Smuggler Nation (67 page)

21
. Quoted in Edward A. Park, ed.,
The Works of Samuel Hopkins
(Boston: Doctrinal Tract and Book Society, 1852), 1:123.

22
. Quoted in Rappleye,
Sons of Providence
, 299.

23
. Rappleye,
Sons of Providence
, 304.

24
. Quoted in Rappleye,
Sons of Providence
, 260.

25
. Farrow et al.,
Complicity
, 110.

26
. According to Fehrenbacher, a cargo of slaves could be worth up to fifteen times the value of the ship. See
The Slaveholding Republic
, 197.

27
. Jay Coughtry,
The Notorious Triangle: Rhode Island and the African Slave Trade, 1700–1807
(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1981), 217.

28
. Quoted in Coughtry,
The Notorious Triangle
, 218.

29
. For more details on this episode, see Rappleye,
Sons of Providence
, 317–18; and Coughtry,
The Notorious Triangle
, 27–28.

30
. Rappleye,
Sons of Providence
, 312.

31
. Rappleye,
Sons of Providence
, 338.

32
. Farrow et al.,
Complicity
, 111.

33
. Fehrenbacher,
The Slaveholding Republic
, 141.

34
. Rappleye,
Sons of Providence
, 337.

35
. Coughtry,
The Notorious Triangle
, 229.

36
. Quoted in Farrow et al.,
Complicity
, 112.

37
. Farrow et al.,
Complicity
, 112.

38
. Quoted in Dattel,
Cotton and Race in the Making of America
, 91.

39
. Quoted in Dattel,
Cotton and Race in the Making of America
, 90.

40
. Quoted in Soodalter,
Hanging Captain Gordon
, 71.

41
. Obadele-Starks,
Freebooters and Smugglers
, 176.

42
. Thomas,
The Slave Trade
, 773.

43
. Quoted in Thomas,
The Slave Trade
, 773.

44
. Howard,
American Slavers and the Federal Law
, 167; Soodalter,
Hanging Captain Gordon
, 83–87.

45
. Farrow et al.,
Complicity
, 125.

46
. Only one-sixth of indictments in New York City produced convictions. Between 1837 and 1861, there were about 125 prosecutions, and of these just 20 led to prison sentences (averaging two years per sentence). Of these, ten received presidential pardons. See Soodalter,
Hanging Captain Gordon
, 9.

47
. Quoted in Farrow et al.,
Complicity
, 124.

48
. Thomas,
The Slave Trade
, 568.

49
. David Eltis, “The U.S. Transatlantic Slave Trade, 1644–1867: An Assessment,”
Civil War History
54, no. 4 (2008): 372.

50
. Howard,
American Slavers and the Federal Law
, 30.

51
. Howard,
American Slavers and the Federal Law
, 32.

52
. Quoted in Thomas,
The Slave Trade
, 729.

53
. David Eltis, “The U.S. Transatlantic Slave Trade, 1644–1867,” 376.

54
. Howard,
American Slavers and the Federal Law
, 32.

55
. David Eltis,
Economic Growth and the Ending of the Transatlantic Slave Trade
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 271–72. Eltis notes, “In the last twenty years of the trade, a count of 136 ships for which information on place of construction can be found indicates that 64 percent were built in the United States.”

56
. Howard,
American Slavers and the Federal Law
, 37–39.

57
. Thomas,
The Slave Trade
, 729.

58
. Quoted in Fehrenbacher,
The Slaveholding Republic
, 164.

59
. Quoted in Fehrenbacher,
The Slaveholding Republic
, 164.

60
. Fehrenbacher,
The Slaveholding Republic
, 177–78.

61
. Fehrenbacher,
The Slaveholding Republic
, 179.

62
. For a discussion, see Fehrenbacher,
The Slaveholding Republic
, 137.

63
. Howard,
American Slavers and the Federal Law
, 29.

64
. Government slave auctions were typically set up by the U.S. marshal’s office. “The sale of slaves by the United States marshals,” the
New Orleans Bee
observed in 1830, “was not uncommon in everyday life of Louisiana.” Quoted in Obadele-Starks,
Freebooters and Smugglers
, 81.

65
. Joe G. Taylor, “The Foreign Slave Trade in Louisiana after 1808,”
Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association
1, no. 1 (Winter 1960): 37, 43.

66
. Quoted in Fehrenbacher,
The Slaveholding Republic
, 148.

67
. Taylor, “The Foreign Slave Trade in Louisiana After 1808,” 38.

68
. Quoted in Adam Rothman,
Slave Country: American Expansion and the Origins of the Deep South
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005), 193.

69
. Quoted in Rothman,
Slave Country
, 193.

70
. Quoted in Rothman,
Slave Country
, 193.

71
. William C. Davis,
Three Roads to the Alamo
(New York: HarperCollins, 1998), 60.

72
. Quoted in “Early Life of the Southwest—the Bowies,”
DeBow’s Review
13, no. 4 (October 1852): 381.

73
. Richard Drake, “Revelations of a Slave Smuggler (1808–1853),” excerpted in Robert Edgar Conrad, ed.,
In the Hands of Strangers: Readings on Foreign and Domestic Slave Trading and the Crisis of the Union
(University Park: Penn State Press, 2001), 73. Historians question the authenticity of Drake’s account yet still cite it because it reveals credible knowledge of slave trafficking, especially the parts related to the United States.

