Virtual Lecture – The Crowning Crime
The title is taken from a handbill published and distributed by an abolitionist organization included a poem that called the Trans-Atlantic slave trade the "Crowning Crime of Christendom." After the United States declared the importation of slaves illegal in 1808, the U.S. Navy was charged with the mission of enforcing the law. As a result of the Webster-Ashburton Treaty of 1842, the U.S. Navy and British Royal Navy began patrolling the waters of the coast of West Africa to interdict ships carrying human cargo to the Western Hemisphere. The most...