" During the intervening period of more
than twenty years, the matter was exclusively under the control of the
respective States. Nevertheless, every Southern State, without
exception, either had already enacted, or proceeded to enact, laws
forbidding the importation of slaves.[2] Virginia was the first of all
the States, North or South, to prohibit it, and Georgia was the first to
incorporate such a prohibition in her organic Constitution.
Two petitions for the abolition of slavery and the slave-trade were
presented February 11 and 12, 1790, to the very first Congress convened
under the Constitution.[3] After full discussion in the House of
Representatives, it was determined, with regard to the first-mentioned
subject, "that Congress have no authority to interfere in the
emancipation of slaves, or in the treatment of them within any of the
States"; and, with regard to the other, that no authority existed to
prohibit the migration or importation of such persons as the States
might think proper to admit--"prior to the year 1808." So distinct and
final was this statement of the limitations of the authority of Congress
considered to be that, when a similar petition was presented two or
three years afterward, the Clerk of the House was instructed to return
it to the petitioner.[4]
In 1807, Congress, availing itself of the very earliest moment at which
the constitutional restriction ceased to be operative, passed an act
prohibiting the importation of slaves into any part of the United States
from and after the first day of January, 1808.
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