US Prohibition of Slave Supply to Foreign Nations
- When
- 1794
- Where
- United States
- Episodes
- 1
In 1794 the United States Congress passed the Slave Trade Act of 1794, titled 'An Act to prohibit the carrying on the Slave Trade from the United States to any foreign place or country.' The law barred building, fitting, equipping, loading, or otherwise preparing ships in American ports for slave-trading voyages to foreign countries, with forfeiture of the vessel and its appurtenances as the penalty. President George Washington signed it on March 22, 1794, making it the first of several congressional anti-slave-trade acts.
Episodes
Background and detail
Provisions of the Act. The statute prohibited any citizen of the United States, foreigner, or other person residing in or coming into the country, acting as master, factor, or owner, from building, fitting, equipping, loading, or otherwise preparing any ship or vessel within any American port for slave-trading traffic to any foreign country, or for procuring inhabitants of foreign places to be transported elsewhere and sold as slaves. Vessels so fitted out, together with their tackle, furniture, apparel, and other appurtenances, were forfeited to the United States and liable to seizure, prosecution, and condemnation in any circuit court or district court of the district where found and seized. In effect, the Act limited the international slave trade to foreign ships, and foreign ships using United States ports had to agree not to export from them.
People involved
- United States Congress · Legislature that passed the Act
- George Washington · President who signed the Act into law
Sources
- Slave Trade Act of 1794 Wikipedia, revision of 2025-10-08
Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.