PBA Galleries

Autograph Document Signed by Dundas (and certified on verso by a court official 2pp. (front and verso), 7 x 8”.
 

Rare. We can find only one record of another Virginia “non-Importation” certificate having appeared at auction in recent years – sold at our Galleries in February. “I James Graham do sware that my removal to the State of Virginia was with no intention to evade the Act for preventing the further Importation of Slaves within this Commonwealth nor have I brought with me, or will cause to be brought, any slave with an intent of Selling them, nor have any of the Slaves now in my possession been imported from Africa or any of the West India Islands since the first day of November Seventeen hundred and seventy eight…Negroes, Sam / Linder”
 

Dundas (1759-1813), Mayor of Alexandria when he signed this document, was a planter and mill owner who owned a large plantation on which he built an imposing home known locally as “Dundas Castle.”

During the Revolution, all the rebellious colonies – including those in the South – banned or suspended the international slave trade as a measure of economic warfare, because most slaves had arrived in America from the coast of Africa on ships of their British enemy. After Independence, while slave-holders guarded their legal right to “import” more slaves, most Southern states, including Virginia, maintained the slave trade ban until Congress finally outlawed the trade nationally in 1808.