation of Africans only to be consistently overruled by King George III, who refused to assent to any law "by which the importation of slaves should be in any respect prohibited or obstructed."

One of the charges leveled against George III by Thomas Jefferson in the original draft of the Declaration of Independence was that he had "prostituted his negative [veto] for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit, or to restrain, this execrable commerce" and that he, during Great Britain's war with the American colonies, was attempting to incite the slaves "to rise in arms against us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people on whom he obtruded them; thus paying off former crimes committed against the liberties of one people with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another." Not long after declaring her independence, the fledgling State of Virginia, under the governorship of Patrick Henry, became "the first political community in the civilized modern world" to legislate against the slave trade. In the Act For Preventing the Farther Importation of Slaves of 5 October 1778, it was declared that "no slave or slaves shall hereafter be imported into this Commonwealth by sea or land, nor shall any slaves so imported be bought or sold by any person whatsoever." The penalty provided for violation of this law was the forfeiture of "one thousand pounds for every slave so imported," and "five hundred pounds for every slave so bought or sold." It was further provided that "every slave imported into this Commonwealth, contrary to the true intent and meaning of this act, shall, upon such importation, become free." continued...