1. Education  Importation of Slaves Outlawed by 1807 Act of
Congress   Early Anti-Slavery Poster  An Early Anti-Slavery
Poster  Library of Congress  When the US Constitution was
written in 1787, a long forgotten and peculiar provision was
included in Article I, the part of the document dealing with the
duties of the legislative branch:   In other words, the
government could not ban the importation of slaves for 20 years
after the adoption of the Constitution. And as the designated
year 1808 approached, those opposed to slavery began making
plans for legislation that would outlaw the trans-Atlantic slave
trade.  A senator from Vermont first introduced a bill to ban
the importation of slaves in late 1805, and President Thomas
Jefferson recommended the same course of action in his annual
address to Congress a year later, in December 1806.   In
subsequent years the law would have to be enforced, and at times
the US Navy dispatched vessels to seize suspected slave ships.
An African Squadron patrolled the west coas