the end of the 17th century, the London-based Royal African Company was bringing 1,000 slaves into Virginia every year. Victory in America's War of Independence did not end the slave trade. 1790, roughly one of every five persons in the new republic was black. August Meier and Elliot Rudwick cover much of the same ground as Franklin in From Plantation to Ghetto (Hill & Wang, 1976, cloth & paper).
Congress outlawed the importa- tion of African slaves in 1807, but the domestic slave trade...