Editing Atlantic slave trade (section)

==Conditions of slavery on plantations before and after abolition of the transatlantic slave trade==

===Caribbean===
[[File:The boiling house - Ten Views in the Island of Antigua (1823), plate VI - BL.jpg|thumb|Enslaved people inside a sugar boiling house on the island of [[Antigua]] in 1823]]

Over the colony's hundred-year course, about a million slaves succumbed to the conditions of slavery in [[Haiti]].<ref>{{cite book |last=Abbott |first=E. |date=2011 |title=Haiti: A Shattered Nation |publisher=[[Penguin Books]] |isbn=978-1-4683-0160-1 |page=27}}</ref> A slave imported into Haiti was expected to die, on average, within 3 years of arrival, and slaves born on the island had a life expectancy of only 15 years.<ref name="Marlenedaut">{{cite journal |last1=Daut |first1=Marlene L. |title=All the Devils Are Here – How the visual history of the Haitian Revolution misrepresents Black suffering and death |journal=The University of Edinburgh Race .edu |date=27 October 2020 |url=https://www.race.ed.ac.uk/all-the-devils-are-here-how-the-visual-history-of-the-haitian-revolution-misrepresents-black-suffering-and-death/ |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231102182008/https://www.race.ed.ac.uk/all-the-devils-are-here-how-the-visual-history-of-the-haitian-revolution-misrepresents-black-suffering-and-death/ |url-status=dead |archive-date=2 November 2023|access-date=2 November 2023}}</ref>

In the Caribbean, Dutch Guiana, and Brazil, the death rate of enslaved people was high, and the birth rates were low, slaveholders imported more Africans to sustain the slave population. The rate of natural decline in the slave population ran as high as 5 percent a year. While the death rate of enslaved populations in the United States was the same on Jamaican plantations. In the [[Danish West Indies]], and for most of the Caribbean, mortality rate was high because of the taxing labor of sugar cultivation. Sugar was a major cash crop and as the Caribbean plantations exported sugar to Europe and North America, they needed an enslaved work force to make its production economically viable, so slaves were imported from Africa. Enslaved Africans lived in inhumane conditions and the mortality rate of enslaved children under the age of five was forty percent. Many enslaved persons died from smallpox and intestinal worms contracted from contaminated food and water.<ref>{{cite web |title=Illness and death among the enslaved |url=https://www.virgin-islands-history.org/en/history/slavery/illness-and-death-among-the-enslaved/ |website=[[Danish National Archives]] |access-date=2 March 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240621032705/https://www.virgin-islands-history.org/en/history/slavery/illness-and-death-among-the-enslaved/ |archive-date=21 June 2024}}</ref>

