away all the dirty words, he by the way, that's a very small basically says i want to get something for the senate seat. piece of the larger atlantic i'm not just going to give it african slave trade. away. and he did get something for it. millions went to brazil. >> 14 years. millions went to the caribbean. far fewer went to what becomes the united states. >> added to the unemployment of with the closing of the african the country, lost his job. it's about seven minutes to slave trade, you have a trickle 3:00. should i give you all a gift of of illegal slaving, but it's really a trickle, because it's time? -- the penalties are huge and the complexities of the illegal we will reassemble a few minutes trade really diminish it after 3:00 for our next panel. thank you all very much. greatly. [ applause ] there's much more of an illegal slave trade to cuba where spanish authorities simply turn a blind eye. all this month on american once the african trade ends, the history tv, we're featuring domestic trade picks up dramatically. programs on the 40th anniversary of the watergate break-in, millions of american slaves will move west. including panel discussions and some of them will be brought by their masters. oral history interviews recently released by the richard nixon presidential library. that is, somebody in virginia is moving to alabama. for more information on these he takes his slaves with them. programs and to see our complete schedule, go to c-span.org/history. often, though, somebody in virginia will simply say i have this is american history tv, all excess slaves. weekend, every weekend on c-span3. i will sell those slaves to a

slave trader. the slave trader then will transport the slaves to alabama, up next, we talk with albany to mississippi, to texas, to law school professor paul arkansas, to louisiana. the heart of the southwestern finkelman about capturing free cotton boom. men from the north. >> the children of those slaves and sending them south during the 19th-century. are they, themselves, become slaves as children born into he also discusses renting slaves and how this tied nonslave slavery? owners to the slave system. >> right. >> so the numbers increase? >> the numbers increase. professor finkelman has taught classes and written about the slave trade for many years. and america has a very large this takes place at the american slave population that reproduces rather rapidly. historians meeting in milwaukee. it's about 20 minutes. this is due to a combination of many things. >> american history tv is at the annual meeting of the one of which is simply climate. organization of american the american climate is historians in milwaukee. healthier, say than brazil, or the caribbean. joining us is paul finkelman, a food supply is better. professor of law and public the work, while horrendous, is policy at the law school. thanks for being here. not lethal the way sugar >> it's a delight to be with planting is. c-span. >> you're here because you're so, the american slave participating in a panel called population grows from a couple new perspectives on the 19th century slave trade? million after the revolution to -- actually, from about a >> right. >> what did you talk about in million after the revolution to your discussion today? 4 million by the end of the

civil war. >> well, the panel talked about two pieces of the slave trade. >> you teach a course at albany law school called slavery and the law. one was the kidnapping of black >> right. children from mostly >> tell us about that course. >> well, people often ask, why philadelphia, but also other do you teach slavery and the law? places where they were free. it's not on the bar exam. and this is something that that, of course, is true. historians have known a lot about, but there has not been very much research. but i teach slavery in the law for a couple of reasons. first, because much of american and so two of the panelists were constitutional law actually is able to discuss research that is still based on precedents that ongoing about kidnapping gangs. were created by slavery. this is really kind of an early the oddest and most obvious version of trafficking people, because you have three people example is the electoral college in the constitution. why do we have an electoral college? who are grabbed off the streets, why not elect the president directly? thrown into ships, taken to delaware, maryland and, from there, transported further soft. >> because delaware, maryland, would have allowed the slave trade? at the convention -- >> well, they wouldn't. it's illegal everywhere. constitutional convention they discuss this. the fittest thing, that is the kidnapping free people is best thing, would be for the people to directly elect the illegal, even in mississippi. president. ie, popular vote. to use the most obvious example, it's illegal to kidnap a free al gore beats george bush because he has more votes. person. the difference is that but madison then says there are two problems with that. pennsylvania is in the process of ending slavery.

the first is the difference in most of the blacks in the franchise, meaning that in pennsylvania by 1810 are free. south carolina, only adult white men who own a certain amount of so free black children on the property can vote, whereas in streets of pennsylvania are massachusetts, all adult men, free, but in maryland and black, indian, white can vote. delaware, slavery is an ongoing and in new jersey, even women can vote. institution and the presumption so, what madison is saying is that we would have a difference in the franchises to who could vote and that would skew the of the law changes. election to favor some states over others. once you get into a slave state the presumption is if you're an but that could have been dealt with, you know. african-american you're a slave. the constitution could have and so if someone is taking a black child through maryland, nobody is going to intervene said, all adult males or all saying why are you carting this adult white men. black child off? they obviously weren't going to if the black child is chained, enfranchise women, can vote in the president's election. no one is going to say why are you carting this black child off? lot of ways to do it. then madison says the most they'll assume the child was a slave. important reason is that our slaves won't count. whereas if you're doing it in pennsylvania, you would be now, he doesn't mean the slaves should vote. stopped by all kinds of people, saying why are you kidnapping what he means is that if you have a presidential election this child? >> who is behind these gangs? that's a popular vote, there >> people who are professional criminals. won't be slaves voting. the most interesting one is a so, virginia, which is the woman named patty canon. largest state population wise, becomes the third largest state if you don't count the slaves. how do you get around it with

