The Creole case was an incident in American history concerning the coastwise slave trade, which flourished for a half century or longer. In 1841, a brig named Creole (also known as USS Creole) was transporting 135 slaves between Hampton Roads, Virginia and New Orleans. Nineteen slaves on board the Creole revolted, led by Madison Washington, and directed the ship to be taken to Nassau, on the island of New Providence in the Bahamas, which was then a British colony.

The Creole case generated diplomatic tension between Great Britain and the United States, and political rumblings within the United States itself. Secretary of State Daniel Webster explained that the slaves were legal properties and demanded their return. Slavery was by this time illegal in Great Britain and her colonies, and so the British ignored the claim.

In the United States House of Representatives, Joshua Reed Giddings of Ohio introduced a series of nine resolutions that argued that Virginia state law did not apply to slaves outside of Virginian waters, and that the US federal government should not act to protect the rights of the slaveholders in this case. The resolutions provoked frigid emotions. The House censured Giddings, who promptly resigned. The voters of Ohio reelected him soon afterwards.

Though either the United States or the British might have raised the issue during the discussions that produced the Webster-Ashburton Treaty of 1842, neither nation did. Among other declarations, the Webster-Ashburton Treaty called for a final end to the slave trade on the high seas to be enforced by both signatories. The British arrested and incarcerated the nineteen rebellious slaves and held them on a charge of murder. The arrest of the conspirators may have placated the Americans sufficiently. Other issues were vastly more important in August 1842.

A similar incident took place on the high seas in 1839 on board the Amistad.

The Giddings Resolutions

1. Resolved, That, prior to the Adoption of the Federal Constitution, each of the several States composing this Union exercised full and exclusive jurisdiction over the subject of slavery within its own territory, and possessed full power to continue or abolish it at pleasure.
2. Resolved, That, by adopting the Constitution, no part of the aforesaid powers were delegated to the Federal Government, but were reserved by and still pertain to each of the several States.
3. Resolved, That, by the 8th section of the 1st article of the Constitution, each of the several States surrendered to the Federal Government all jurisdiction over the subjects of commerce and navigation upon the high seas.
4. Resolved. That slavery, being an abridgment of the natural rights of man, can exist only by force of positive municipal law, and is necessarily confined to the territorial jurisdiction of the power creating it.
5. Resolved, That when a ship belonging to the citizens of any State of the Union leaves the waters and territory of such State, and enters upon the high seas, the persons on board cease to be subject to the slave laws of such State, and therefore are governed in their relations to each other by, and are amenable to, the laws of the United States.
6. Resolved, That when the brig Creole, on her late passage for New Orleans, left the territorial jurisdiction of Virginia, the slave laws of that State ceased to have jurisdiction over the persons on board such brig, and such persons became amenable only to the laws of the United States.
7. Resolved, That the persons on board the said ship, in resuming their natural rights of personal liberty, violated no law of the United States, incurred no legal responsibility, and are justly liable to no punishment.
8. Resolved, That all attempts to regain possession of or to re-enslave said persons are unauthorized by the Constitution or laws of the United States, and are incompatible with our national honor.
9. Resolved, That all attempts to exert our national influence in favor of the coastwise slave trade, or to place this nation in the attitude of maintaining a "commerce in human beings," are subversive to the rights and injurious to the feelings of the free States, are unauthorized by the Constitution, and prejudicial to our national character.

1841 | History of slavery in the United States