The Atlantic slave trade exportation of slaves to Cuba was illegal by 1820; however, Cuba continued to import enslaved Africans from Africa until slavery was abolished in 1886. After the abolition of the slave trade to the United States and British colonies in 1807, Florida imported enslaved Africans from Cuba, many landing in [[Amelia Island affair|Amelia Island]]. A clandestine slave ferry operated between [[Havana|Havana, Cuba]] and [[Pensacola, Florida]]. Florida remained under Spanish control until 1821 which made it difficult for the United States to cease the smuggling of enslaved Africans from Cuba. In 1821, Florida was ceded to the United States and the smuggling of enslaved Africans continued, and from 1821 to 1841 Cuba became a main supplier of enslaved Africans for the United States. Between 1859 and 1862, slave traders made 40 illegal voyages between Cuba and the United States.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Kriple |first1=Kenneth |title=The Case Against a Nineteenth-Century Cuba-Florida Slave Trade |journal=[[Florida Historical Quarterly]] |date=1970 |volume=49 |issue=4 |pages=1–3 |url=https://stars.library.ucf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3200&context=fhq |access-date=2 March 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240302155343/https://stars.library.ucf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3200&context=fhq |archive-date=2 March 2024 |url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |title=Amelia Island Pays Homage to Slaves Middle Passage with Marker |url=https://jacksonvillefreepress.com/amelia-island-pays-homage-to-slaves-middle-passage-with-marker/ |access-date=2 March 2024 |agency=The Free Press of Jacksonville |date=2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240302155343/https://jacksonvillefreepress.com/amelia-island-pays-homage-to-slaves-middle-passage-with-marker/ |archive-date=2 March 2024 |url-status=live}}</ref>
[[File:Knackstedt & Näther Stereoskopie 0669 Cuba. Zuckerrohr-Plantage. Bildseite mit Ansicht um 1900 arbeitender Sklaven im Feld auf Kuba (cropped).jpg|thumb|right|Afro Cubans working in a sugar plantation]]
The costs of the shipment of human cargo from Africa and operating costs of the slave trade from Africa into Cuba rose in the mid-19th century. Historian Laird Bergad writes of the Cuban slave trade and slave prices: "Three interacting factors produced the overwhelming demand for slaves responsible for pushing prices to the high levels[...] The first was the uncertainty surrounding the future of the slave trade itself. The long and persistent British campaign to force an end to the Cuban trade had traditionally been circumvented by collusion between Spanish colonial officials and Cuban slave traders. An additional obstacle to British efforts was the unwillingness of the United States to permit the search of U.S.-flag vessels suspected of involvement in the slave trade". By the mid-1860s, prices of Africans in their elderly years decreased while prices of younger Africans increased because they were considered to be of prime working age. According to research, in 1860 in [[Matanzas]], about 39.6 percent of slaves sold were young prime aged Africans of either sex; in 1870 the percentage was 74.3 percent. In addition, as the cost of sugar increased so did the price of slaves.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Bergad |first1=Laird |title=Slave Prices in Cuba, 1840-1875 |journal=[[Hispanic American Historical Review]] |date=1987 |volume=67 |issue=4 |pages=631–655 |doi=10.1215/00182168-67.4.631 |url=https://read.dukeupress.edu/hahr/article/67/4/631/148042/Slave-Prices-in-Cuba-1840-1875 |access-date=14 March 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240314162254/https://read.dukeupress.edu/hahr/article/67/4/631/148042/Slave-Prices-in-Cuba-1840-1875 |archive-date=14 March 2024 |url-status=live}}</ref>

===South America===
[[File:Slaves working on a coffee plantation 02.jpg|thumb|Enslaved people working on a [[Coffee production in Brazil|coffee]] plantation in Brazil]]

The life expectancy for Brazil's slave plantation's for African descended slaves was around 23 years.<ref name="Skidmore">{{cite book |last=Skidmore |first=Thomas E. |url=https://archive.org/details/brazilfivecentur00skid |title=Brazil: Five Centuries of Change |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |year=1999 |isbn=0-19-505809-7 |location=New York |url-access=registration}}</ref>{{page needed|date=May 2022}} The trans-Atlantic slave trade into Brazil was outlawed in 1831. To replace the demand for slaves, slaveholders in Brazil turned to slave reproduction. Enslaved women were forced to give birth to eight or more enslaved children. Some slaveholders promised enslaved women their freedom if they gave birth to eight children. In 1873 in the village of [[Ceará|Santa Ana, province of Ceará]] an enslaved woman named Macária was promised her freedom after she gave birth to eight children. An enslaved woman Delfina killed her baby because she did not want her enslaver Manoel Bento da Costa to own her baby and enslave her child. Brazil practiced [[partus sequitur ventrem]] to increase the slave population through enslaved female reproduction, because in the 19th century, Brazil needed a large enslaved labor force to work on the sugar plantations in Bahia and the agricultural and mining industries of Minas Gerais, São Paulo, and Rio de Janeiro.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Santos |first1=Martha |title="Slave Mothers", Partus Sequitur Ventrem, and the Naturalization of Slave Reproduction in Nineteenth-Century Brazil |journal=Temp |date=2016 |volume=22 |issue=41 |pages=1–5 |url=https://www.redalyc.org/pdf/1670/167047720002.pdf |access-date=14 March 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240518044226/https://www.redalyc.org/pdf/1670/167047720002.pdf |archive-date=18 May 2024}}</ref>

