Statute 2 of the Congress, enacted on March 2, 1807 ended the international slave trade effective January 1, 1808 while keeping the intra-national slave trade intact. It further stipulated at vessels under 40 tons were no longer permitted to transport slaves and that vessels above 40 tons were required to complete manifests at their outbound and inbound ports detailing information about any slaves being transported. These records were completed as separate slave manifests and contained data such as departure port, arrival port, arrival date, name, shipper or owner, ship name, and age, among other metrics. (National Archives, Slave Ship Manifests filed at New Orleans 1807-1860)
Additionally, an 1820 act declared violations of the international slave trade to be acts of piracy punishable by death.
As tobacco lands suffered in the upper South, cotton boomed in the lower Southern states, making the sale of enslaved people by those in states such as Maryland and Virginia to Texas, Alabama, and Louisiana profitable. The National Archives dates the peak of this intra-national trade in 1836, where records show that 120,000 slaves from Virginia alone were sold to states in the lower South. (National Archives, Slave Ship Manifests filed at New Orleans 1807-1860)
New Orleans, Louisiana was the largest domestic slave market in the United States. Because of the central role that the city played in the sale of African Americans due to its trade port status as well as its specific centrality to the deep south where rice and cotton were cash crops in the Antebellum 19th Century, any analysis of the domestic slave trade should consider New Orleans. *The Historic New Orleans Collection'*s "Purchased Lives" is a well-constructed resource for an exploration of the sale of enslaved African Americans in the US following the international slave trade ban on January 1, 1808.
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CDH 501 Project - Inbound Slave Manifests of New Orleans, 1818-1821