Chapter 9: The Delegates Decide to Ban the Future Importation of Slaves

Another compromise follows in a recommendation by a Committee of Eleven to prohibit the further importation of slaves from abroad by 1800. Some feel this deadline is too soon and agreement is reached to push it back to 1808.

This ban, however, adds further misery to the lives of those enslaved, especially the women.
To make up for fewer imported slaves, plantation owners turn to “forced breeding” to increase the number available at auction. One leading sponsor of this strategy is Thomas Jefferson, who explains the rationale in an 1820 letter to his kinsman, John Eppes:

I know no error more consuming to an estate than that of stocking farms with men
almost exclusively. I consider a woman who brings a child every two years as more
profitable than the best man of the farm. what she produces is an addition to the
capital, while his labors disappear in mere consumption.