By the end of 1803, it appeared that controversies over the transatlantic slave trade had been largely overcome in the United States. All states by then had stopped slave imports, including South Carolina, the most recalcitrant state dealing with this issue. The issue of the slave trade, however, came to the fore dramatically as a political issue with the acquisition of the Louisiana Territory by the United States in 1803 and the subsequent reopening of South Carolina’s slave trade for the first time since 1787. The massive increase in US-owned territory through the Louisiana Purchase held out the possibility of further demand for slave labour, with Charleston acting as an entrepôt for furnishing new African imports across the southwest United States to New Orleans and Natchez. But there was no consensus among politicians either at federal or state level that this was a desirable outcome. The years between 1803 and 1806 were therefore marked by bitter controversies about whether to reopen the slave trade to South Carolina and then, after that had taken place, whether the trade should remain open. Jefferson’s presidential message of December 1806, looking forward to the time when Congress could intervene constitutionally to prohibit the slave trade, gave notice that the issue would be subject to detailed scrutiny in the national legislature at the first available opportunity. Debates on the slave trade accordingly were regularly held in Congress and in South Carolina’s state legislature in late 1806 and 1807 and the final result was for Congress to prohibit the slave trade to the United States from 1 January 1808. This was achieved without significant abolitionist pressure or campaigning. In Congress, few representatives dwelt upon the morality and cruelty of the slave trade but upon the practical measures needed to prohibit it. Slave importations to the United States were banned at the first moment constitutionally that action on this matter could be taken.