The Fate of Texas: The Civil War and the Lone Star State

6. Slaves Taken to Texas for Safekeeping during the Civil War

6 Slaves Taken to Texas for Safekeeping during the Civil War Dale Baum The victory of Ulysses S. Grant’s soldiers at Shiloh in the spring of 1862 and the subsequent surrender of New Orleans, along with the ensuing movement of the U.S. Navy up the Mississippi River, dramatically increased the flow of Confederate refugees into Texas. Among them were many slaveholders, especially from Louisiana, Arkansas, and Mississippi, who were determined to take their slaves with them for protection from Union forces occupying or threatening areas close to their homes and plantations. Although the exact number of slaves “refugeed” (a coined variant by contemporaries of the word “refuge”) into Texas during the Civil War cannot be precisely determined, their movement into the state enlarged the population in the “black belts,” or bottomlands, along the Sabine, Trinity, and Brazos rivers. Relying heavily on local tax records and federal census data, presented here is: (1) an identification of the Texas counties where refugeed slaves were disproportionately relocated; (2) a description of a segment of refugee slaveholders with considerable slave property and speculation about their welcome and 83 adjustment to their new residences; and (3) a new estimate of the number of slaves transported into the state for safekeeping and a rough calculation of the percentage who remained in the state after their emancipation—all of which provide a better understanding of the nature and effects of wartime refugeeing. County increases in both the absolute numbers of slaves and their slave growth rates must be taken into account in order to pinpoint where refugeeing had its greatest consequences within the state. Although causing no severe problems for slavery in Texas, it nevertheless triggered grievances stemming from tensions between wealthy planters and plain folks. More refugee slaveholders than previously acknowledged most likely decided at the time they fled their antebellum homes to permanently pull up their roots. The bondsmen they transported into Texas from other slave states could have without difficulty reached more than 50,000, and of this number about 60 percent probably remained in the state during the immediate postwar years. Once the first Confederate shots hit Fort Sumter, many slaveholders in the Upper South and Border States, especially those concerned about the future security of their investment in slave property, considered moving farther south, particularly all the way to Texas. The recollections of former slave Van Moore aptly describe their motivation: “[T]hey said the Yankees would never get that far, and they wouldn’t have to free the slaves if they came way over here.” As the last frontier of American slavery, Texas was similar to other states of the Lower South but was different because it was the only slave state with an international boundary and a history of having briefly been an independent slaveholding republic. In the wake of Abraham Lincoln’s election to the presidency, many zealous proslavery “Texians” had talked about unfurling once again the “glorious flag of the Lone Star.” After the fall of Vicksburg isolated Texas from the eastern Confederacy and the Richmond government, “Texas firsters,” who bordered on putting local concerns ahead of Confederate priorities, were willing to consider either declaring independence with existing slave codes firmly in place or opening separate negotiations for returning to the Union on the basis of a gradual and counterfeit emancipation.1 Expectations that Texas would elude the ramifications of Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation died hard. After the fall of Atlanta in 1864, only the most stalwart of heart sustained any hope for the Southern cause, but most Texas Confederates did not feel defeated. Proximity to Mexico had allowed the marketing of cotton via Matamoros and the nearby port of Bagdad, where ships could come and go without fear of the Union blockade. The majority of the state’s slaves had remained undisturbed by advancing or occupying Union troops and had few chances to run off behind Federal lines or join the Northern cause. All in all, Texas had avoided being a major arena of military operations, 84 Dale Baum its economy (in contrast to other Southern states) had not been as disrupted by the war, and the refugeed slaves had helped increase the amount of land under cultivation for growing cotton. In the fall of 1863, Gov. Francis R. Lubbock had proclaimed that the state had plenty of work to keep the thousands of newly arrived slaves “beneficially and constantly employed.” Even the...