After the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade to Brazil, the inter-provincial trade increased which slaveholders forced and depended on enslaved women to give birth to as many children as possible to supply the demand for slaves. [[Abolitionism|Abolitionists]] in Brazil wanted to abolish slavery by removing partus sequitur ventrem because it was used to perpetuate slavery. For example, historian Martha Santos writes of the slave trade, female reproduction, and abolition in Brazil: "A proposal centered on the 'emancipation of the womb', authored by the influential jurist and politician Agostinho Marques Perdigão Malheiro, was officially endorsed by Pedro II as the most practical means to end slavery in a controlled and peaceful manner. This conservative proposal, a modified version of which became the 'free womb' law passed by Parliament in 1871, did provide for the freedom of children subsequently born of enslaved women, while it forced those children to serve their mothers' masters until age twenty-one, and deferred complete emancipation to a later date".<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Santos |first1=Martha |title="Slave Mothers", Partus Sequitur Ventrem, and the Naturalization of Slave Reproduction in Nineteenth-Century Brazil |journal=Temp |date=2016 |volume=22 |issue=41 |pages=1–5 |url=https://www.redalyc.org/pdf/1670/167047720002.pdf |access-date=14 March 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240518044226/https://www.redalyc.org/pdf/1670/167047720002.pdf |archive-date=18 May 2024}}</ref>

===United States===
{{Main|Slave trade in the United States|Post-1808 importation of slaves to the United States|History of slavery in the United States by state}}
[[File:Advertisement from J.M. Wilson for sale of Maryland and Virginia Negroes.jpg|thumb|Advertisement from [[Jonathan M. Wilson|J. M. Wilson]] for sale of Maryland and Virginia slaves. Maryland and Virginia sold thousands of enslaved people to the [[Deep South]].]]

The birth rate was more than 80 percent higher in the United States because of a natural growth in the slave population and [[Slave breeding in the United States|slave breeding farms]].<ref>{{cite web |last1=Mintz |first1=Steven |title=Historical Context: Facts about the Slave Trade and Slavery |url=https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-resources/teacher-resources/historical-context-facts-about-slave-trade-and-slavery |website=The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History |access-date=17 January 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240224234501/https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-resources/teacher-resources/historical-context-facts-about-slave-trade-and-slavery |archive-date=24 February 2024 |url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Smithers |first1=Gregory |title=Slave Breeding: Sex, Violence, and Memory in African American History |date=2012 |publisher=[[University Press of Florida]] |isbn=978-0-8130-4260-2 |url=https://muse.jhu.edu/book/19461/ |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210725061427/https://muse.jhu.edu/book/19461 |archive-date=25 July 2021 |access-date=17 January 2024 |url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=A Guide to the History of Slavery in Maryland |url=http://slavery.msa.maryland.gov/pdf/md-slavery-guide-2020.pdf |website=The Maryland State Archives |access-date=17 January 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240605182255/http://slavery.msa.maryland.gov/pdf/md-slavery-guide-2020.pdf |archive-date=5 June 2024}}</ref> Birth rates were low for the first generation of slaves imported from Africa, but, in the US, may have increased in the 19th century to some 55 per thousand, approaching the biological maximum for human populations.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Hacker |first1=David |title=From '20. and odd' to 10 million: The growth of the slave population in the United States |journal=[[Slavery and Abolition]] |date=2020 |volume=41 |issue=4 |pages=840–855 |doi=10.1080/0144039x.2020.1755502 |pmid=33281246 |pmc=7716878}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last1=Withycomb |first1=Shannon |title=Women and Reproduction in the United States during the 19th Century |url=https://oxfordre.com/americanhistory/display/10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.001.0001/acrefore-9780199329175-e-426 |website=Oxford Research Encyclopedias / American History |date=2019 |doi=10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.013.426 |isbn=978-0-19-932917-5 |access-date=3 February 2024 |archive-date=3 February 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240203151117/https://oxfordre.com/americanhistory/display/10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.001.0001/acrefore-9780199329175-e-426 |url-status=live}}</ref>

