This is Episode 50 – Slaves and Slavery in Texas Part 3 Treatment of Slaves and Slave Insurrections

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In this episode I’m going to continue my discussion about a topic that often makes some folks a tad uncomfortable and that’s because I’m talking about the history of slaves and slavery in Texas. In the last episode I covered how the early Anglo settlers of Texas had roots in the deep south and brought with them  their prejudices and social customs and one of those customs was slavery.

I looked at how even though Mexico and Spain eventually outlawed slavery, Texas was exempted from those laws. Government officials were so eager to profit from the production of cotton that they ignored the slavery issue. Steven F. Austin, said, “The primary product that will elevate us from poverty is cotton and we cannot do this without the help of slaves.”  As a result, Anglo-Americans where able to bring their family slaves with them to Texas. Until 1840, they were also allowed to buy and sell them.  As I mentioned, it’s important to understand that Texas was actually the last frontier of slavery in the United States. Between the years of 1821 and 1865, slavery spread over the eastern two-fifths of the state. The reality of slavery tightly bound Texas with the Old South.

I realize that there are some who refer to it as the “peculiar institution” because even though slavery was a reality in many other countries, how large it was and how it was so tightly woven into Southern society made it unique or  “peculiar”  only to the South. Over decades Southern politicians and writers used the term to defend the practice of slavery. One thing we need to keep in mind when it comes to the issue of slavery is that it was and is an absolutely barbaric practice.

In the past Hollywood made movies that sometimes-showed images of scenes of “happy” slaves, sitting around singing and generally in good spirits. The reality is slaves lived a life that was totally under the control of their owners. They were whipped, not a childish misbehavior spanking, but a brutal ripping of the skin off the back of the person being whipped. They could be hung. They could be beaten. They could be and were often sold. Female slaves could be and were raped by their masters. Families were torn apart. Slaves were considered to be less than  human. There were no happy slaves. As it was elsewhere, in Texas how slaves were treated did rely on who their owner was.

One story about how slaves were treated is the story of Lavinia Bell, a Black woman who had been kidnapped when she was a child and sold into slavery. She eventually escaped and part of her story was how she had been forced to work naked in the cotton fields near Galveston. She had made multiple attempts to escape and after her first failed attempt she was physically mutilated and beaten severely by her owner. Hers is not the only such story, many others who were enslaved in Texas told similar stories of violence and cruelty by their owners. Hundreds sought to escape, especially to Mexico where they knew they would be safe from being returned. Now of course, there are the outliers, such as Joshua Houston. He was owned by Sam Houston, actually he was  owned initially by Houston’s second wife, and he became an important part of Houston’s family.

He was treated well, taught to read and write, and actually the Houston family helped to prepare him for his eventual emancipation. After the Civil War he became a politician, and, at one point, offered to lend money to Sam Houston’s widow when she faced financial difficulties. While the treatment of slaves in Texas may have varied on the basis of the disposition of individual slaveowners, it was clear that Anglo Texans in general accepted and defended slavery. There was also one undercurrent of reality that existed for all slave owners, and that was the fear of a revolt or insurrection by the slaves.

Actions by the Texas legislature provide an apt illustration. Although a committee of the House concluded in 1857, “Our slaves are the happiest . . . of human beings on whom the sun shines,” a year later after pressure from slave owners and others, in 1858 the legislature passed a measure to repress insurrections and punish any participants. So, what was the reality of possible insurrections? Better than most would think and not nearly as bad or as many as others would believe.

I talked about the first one that took place prior to the beginning of the Texas Revolution. During 1835–36, Texas leaders were becoming more and more nervous due to the news that Santa Anna’s army was approaching and a clash was inevitable because they believed their enemies were planting the seeds for a slave rebellion. The fear was that a group of slaves who lived along the Brazos were thought to getting ready to “make an attempt to rise up”, theoretically as a part of some grand scheme to seize land. Whites retaliated by rounding up, whipping, and hanging slaves, this did not help to quell the fears of insurrection as Texas military fortunes waned. After this event and even though bands of Indians, Mexicans, and runaway slaves took part in a series of guerilla warfare raids during the ensuing years, it really wasn’t until the mid-1850s that tensions began to rise again.

