Slavery in the United States

This is a list of slave traders of the United States, people whose occupation or business was the slave trade in the United States. Slave traders were human traffickers that bought and sold people as property, also called "chattel" or "commodities". The people who were enslaved and bought and sold were primarily Africans and African-American people in the Southern United States from the time of the United States Declaration of Independence in 1776 until the defeat of the Confederate States of America in 1865, ending the American Civil War. The Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves was passed into law in 1808 under the Star-Spangled Banner flag, when there were 15 states in the Union. This Act, combined with the Slave Trade Act of 1794 and the Slave Trade Act of 1800, prohibited U.S. citizens from engaging in the international slave trade between nations: Slave Trade Act of 1794: This law prohibited U.S. citizens from using American ships to transport slaves to foreign countries.