After the prohibition of the [[Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves|trans-atlantic slave trade in 1807]], slaveholders in the [[Deep South]] of the United States needed more slaves to work in the cotton and sugar fields. To fill the demand for more slaves, slave breeding was practiced in Richmond, Virginia. Richmond sold thousands of enslaved people to slaveholders in the Deep South to work the cotton, rice, and sugar plantations. Virginia was known as a "breeder state." A slaveholder in Virginia bragged his slaves produced 6,000 [[children of the plantation|enslaved children]] for sale. About 300,000 to 350,000 enslaved people were sold from Richmond's slave breeding farms.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Edwards |title=The Significance of Richmond's Shockoe Bottom: Why it's the wrong place for a baseball stadium |journal=African Diaspora Archaeology Newsletter |date=2015 |volume=15 |issue=1 |page=3 |url=https://scholarworks.umass.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2236&context=adan |access-date=17 January 2024 |archive-url=https://archive.today/20240810183831/https://scholarworks.umass.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/fd3e6c80-e1d7-4065-826b-85645e58c301/content |archive-date=10 August 2024}}</ref> Slave breeding farms and forced reproduction on [[Female slavery in the United States|enslaved young girls and women]] caused reproductive health issues. Enslaved women found ways to resist forced reproduction by causing miscarriages and abortions by taking plants and medicines.<ref>{{cite web |title=Reproduction and Resistance |url=https://ldhi.library.cofc.edu/exhibits/show/hidden-voices/resisting-enslavement/reproduction-and-resistance |website=Lowcountry History Digital Initiative |publisher=Lowcountry Digital Library at the College of Charleston |access-date=17 January 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240613202829/http://ldhi.library.cofc.edu/exhibits/show/hidden-voices/resisting-enslavement/reproduction-and-resistance |archive-date=13 June 2024}}</ref><ref>{{cite magazine |last1=Schwartz |first1=Marie Jenkins |title="Good Breeders" |url=https://slate.com/human-interest/2015/08/how-enslaved-womens-sexual-health-was-contested-in-the-antebellum-south.html |access-date=17 January 2024 |magazine=[[Slate (magazine)|Slate]] |date=August 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240726160705/https://slate.com/human-interest/2015/08/how-enslaved-womens-sexual-health-was-contested-in-the-antebellum-south.html |archive-date=26 July 2024 |url-status=live}}</ref>

Slaveholders tried to control enslaved women's reproduction by encouraging them to have relationships with enslaved men. "Some slaveholders took matters into their own hands, however, and paired enslaved men and women together with the intent that they would procreate."<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Marks |first1=Katie |title=Exploitation and Resistance, Enslaved Motherhood at the University of Alabama |journal=The Crimson Historical Review |date=2021 |page=54 |url=https://crimsonhistorical.ua.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Exploitation_and_Resistance_Final.pdf |access-date=3 February 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240726160703/https://crimsonhistorical.ua.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Exploitation_and_Resistance_Final.pdf |archive-date=26 July 2024 |url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=West |first1=Shear |last2=Shearer |first2=Erin |title=Fertility control, shared nurturing, and dual exploitation: the lives of enslaved mothers in the antebellum United States |journal=[[Women's History Review]] |date=2017 |page=6 |url=https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/82964048.pdf |access-date=3 February 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240203151116/https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/82964048.pdf |archive-date=3 February 2024 |url-status=live}}</ref> Enslaved teenage girls gave birth at the ages of fifteen or sixteen years old. Enslaved women gave birth in their early twenties. To meet the demands of slaveholders' needs to birth more slaves, enslaved girls and women had seven or nine children. Enslaved girls and women were forced to give birth to as many slaves as possible. The mortality rate of enslaved mothers and children was high because of poor nutrition, sanitation, lack of medical care, and overwork.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Carey |first1=Anthony |title=Sold Down the River Slavery in the Lower Chattahoochee Valley of Alabama and Georgia |date=2011 |publisher=[[University of Alabama Press]] |isbn=9780817317416 |page=178 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=bOVtRFum5WcC&dq=an+enslaved+woman+gave+birth+to+20+kids&pg=PA178 |access-date=23 January 2024 |archive-date=26 July 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240726160736/https://books.google.com/books?id=bOVtRFum5WcC&dq=an+enslaved+woman+gave+birth+to+20+kids&pg=PA178#v=onepage&q=an%20enslaved%20woman%20gave%20birth%20to%2020%20kids&f=false |url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Campbell |first1=John |title=Work, Pregnancy, and Infant Mortality among Southern Slaves |journal=[[The Journal of Interdisciplinary History]] |date=1984 |volume=14 |issue=4 |pages=793–812 |doi=10.2307/203466 |jstor=203466 |pmid=11617354 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/203466 |access-date=3 February 2024 |archive-date=3 February 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240203151116/https://www.jstor.org/stable/203466 |url-status=live}}</ref> In the United States a slave's life expectancy was 21 to 22 years, and a black child through the age of 1 to 14 had twice the risk of dying of a white child of the same age.<ref>{{cite web |title=What was Life Like Under Slavery |url=https://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtid=2&psid=3040 |website=Digital History |access-date=2 November 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231223092420/https://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=2&psid=3040 |archive-date=23 December 2023 |url-status=live}}</ref>

