Memorial of Robert Campbell and Geo. B. Cumming

Washington, D.C. printed by Gales & Seaton, 1828. 8vo, pp. 6, [2]; removed from binding; very good. Issued as House of Reps. Doc. No. 138, 20th Congress. In 1820 the ship Antelope was apprehended off the coast of Florida under suspicion of it being a privateer. The Spanish and Portuguese governments claimed the captives on board as their slave property, and the matter was brought before the US Supreme Court, which found that portion of those captives were the property of Spain. A member of the US House, Richard Henry Wilde, subsequently purchased 39 of those slaves, at the cost of about $9,000, for the purpose of returning them to Africa, but he failed to get the support of the American Colonization Society to do so. This memorial is a petition by Campbell and Cumming for the House to appropriate funds to assist Wilde in the repatriation. They argued that slavery under Spanish law would have been preferable to slavery in Georgia. The petition is followed by the text of the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves. Item #58442

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