The Suppression of the African Slave Trade is a fundamental work of African-American history that is a detailed survey of the laws governing slavery from its beginnings in the early days of the American colonies through its peak in the era of King Cotton and the efforts to suppress, limit and eliminate the practice before the Civil War and Reconstruction era.  It is based on the doctoral thesis of W. E. B. Du Bois and was published in 1896 as the first in a series of Harvard Historical volumes. The following is from the introduction.

“This monograph was begun during my residence as Rogers Memorial Fellow at Harvard University, and is based mainly upon a study of the sources, i.e., national, State, and colonial statutes, Congressional documents, reports of societies, personal narratives, etc. The collection of laws available for this research was, I think, nearly complete; on the other hand, facts and statistics bearing on the economic side of the study have been difficult to find, and my conclusions are consequently liable to modification from this source. The question of the suppression of the slave-trade is so intimately connected with the questions as to its rise, the system of American slavery, and the whole colonial policy of the eighteenth century, that it is difficult to isolate it, and at the same time to avoid superficiality on the one hand, and unscientific narrowness of view on the other. While I could not hope entirely to overcome such a difficulty, I nevertheless trust that I have succeeded in rendering this monograph a small contribution to the scientific study of slavery and the American Negro.” (W.E. Burghardt Du Bois, Wilberforce University, March, 1896)

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