The Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, Volume 6, July 1902 - April, 1903 Page: 148
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148 Texas Historical Association Quarterly.
manifested considerable ingenuity in hurrying their blacks on to
the United States, and by judicious advertising and discriminating
canvassing maintained an approximate equilibrium between the de-
mand and the supply.
Probably most of the purchasing in Louisiana was done from
agents who transmitted the orders 'to Galveston and contracted for
the delivery of the negroes at specified places. The most popular
of these depots were at the mouths of the Sabine, Calcasieu, and
Bayou Lafourche, or in some of the numerous inlets of Barrataria
Bay. But occasionally careful individuals who preferred 'to buy
only upon personal inspection went to Galveston and selected their
negroes, afterwards paying for them upon delivery at one of the
sub-depositories.'
Perhaps the most successful salesmen of Lafitte's plant were the
three Bowie brothers, Resin P., James, and John J. By the ac-
count of the last, which there seems little reason to doubt, their
profits in this trade from 1818 to 1820 were $65,000.2 And when
he tells us that the price of negroes at Galveston was a dollar a
pound, or an average of a hundred and forty dollars per man, some
idea may be obtained of the magnitude of this branch of Lafitte's
business. Upon one occasion, says his brother, while James Bowie
was convoying alone a, lot of slaves through the wilds of Eastern
Texas, they escaped from him as he slept and were captured by a
wandering band of Comanches. He followed them as far as the
head of the Colorado river, but was forced to give up the pursuit
there and abandon his property. It is not likely that the unfortu-
nate negroes profited greatly by their change of masters, though the
historian Thrall is authority for the statement that in the early
days many Indians of Western Texas wore decidedly negroid boun-
tenances.3
One of Bowie's statements, bearing all the ear-marks of truth.
casts an interesting light upon the defectiveness of congressional
legislation against the importation of slaves. It will be remem-
bered that 'the bill which President Jefferson approved on March 2,
1807, to prohibit the slave trade after January 1 of the following
year-the earliest date possible under the Constitution-was, like
Yoakum, History of Texas, I 183-4.
2De Bow's Review, XIII 381.
"Thrall, Pictorial History of Texas, 129.
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Texas State Historical Association. The Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, Volume 6, July 1902 - April, 1903, periodical, 1903; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101028/m1/152/: accessed April 26, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.