Īt the same time that the importation of slaves from Africa was being restricted or eliminated, the United States was undergoing a rapid expansion of cotton, sugar cane, and rice production in the Deep South and the West. Congress from both the North and the South as well as President Thomas Jefferson. This led to increased calls for abolition in America, supported by members of the U.S. The laws that ultimately abolished the Atlantic slave trade came about as a result of the efforts of British abolitionist Christian groups such as the Society of Friends, known as Quakers, and Evangelicals led by William Wilberforce, whose efforts through the Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade led to the passage of the 1807 Slave Trade Act by the British parliament in 1807. Slaves dancing on a South Carolina plantation.