74
. Frances J. Stafford, “Illegal Importations: Enforcement of the Slave Trade Laws Along the Florida Coast, 1810–1828,”
Florida Historical Quarterly
46, no. 2 (October 1967): 124–33.

75
. Jennifer Heckard,
The Crossroads of Empire: The 1817 Liberation and Occupancy of Amelia Island, East Florida
(Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Connecticut, 2006), 8–9.

76
. For more details, see T. Frederick Davis, “MacGregor’s Invasion of Florida, 1817,”
Quarterly of the Florida Historical Society
7, no. 1 (July 1928): 1–71.

77
. Stafford, “Illegal Importations,” 126.

78
. Rothman,
Slave Country
, 193.

79
. Quoted in Charles H. Bowman Jr., “Vicente Pazos and the Amelia Island Affair, 1817,”
Florida Historical Quarterly
53, no. 3 (January 1975), 293.

80
. U.S. Congress, Senate Committee on Foreign Relations,
Compilation of Reports on Foreign Relations
(Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1901), 6:25.

81
. This is emphasized by Richard G. Lowe, “American Seizure of Amelia Island,”
Florida Historical Quarterly
45, no. 1 (July 1966): 18–30.

82
. Obadele-Starks,
Freebooters and Smugglers
, 79.

83
. For a more detailed account, see especially Paul D. Lack, “Slavery and the Texas Revolution,”
Southwestern Historical Quarterly
89, no. 2 (October 1985): 181–202. Also see Obadele-Starks,
Freebooters and Smugglers
, 85–87.

84
. Lack, “Slavery and the Texas Revolution,” 186.

85
. Sean Kelley, “Blackbirders and Bozales: African-Born Slaves on the Lower Brazos River of Texas in the Nineteenth Century,”
Civil War History
54, no. 4 (December 2008): 413; Lack, “Slavery and the Texas Revolution,” 186.

86
. Obadele-Starks,
Freebooters and Smugglers
, 86–87.

87
. Larry Gara,
The Liberty Line: The Legend of the Underground Railroad
(Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1996 ed.).

88
. Lathan A. Windley, “Runaway Slave Advertisements of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson,”
Journal of Negro History
63, no. 4 (October 1978): 373–74.

89
. Ethan A. Nadelmann,
Cops Across Borders: The Internationalization of U.S. Criminal Law Enforcement
(University Park: Penn State Press, 1993).

90
. Sean Kelley, “‘Mexico in His Head’: Slavery and the Texas-Mexico Border, 1810–1860,”
Journal of Social History
37, no. 3 (Spring 2004): 709–23; Ronnie C. Tyler, “Fugitive Slaves in Mexico,”
Journal of Negro History
57, no. 1 (January 1972): 1–12.

91
. Obadele-Starks,
Freebooters and Smugglers
, 127.

92
. Nadelmann,
Cops Across Borders
, 36.

93
. James McPherson,
Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 81.

94
. In the 1850s, Indiana, Iowa, and Illinois went so far as to pass exclusion laws prohibiting the immigration of any blacks regardless of whether they were free or not.

95
. Carol Wilson,
Freedom at Risk: The Kidnapping of Free Blacks in America, 1780–1865
(Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1994).

96
. Wilson,
Freedom at Risk
, 18.

97
. Fehrenbacher,
The Slaveholding Republic
, 215.

98
. Quoted in Gara,
The Liberty Line
, 117.

99
. For a more detailed analysis, see Stanley W. Campbell,
The Slave Catchers: Enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law, 1850–1860
(New York: Norton, 1972).

100
. John Reuben Thompson, “The Editor’s Table: The Fugitive Slave Bill,”
Southern Literary Messenger
(November 1850), 697.

101
. Gara,
The Liberty Line
, 114.

102
. Frederick Douglass,
My Bondage and My Freedom
(New York: Washington Square Press, 2003, originally published 1855), 365.

103
. Fehrenbacher,
The Slaveholding Republic
, 234.

104
. Fehrenbacher,
The Slaveholding Republic
, 238.

105
. Gara,
The Liberty Line
, 128; Fehrenbacher,
The Slaveholding Republic
, 251.

106
. Campbell,
The Slave Catchers
, 110.

107
. On the origin and popularization of the word
contraband
to describe escaped slaves, see Kate Masur, “A Rare Phenomenon of Philological Vegetation: The Word ‘Contraband’ and the Meanings of Emancipation in the United States,”
Journal of American History
93, no. 4 (March 2007): 1050–84.

108
. Testimony of the Superintendent of Contrabands at Fortress Monroe, Virginia, before the American Freedmen’s Inquiry Commission, 9 May 1863, reprinted in Conrad, ed.,
In the Hands of Strangers
, 492–94.

Chapter 9

1
. James McPherson,
Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 318–19.

2
. Two clandestinely acquired vessels, named the
Florida
and
Alabama
, wreaked havoc on the U.S. merchant marine, greatly damaging America’s prominence in commercial shipping. Stephen R. Wise,
Lifeline of the Confederacy: Blockade Running During the Civil War
(Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1988), 49; McPherson,
Battle Cry of Freedom
, 547.

3
. Dean B. Mahin,
One War at a Time: The International Dimensions of the American Civil War
(Washington, DC: Brassey’s, 2000), 84.