being slaves on Monday, 16 December 1805. Wary of offending the slaveholders to the least degree, the Senate amended the proposed Senatorial Act, then passed it to the House of Representatives, where it was meticulously scrutinised. Ever mindful of not inciting the wrath of slaveholders, members of the House produced a bill which would explain the Senatorial Act. The two measures were bound together, with the House bill being called H R 77 and the Senate Act being called An Act to prohibit the importation of slaves into any port or place within the jurisdiction of the United States, from and after the first day of January, in the year of our Lord, 1808. The bond measure also regulated the coastwise slave trade. The bond measure was placed before President Thomas Jefferson on 2 March 1807 for his approbation. The 1807 Act of Congress was modified and supplemented by the Fifteenth Congress. The importation of slaves into the United States was called "piracy" by an Act of Congress that punctuated the Era of Good Feelings in 1819. Any citizen of the United States found guilty of such "piracy" might be given the death penalty. The role of the Navy was expanded to include patrols off the coasts of Cuba and South America. The naval activities in the western Atlantic bore the name of The African Slave Trade Patrol of 1820–61. The blockade of Africa was still being performed in the eastern Atlantic at the same time. Africa Squadron operations American naval officer Matthew Calbraith Perry was the executive officer aboard in 1819, which had escorted the Elizabeth, whose passengers included former slaves moving from the United States to Africa. President James Monroe had the Secretary of the Navy order the American vessel to convoy the Elizabeth to Africa with the first contingent of freed slaves that the American Colonization Society was resettling there. Of the 86 black emigrants sailing on the Elizabeth, only about one-third were men; the rest were women and children. In 1821, Perry commanded Shark in the Africa Squadron. Alligator under the command of Lieutenant Robert F. Stockton was also in the African Squadron in 1821 and captured several slavers. Lieutenant Stockton also convinced the local African chief to relinquish land around Cape Mesurado about which Liberia grew. Stockton became the commander of the US Navy's first screw-propelled steamer, the Princeton, in 1843. On 26 and 27