Slave breeding replaced the demand for enslaved laborers after the decline of the Atlantic slave trade to the United States which caused an increase in the [[Slave trade in the United States|domestic slave trade]]. The sailing of slaves in the domestic slave trade is known as "sold down the river," indicating slaves being sold from [[History of Louisville, Kentucky#"Sold down the river"|Louisville, Kentucky]] which was a slave trading city and supplier of slaves. Louisville, Kentucky, Virginia, and other states in the [[Upland South|Upper South]] supplied slaves to the Deep South carried on boats going down the [[Mississippi River]] to Southern slave markets.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Sublette |first1=Ned |title=The American Slave Coast: A History of the Slave-Breeding Industry |date=2015 |publisher=[[Chicago Review Press]] |isbn=9781613748237 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=iwCKCgAAQBAJ&q=slave+trade&pg=PT11 |access-date=23 January 2024 |archive-date=26 July 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240726160706/https://books.google.com/books?id=iwCKCgAAQBAJ&q=slave+trade&pg=PT11#v=snippet&q=slave%20trade&f=false |url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |last1=Fierce |first1=Mildred |title=Slavebreeding in the South's "Peculiar Institution" |url=https://ourtimepress.com/slavebreeding-in-the-souths-peculiar-institution/ |access-date=17 January 2024 |agency=Our Time Press |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240703062752/https://ourtimepress.com/slavebreeding-in-the-souths-peculiar-institution/ |archive-date=3 July 2024}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last1=Jackson |first1=Kellie |title=The 'Capitalized Womb': A Review of Ned and Constance Sublette's ''The American Slave Coast'' |url=https://www.aaihs.org/the-capitalized-womb/ |website=African American Intellectual History Society |date=31 March 2016 |access-date=17 January 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240225224735/https://www.aaihs.org/the-capitalized-womb/ |archive-date=25 February 2024}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last1=Gandhi |first1=Lakshmi |title=What Does 'Sold Down The River' Really Mean? The Answer Isn't Pretty |url=https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2014/01/27/265421504/what-does-sold-down-the-river-really-mean-the-answer-isnt-pretty |publisher=[[NPR]] |work=Code Switch |date=27 January 2014 |access-date=17 January 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240726161242/https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2014/01/27/265421504/what-does-sold-down-the-river-really-mean-the-answer-isnt-pretty |archive-date=26 July 2024 |url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Sold Down the River |url=https://mississippiencyclopedia.org/entries/sold-down-the-river/ |first1=Leah Preble |last1=Holmes |date=15 April 2018 |website=Mississippi Encyclopedia |access-date=17 January 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200706144550/https://mississippiencyclopedia.org/entries/sold-down-the-river/ |archive-date=6 July 2020}}</ref> [[New Orleans|New Orleans, Louisiana]] became a major slave market in the United States domestic slave trade after the prohibition of the Atlantic slave trade in 1807. Between 1819 and 1860, 71,000 enslaved people were transported to the [[slave market#North America|New Orleans slave market]] on slave ships that departed from ports in the United States along the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico to New Orleans to supply the demand for slaves in the Deep South.<ref>{{cite web |title=Mapping the Coastal Slave Trade |url=https://www.hnoc.org/virtual/purchased-lives/mapping-coastal-slave-trade |website=The Historic New Orleans Collection |access-date=29 February 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240229165301/https://www.hnoc.org/virtual/purchased-lives/mapping-coastal-slave-trade |archive-date=29 February 2024}}</ref><ref>{{cite magazine |title=Before the Civil War, New Orleans Was the Center of the U.S. Slave Trade |url=https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/civil-war-new-orleans-was-center-us-slave-trade-180977532/ |magazine=[[Smithsonian Magazine]] |publisher=[[Smithsonian Institution]] |access-date=29 February 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240510030022/https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/civil-war-new-orleans-was-center-us-slave-trade-180977532/ |archive-date=10 May 2024}}</ref>