she has a gang of kidnappers, the electoral college, based on congressional representation, including some mixed race which is based on counting people, people of both african slaves for three-fifths of the congressional representation. and european descent, to help entice children on the theory that the children will be more so the result is that the three-fifths clause, which counts three slaves out of every comfortable with somebody who five towards congressional appears to be african-american. representation gives the south extra representatives in that's one piece of it. the more interesting piece, in some ways -- i shouldn't say the congress and gives the south more interesting piece because they're both interesting. that tells us something about extra muscle in the electoral human trafficking, but also suggests that trafficking in college and that's how we get children, which is an international problem today, is nothing new. the catastrophe in bush v. gore. maybe it's easier to traffic there are real day-to-day children because they are less able to assert their rights. consequences from american law they're less able to escape. that developed out of slavery. they're less able to fight back. there are a bunch of other doctrines. so that's one piece of it. dorman commerce clause begins the other piece of the panel was with slavery. domestic police powers begin with slavery. about the interstate and i teach it for that reason. intrastate renting of slaves. but the other reason to teach it is because law is a powerful and this is really fascinating. tool, used to create societies, it turns out that significant to help make society better. numbers of slaves at some time in their life are rented out. but law can also be used to help make society much worse.

the most common time of being it's an important thing for a rented out is when your master lawyer to understand the power dies. of the law, to do evil as well that's the worst day in the life of a slave. as to do good. we learn from our mistakes. that's the death of the master. and it's kind of shocking to see when the master dies, it means the master's estate will be dispersed among the heirs. slave families will be broken up, slave communities will be broken up. well-educated, intelligent judges making decisions that, by our standards, are absolutely slaves will be separated from horrible because those decisions the people they've always known are supporting slavery. from the people that they have always lived with. the most famous example, the probably the most famous example is thomas jefferson. >> how did it work? dred scott decision where chief who handled the renting? >> what happens is someone dies. they have a will. justice tawney says blacks have no rights, that the white man need respect. he was probably right constitutionally. that's what's shocking. students need to know that. the deceased person has a will. the will names an executor. >> i read that the course also looks at british law. the first thing the executor does is to pay off the debts of how did the british resolve the slavery issue. when did they end slavery and how did they end it differently the estate and then to disperse from the united states, except the property. that could take many years. for the civil war? that doesn't happen instantaneously. >> right. well, except for the civil war. that's a pretty big exception. we'll get to that in a second. often the way to disperse the britain deals with slavery in property is to sell slaves, the law in sort of three phases.

auction them off to various parties. the most famous example is the settling of thomas jefferson's the first phase is a decision by estate where close to 200 slaves the chief justice of the court are auctioned off in one day. of kings bench, lord mansfield four or five of jefferson's slaves get free. in 1772 known as the somerset case. one of them, his blacksmith, is freed and jefferson says in his somerset was a slave in will that the blacksmith cannot virginia, brought to england by his master, who is a colonial only be freed but live on bureaucrat. worked for a while in virginia. monticello, have his blacksmith tools and live in his cabin with his family. came back to england. only jefferson forgot to free his family. brought his slave with him. somerset gets to london says i so the day he got free he saw don't want to be a slave anymore. his wife and children auctioned off to a number of different buyers. lots of free blacks in london. runs away. his master, james stewart, grabs somerset and brings him back -- that's the end point of settling the estate. charles stewart, master charles stewart grabs james somerset, but the middle point from the death of the master until the brings him back and has him settling of the estate, the chained in his ship to send him to barbados to be sold. executor has to do something with slaves. and often the easiest thing to do is rent them out to other people. abolitionists bring the case before lord mansfield and lord so that a man dies, leaving 15 mansfield says that slavery slaves. cannot exist by common law, only his widow will eventually get a use of some of these slaves.

