On this Texas island, pirates kept the Atlantic slave trade going—even after it was abolished
The tragic history of the African slave trade in the Gulf of Mexico has been largely forgotten
When Americans think of the slave trade, they usually imagine ships pulling into East Coast harbors — not Texan ones. But Texas was once the site of an illegal racket led by pirates who brought slaves into the state and sold them throughout the United States. In the first wave of slave trading, between 1816 and 1821, a smuggling ring was in full effect on Galveston Island, a sandbar off the coast of southeast Texas, as well as other places along the Gulf of Mexico.
Before becoming a sovereign nation and then a part of the United States in 1845, Texas was under Spain’s rule, then Mexico’s. When Spaniards occupied Texas, between 1716 and 1821, they allowed slavery but later encouraged the freeing of slaves, although this wasn’t enforced. The first documented slave in Texas was Estevanico, a Moor who accompanied Spanish settlers. By 1808, the Atlantic slave trade had been abolished, but the domestic slave trade continued through the end of the Civil War. Texas became a strange mix of both anti- and pro-slavery sentiment.
Pirate culture has been glorified in America, but pirates were more than swashbucklers with a rugged aesthetic. They terrorized and robbed vessels at sea.
A privateer government was established in Texas in 1816 by José Manuel de Herrera, a Mexican rebel who proclaimed Galveston a port of the Mexican Republic. He appointed Louis-Michel Aury, a former French naval captain turned Mexican revolutionary, as the territory’s governor.
Galveston was a safe port for pirates to plunder vessels in the Gulf of Mexico and initiate raids on other smugglers. Their spoils, which included enslaved human beings, would eventually end up on the black market in New Orleans and other places throughout the United States. Cuban ships were a main target, as Cuba was a major depot of Africans during the illegal slave trade.
Galveston’s slave trade began when Aury left Galveston in April 1817. He sold 300 Africans he had acquired through raids to planters in Mississippi. Shortly thereafter, Captain Guy Champlin arrived in Galveston with two ships — one carrying 174 Africans and another carrying 113.
Aury returned to Galveston in the summer of 1817 with two more vessels of African slaves, including one ship that was set adrift because he worried the slaves’ fever might spread to the pirates. The other ship contained 400 Africans. At this time, there were more than 650 slaves waiting to enter the U.S.
Upon Aury’s return, he faced competition. Jean Lafitte, a French-born pirate who had fought for the U.S. during the War of 1812, had begun vigorously smuggling slaves onto the island, where he ran a pirate commune known as Campeche and served as its governor.
Lafitte worked with middlemen who would contract with planters to sell slaves. Bowie brothers John, Rezin, and James were among his most prolific intermediaries. According to Smuggler Nation: How Illicit Trade Made America, by Peter Andreas, the Bowie brothers purchased 40 Africans at about one dollar per pound of the slaves’ weight, averaging about $140 each, and then turned them over to customs officials, which entitled them to half the value of the slaves as a reward for their ”discovery.” The U.S. marshal then put the slaves up for auction and the Bowie brothers swooped right in to buy them back at half the price. This possession was now legal, since a bill of sale had been secured by a federal marshal. The men could then sell the slaves in the United States. Altogether, they smuggled more than 1,500 Africans into the country.
“We continued to follow this business until we made $65,000, when we quit and soon spent all our earnings,” John Bowie wrote. By 1821, though, American officials had gotten wind of the scheme and forced Lafitte’s retreat from Galveston Island.
That same year, Mexico gained independence from Spain. The newly formed Republic of Mexico approved American pioneer and businessman Moses Austin’s petition to settle Anglo-American colonists in Texas. While Mexico outlawed slavery, American settlers continued to bring slaves they already owned with them to Texas. According to historian Randolph B. Campbell, in his book An Empire for Slavery: The Peculiar Institution in Texas, 1821–1865, “Mexican leaders showed disapproval of slavery but did nothing effective to abolish it.”
In 1836, the Anglo-American settlers gained their independence from Mexico, becoming the Republic of Texas. At this time, there were an estimated 5,000 slaves in the area. Now free of the Mexican government, Anglo-American settlers reveled in their ability to own slaves. They attempted to be annexed to the United States but were rejected twice, as the federal government had concerns about admitting another slave-holding state. They eventually succeeded in 1845.
The number of slaves in the state had grown to 30,000 by the year of their independence, and by 1860 there were 182,566 slaves — about one-third of the state’s total population. In Galveston, there was a fourfold increase in the slave population between 1847 and 1850, a period that saw only a twofold increase in the free population.
By 1860, there were only two free black Americans in Galveston. Historians believe this was due to laws passed in 1840 and 1858 that required freed blacks to leave Texas, select a master, or be arrested and sold into slavery.
On June 19, 1865 — two and a half years after President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation — General Gordon Granger informed Galveston residents that slaves were now free.
Today a small group of African Americans journey to the city each year to honor their African ancestors. Dressed in white, they caravan from Houston to Galveston to offer praise and give thanks to the spirits of their relatives who onced dwelled on the shores and streets there.
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