The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 41, July 1937 - April, 1938 Page: 103
383 p. : maps ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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The Free Negro in the Republic of Texas
free might be seized on fraudulent claims and enslaved by law.
Free papers were by no means conclusive evidence that Negroes
were entitled to their freedom. Henry Forbes admitted on the
gallows that his had been forged by a white man,s3 and runaway
slaves able to write were in no need of white men's collusion.
When Ben, a dark mulatto slave, ran away his master gave notice
that "He will no doubt pass for a free man,"s" and James Doswell
advertised that two Negroes who ran away from his plantation in
Mississippi might be heading for Texas and "passing as Free
men."s5 In the process of recovering slaves alleging themselves
to be free, Negroes actually free might have been enslaved. An
advertisement in 1838, illustrates a situation where a fraudulent
claim to ownership could easily have been recognized and enforced.
Robert Stevenson, the sheriff of Washington county, arrested
Palmer Jackson, who "says . . . he was brought out to Texas
in September last in a small whale boat by Mr. Robert Bushare
[of Attakapas, Louisiana], that he has been living in Houston
ever since he arrived in Texas and that he is a free man." The
distrust in which the sheriff held this Negro and the ease with
which Palmer Jackson might be fraudulently claimed as a slave,
is indicated by the fact that the sheriff added to his notice, "The
owner can have him by applying to me and paying expenses.""
In addition to the possibility of being reduced to slavery by law,
free Negroes faced the danger of being seized without legal pre-
tence and sold into slavery. "There lived in Yocum's neighbor-
hood an old Frenchman who had a negro woman for a wife, by
whom he had a large family of mulatto children, among them
several grown daughters. The Yocum's, associated with Earpe
Wingate and Col. Gravenor-who had at one time been a soldier
at Fort Jessup, planned the killing of the old man, and taking
his wife and children to western Texas, and selling them into
slavery. Accordingly they approached the old man one night and
murdered him, and burnt him in a log heap. Then they drove
"Daily Picayune, November 18, 1840.
"Telegraph and Texas Register, September 9, 1837.
S"Nacogdoches Archives, Vol. 89, p. 1.
"Telegraph and Texas Register, March 24, 1838. The law provided
that a notice of runaway slaves held in jail should be published weekly
tor one month, and if not claimed in six months, upon thirty days' notice
the Negroes were to be sold to the highest bidder at public auction.
Gammel, The Laws of Texas, IT, 649.103
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 41, July 1937 - April, 1938, periodical, 1938; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101103/m1/111/: accessed April 26, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.