The first was in 1856 when vigilantes in Colorado county thought another slave-Mexican rebellion was spreading to the west and south. There isn’t much evidence that any such rebellion existed and as with many of these types  of situations only those accused actually suffered any damage. Vigilante committees executed 3 Blacks, whipped a White abolitionist, and forced the entire Mexican population to leave the county.  Part of this is due to the fact that at the same time in 1856 when anti-slavery candidate Republican John C. Frémont, was running for President  and slaves were supposedly being incited to revolt by the campaign. However, what this incident actually showed was how extensive the anti-Hispanic hostility was, this hostility had been steadily building in western Texas since 1854. The anti-Hispanic feeling culminated in the Cart War of 1857, which I discussed in the last episode.

As far as actual insurrections, the bloodiest one known was the Texas Troubles, and took place during the intense political climate of 1860. What happened was a series of unexplained fires in July took place in Dallas, Denton, and other parts of North Texas, of course these fires naturally gave birth to another group of  vigilante committees. The vigilantes that interrogated people spread terror in the slave quarters. In addition to the slaves, several ministers were also implicated as the insurrection leaders.

The vigilantes expected a rebellion to take place on election day, August 6. The rebellion failed to take place, but that did not stop people from wildly exaggerating events and that helped spread panic through many northern and a few central Texas counties. In the end, between July and September, about ten known abolitionists and maybe half of that many slaves reportedly died at the hands of frontier justice.

The fear and expectation of a Black revolt continued to exist even after the Civil War. On historian has described this last scare as a “drama of the imagination,” and swept through the Gulf south during the summer of 1865. This plot claimed the insurrection would take place around or on Christmas Day. While many people doubted the existence of any plot others began to worry about the danger of an uprising as the expected date for it was neared.  Like many events that are invented and fueled by rumors, the holidays passed without a rising.

There was a very consistent undercurrent for every supposed insurrection. Every time Texans felt outside political or military pressure, they became apprehensive about the internal enemies of slavery being encouraged. However, in NO instance did an organized body of slaves shed White blood, although the vigilantes did.

There were some very suspicious circumstances that did help to provide some fuel for the anxiety. For instance, those fires that broke out in North Texas on July 8, 1860, almost all began simultaneously, and they broke out in different towns, which would suggest that arsonists were to blame.

Every now and then vigilantes would find slaves in possession of arms and some testimonials regarding the slaves’ intention of revolting in 1835 did come from fairly reliable military sources. Mosly though, the evidence suggests that the incidents grew out of emotional tensions and mob actions. Vigilantes would obtain “confessions” through intimidation and torture. We think today’s media is often misleading, well in those days newspapers often reported secondhand and contradictory information. The information they used many times came from accounts actually supplied by mob members. In 1860 Union supporters disputed the very existence of rebellions and suggested that the 1860 fires had actually been caused by faulty matches. They claimed that supporters of seceding has deliberately lied and spread hysteria in order to gather support for their cause. Historians who have conducted intensive studies of specific groups and communities of that time have cast doubt on the existence of actual revolts. In fact, most northern Methodists who were persecuted as Black Republican incendiaries in 1860, had actually already fled the state in 1859, and were persecuted based on flimsy evidence including name misidentification.

While several newspapers had reported slave rebellions in the population and political centers of Harrison and Travis counties, neither place experienced any real revolt. Historian Herbert Aptheker, has taught that rumors were frequently confused with rebellions, described the evidence for the 1860 plot as “far from satisfactory.” The years between 1850 and 1860 were indeed tense years and would culminate in Texas eventually seceding from the Union.

That’s going to do it for today. Race relations in Texas still are tenuous at best and there are still people who believe every rumor they have heard. Many stories have been passed down from generation to generation and sometimes people are unwilling to examine what they’ve been taught. Next time I’ll look further into the political world that existed in the 1850s including external pressures that Texans faced.

Please subscribe to the podcast, I’m back and I’ll keep posting new episodes, sometimes though life gets in the way which is why there’s been a gap between episodes. If you want more information on Texas History, visit the website of the Texas State Historical Association. I also have four audiobooks on the Hidden History of Texas, The Spanish Bump Into Texas 1530s to 1820s,  Here Come The Anglos 1820s to 1830s, Years of Revolution 1830 to 1836. And, my latest A Failing Republic Becomes a State 1836-1850. You can find the books pretty much wherever you download or listen to audiobooks. Just do a search for the Hidden History of Texas by Hank Wilson and they’ll pop right up. Or visit my website https://arctx.org. By the way if you like audiobooks, visit my publisher’s website there’s an incredible selection of audiobooks there. In addition to mine you’ll find the classics, horror, science fiction, mental-health, and much more. Check it out visit https://ashbynavis.com

Thanks for listening y’all