his children will eventually get by statutory or what he calls the slaves while they're sorting positive law and since there's this out. no statute creating slavery in the executor comes in and says i'm just going to take these slaves and rent them out and england, it is against the law have a steady cash flow. to hold someone as a slave against his will. that's 1772. so, what we find is almost every many scholars -- and i'm one of them -- believe that one of the american slave or a vast majority of them, at some point reasons for the american in their life, are rented out to someone else. revolution was that southerners did not want to be tied to an england where there was a legal now, here is where it gets interesting. we're in the middle of the civil war.ions often precedent that said slavery couldn't exist except by positive law and if they brought their slaves to england, they asked, why do so many nonslave could lose their slaves. holding southern white men fight somerset scares southern and die to preserve slavery? slavery is the cause of the war. masters, because it's really saying that slavery is immoral. and if people don't believe me, it's legal in all the american colonies, but not the mother they can go look at the country. declaration of the causing of that's the first step. succession by any one of the southern states, south carolina, georgia, texas. they all say the same thing. we're leaving the union to protect slavery. why does the rank and file nonslave holder do this? people often ask that. we now have an answer. the second step in 1807 england

bans the slave trade to all of its colonies. few months later in january 1st, 1808, we do the same thing. many nonslave holders are, in fact, slave renters. that ends new slaves coming in to the caribbean, but it doesn't end slavery in the caribbean. they're involved in the slave economy, renting slaves, using then in the 1830s, england passes a law to end all slavery slavery, important to their livelihood, even if they don't in the caribbean, paying masters yet own slav a small sum for every slave, having some apprenticeship one kind of modern example would programs to ease the transition be why do people who don't own homes believe in the private from slavery to freedom and by ownership of homes? nocause they're renting a home 1837, there's no slavery in the bua home. ay they hope to british western hemisphere. >> how big was the slave trade prior to the civil war? >> do you have any idea the numbers that were in the caribbean under the british empire? >> two slave trades. >> you know, this is something where i wish you would ask me first the african slave trade before we went on camera. i would have looked it up. the one that brings people to africa. that ends in 1808 legally. but it's probably 3 or 4 million slaves. that is -- starting january 1, >> so, many more than original 1808, it is illegal to bring a in the u.s.? slave into the united states. >> that's right. that's right. now here is the difference. that slave trade probably in england, the basis of the brought 400,000 people to what becomes the united states. empire is england. it's great britain. it's the united kingdom. it's not barbados or jamaica.

from the 1650s until 1808. what you really have is parliament telling barbados and jamaican masters, we're buying them from you. you have no choice. england is doing something for somebody else within the empire. they're ending slavery. of course, you can make the argument if you're an american slave, you're better off in the british empire than the american republic, because you'll be free a lot sooner. >> you're a law professor here in a conference of historians and history professors and teachers. >> right. but i am a ph.d. historian. >> the perspective of the law, particularly in slavery, that you would impart to people teaching history that they're not teaching now? >> well, the first thing that i would do -- and this came up in my panel as well -- is that when you look at things like renting slaves, when you look at things like kidnapping, you have to understand the full, legal implications of slavery.

slavery is a pervasive system and it pervades the legal system. i'll give you one example. when we're dealing with kidnapped black children, the only witnesses often would have been free blacks, but he -- the panelist then goes on to say, but the southern states, maryland and delaware, would not relax their rules to allow blacks to testify in these cases. and the point is that throughout the south, nowhere can a black testify against a white. so, you can't relax the rule in one instance, because then the whole system comes tumbling down. so, despite the fact that it's a crime to kidnap free blacks in delaware and maryland, you can't let blacks testify, because if you let blacks testify against whites, then the whole racial basis of slavery begins to crumble and you -- in law talk, law professors talk about the camel's nose under the tent. the idea that if the camel

sticks his nose under his tent next thing you know, you'll have the whole camel under your tent. or we talk about this big slippery slope. tent, next thin you know, you'll have a whole camel under your tent. we talk about the slippery slope. well, the big slippery slope would have been if you allow black testimony against a white ever, then you lose the whole game. so part of the importance of understanding slavery is to understand that as a dramatic legal super structure, which keeps it going, and this links us all the way back to the question of human trafficking, because people often talk about slavery in the united states as modern slavery or the modern slave trade. there's a huge difference between human trafficking today and human trafficking in slaves in the 19th century, and that big difference was that it was illegal then, and it was legal then and it is illegal now. so today, if somebody is trafficked into the united states, all that person has to