[[File:Gulf of Mexico.png|thumb|The Gulf of Mexico was utilized by privateers in Florida, Louisiana, and Texas to smuggle enslaved Africans from Cuba.]]

[[Texas]] participated in the illegal slave trade and imported enslaved persons from Cuba to [[Galveston Island]] which was the main illegal slave port in Texas. Texas was part of Mexico from 1821 until 1836, and Cuba continued to supply African slaves to many Latin American countries. After 1821, the smuggling of slaves into Texas increased because of slaveholders' demand for additional enslaved labor. Galveston Island is located in the Gulf of Mexico and is 800 miles away from the slave ports in Cuba and between 60 and 70 miles away from the Louisiana border. Smugglers utilized these geographic locations to their advantage and illegally imported enslaved Africans from Cuba and made a profit by selling Africans to slaveholders in Texas and Louisiana. For example, French pirate and privateer [[Jean Lafitte]], established a colony on Galveston Island in 1817 and participated in privateering for four years and made a profit by smuggling in slaves and sold over 200 Africans to slaveholders in the United States. Lafitte used intermediaries such as the Bowie brothers, John, Resin, and James who contracted with slave traders and planters from the United States who had an interest in buying slaves. From 1818 to 1820, Lafitte and the Bowie brothers made $65,000 smuggling Africans into the Southern states and selling them to planters in Louisiana and Mississippi.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Robbins |first1=Fred |title=The Origin and Development of the African Slave Trade in Galveston, Texas, and Surrounding Areas from 1816 to 1836 |journal=[[East Texas Historical Journal]] |date=1971 |volume=9 |issue=2 |pages=154–156 |url=https://scholarworks.sfasu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1231&context=ethj |access-date=9 March 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180628015504/https://scholarworks.sfasu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=1231&context=ethj |archive-date=28 June 2018}}</ref>

Historian Ernest Obadele-Starks estimated that after 1807 the number of enslaved Africans smuggled into the United States annually averaged as low as 3,500. New Orleans, Louisiana and Florida were centers for the illegal importation of slaves in the United States because of their close proximity to Cuba and the other Caribbean islands that provided Southern states enslaved labor.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Head |first1=David |title=Slave Smuggling by Foreign Privateers: The Illegal Slave Trade and the Geopolitics of the Early Republic |journal=[[Journal of the Early Republic]] |date=2013 |volume=33 |issue=3 |pages=438–439 |doi=10.1353/jer.2013.0061 |jstor=24487048 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/24487048 |access-date=7 March 2024 |archive-date=18 May 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240518130357/https://www.jstor.org/stable/24487048 |url-status=live}}</ref>