Act to Prohibit the Importation of Slaves (1807)
In 1807 the U.S. Congress passed the Act to Prohibit the Importation of Slaves, which ended large-scale importations of slaves into the United States. The law went into effect on January 1, 1808. In the eight years before the Act to Prohibit the Importation of Slaves made the trade illegal, the United States had imported about forty thousand new slaves from Africa. From 1808 until the Civil War broke out in 1861, less than a fifth of that number of slaves would be illegally smuggled into the nation. The law thus ended American participation in one of the most immoral violations of human rights in world history. The law did not, of course, end slavery itself in the United States. That would not take place until the Civil War and the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865 ended all slavery in the nation.