do is go to a law enforcement officer and say i'm being held against my will, help me. there's no fugitive farm worker law in the united states. many of the women who are trafficked end up in the sex business. there's no fugitive sex worker business. if a woman is being forced against her will to do things, all she needs to do is walk out of where she is, tell someone who is a law enforcement person, and unless that is a corrupt cop, she's going to be protected by the law. that's the difference a fugitive slave today and a traffic person. a fugitive slave then and a traffic person today. now, i'm not saying this is always easy, because often a traffic person is afraid to talk to law enforcement officers. they are often afraid they will be sent back to their home country. there are lots of reasons why they don't do it. but the legal struck clur is very, very important. when we fight modern trafficking, we can't keep using

the slavery analogy because it leads us down the wrong path. our legal tool box to fight trafficking is enormous, whereas the legal tool box to fight slavery was very small. >> paul finkelman is professor at albany law school. thank for the conversation. >> thank very much. >> this year, c-span's local content vehicles are traveling e country expring american history. next, a look at our cent visit to wichita, kansas. you're watching "american history tv" all weekend, every weekend, on c-span 3. >> from 1930 to the middle of 1945, i did occupy that position. and that was the period of the great rise of the labor movement. the communist played an honorable and effective part and won a certain degree of influence in america. that influence has always been exerted toward actively organizing and solidifying the

labor movement and uniting labor with all progressives. communists do not control any labor unions. and do not nt t istsade an penceablribun practice how thl defense of labor rigs cod be combined with the most complete support of the war rt >> what we're looking at is kellogg, the major thoroughfare through wichita. that grassy area to my back there, that was where the house was for earl browder. he was the general secretary of the communist party from about 1920 through 1950. he ran for president twice under the communist party in 1936 and

1940. in 1989 when kellogg was widened, there was talk about moving his house. it was at that time one of the oldest occupied houses in witch tasm it was built in 1874. and there was talk with the city preservationist because of earl browder's connections of moving it to save it. but it proved to be so dilapidated they were unable to save it. he was born in 1891. his family was fairly poor, and so as an early boy, he had to start working and he was a messenger at several places in wichita, including the western union, the union national bank, and a drugstore. and at age 16, he began reading carl marx. and it was here in wichita, he went to the forum, the

forerunner of our century 2 today, and he heard eugene debbs talk about socialism, and he became so moved that he began selling the appeal to reason. it was the nation's largest socialist newspaper in the time, and it was published here in kansas. at that time, there was a huge diverse economic dichotomy going on. you had the very, very wealthy, and you had the very, very poor. and the browder family was certainly among the very poor. and the socialist movement at that time offered hope. what happened was world war i broke out, and rather than serve in the military, he went to prison. and when he got out of prison, he then helped organize the communist party in the nation,

and went during the 1920s to china and helped organize the chinese communist party. and then he came back and was the general secretary of the communist party here in the nation. ran for president in 1936 and 1940 against fdr. did not receive any votes from wichitans. this was before world war ii, so it didn't have quite the negative overtones that it does today. in 1936, earl browder said that the united states is economically ready for communism, but it's politically not ready. >> events and issues are beginning to stand out so that they can be seen by the masses. we don't have to give long winded explanations anymore. the people see, the people understand what they need is a voice to express it for them.

and an organization to rally them, and the people are going to march forward with the people will belong the victory. >> he advocated for the united states and soviet communist parties and that's what caused s stalin to kick him out. he rallied with joe mccarthy and had to answer questions, and he refused to. he refused to name names, and was once again put in prison. he died in 1973 at the age of 82. he was not afraid to show his believes. he wasn't afraid to stand down, no matter what the consequences were. he was in and out of prison right and left. there weren't many like that at that time. >> unity, or progress against the reactionary forces that

threatened to rise to power, unity that rises above the differences of race, religion, and ideology, unity to bring the century of the common man this is the golden rule for all the democratic candidates, which the trade unions occupy central place. this rule says an emphatic no to the proposition that we should erect special discriminations against communists of some kind of menace. >> we welcome you to the missouri governor's mansion. >> the first governor was b. grads brown, his wife, and his child grads. his granddaughter wrote the book "good night moon" which is a very favorite of many of the school children not only here in missouri, but all over the united states.

>> july 7 and 8, book tv and american history tv explore the letterage and literally culture of missouri captain, jefferson city. >> there was a governor stewart, a bachelor governor that the story says he rode his house up the front steps of the mansion, into the dining room and proceeded to feed his horse oats out of this plate warmer. now, the comment that he probably should not be feeding his horse in the governor's mansion and his comment to them was i have to feed more people in this home with less manners than my horse has. >> july 7 and 8 on c-span 2 and 3. >> next weekend, award-winning author and historian david pietrusza is our guest on