Texas Black History Preservation Project
Documenting the Complete African American Experience in Texas -- "Know your history, know yourself"
A Southern Route of the
Underground Railroad
      It was inevitable that the expansion of the U.S. as early as the late 1700s would make Texas a
slaveholding territory. Slavery was a primary motivation for the opening of the West, but just as in so many  
other foundational events in the history of the U.S., the slavery question is often overlooked when western
history is discussed, and so is the southern route of escape from enslavement that thousands of Africans
took through Texas into Mexico.
     The history of slavery is very different in Texas than in northern and even other southern states.
Northern states had allowed slavery early in their history following the arrival of the Europeans, beginning  
in the 1600s, but they abolished it relatively soon in their history (
Segrest, 2003). The South, however,
relied on the labor of enslaved black people to amass its wealth in cotton, tobacco and other agricultural
products and ensure a privileged lifestyle for slave-owners. As the nation expanded west, slave-owning
whites and even whites who could not afford slaves but who had lived in states where slavery and racial
supremacy were the custom and the rule favored slavery.  That Texas was to become a slave territory, soon
after that a slave nation, and then a slave state were not accidental at all. It was a well thought out and
fought for goal of many American leaders. However, the key to protecting slaveholding status lay in the
United State’s relationship with Mexico.
     As far back as the 1500s when Esteban roamed what is now the Southwestern U.S. and parts of
Mexico with Cabeza de Vaca, Africans had been living in the area (
Barr, 2004). Many of them arrived with
the conquistadores as enslaved people and lived in the presidios of the area along with Spanish men and
indigenous peoples (
Barr, 2004). It is important to point out that unlike the English settlers who had arrived
from Europe with their women and children intending to colonize the U.S., Spanish settlements were often
established by men in armies with priests, and those men – African and European – found mates among the
indigenous women. It was a mixed racial society where in some ways the strict definition of race and racial
privileges and limitations was not as rigid as in Anglo dominated areas (
Segrest, 2003). However as the
possibility of war with Mexico loomed in the1830s, the issue of slavery in what would later become Texas
came to the fore.
      Anglo American settlement in Texas began in earnest in the late 1700s when the territory was still
under Spanish control, as was the rest of Mexico (
Gonzalez, 2011). A Spanish census in 1792 counted
1,617 male and 1,375 female residents including 263 black males, 167 mulattas, and “19 female Negroes”
some of whom were enslaved and some of whom were free (
womenintexashistory.org, 2007). The
population grew, mostly fed by immigrants from the southern slaveholding states.  By the 1850s, 77 percent
of Texas residents came from slave states in the U.S. and about 30 percent of the population were enslaved
people owned by about a quarter of the families in the area (
Taylor) . While some American Indians and
Tejanos (mestizo descendants of Spanish and Indians who had lived in Texas for generations) owned
slaves, the majority of the slave-owners were white.
      There were strong factors drawing these newcomers west. The planters of Mississippi and Alabama
and other parts of the South needed to find fresh land to exploit. They had been so rapacious in their own
states that the land was worn out and not yielding as much cotton and other products as it had before. And
they wanted and needed to grow cotton crops the only way they had ever done it – by using enslaved
people laboring in the harsh sun.  Henry A. Wise, a congressman from Virginia, told Congress in 1842 that
“slavery should pour itself abroad without restraint, and find no limit but the Southern ocean.” (
Katz, 1987)
      
Meanwhile Mexico had come a long way in the anti-slavery direction.  First, it gained its independence
from Spain in a struggle that lasted from 1810-1822.  Soon after abolishing slavery under Afro-Mexican
president Vicente Guerrero, an anti-slavery writer of the day, David L. Child warned Mexican officials that
the U.S. had designs on their country.
      There is an impatient and almost irrepressible desire in the inhabitants of the South and Southwest to
lay hold on Texas…The terror which the discussion of the subject of slavery now existing to so great an
extent in our country, inspires throughout the slave States, tends to inflame the desire of the south to seize
your lands…They want Texas for a market of slaves, and for cheap portions for their sons and daughters,
and rely up upon it, Sir, that as soon as they can venture upon a violent aggression, they will attempt it.
(
Katz, 1987)
      The Texans, or Texians (those who favored an independent Texas separate from Mexico) as they were
then known, fought a war of independence against Mexico and declared themselves a republic which lasted
from 1836 to 1845.
      Slavery flourished in this new republic, but there were also some free blacks who had lived in the area
for some time. Some of them sided with the Texian cause, believing that they would be respected as full-
fledged citizens of the new nation, only to be betrayed by the new nation. These free blacks didn’t realize
that they were making it easier for slavery to become legitimate in Texas (
Katz, 1987). Later, they and some
Hispanic Texians who were deprived of land and rights had to fight the republic tooth and nail to regain any
of the rights and freedoms they had enjoyed under Mexican rule. The irony of the situation was not lost on
many of them who had fought and been wounded in the battle for independence from Mexico.
      Observers in Washington, D.C. were extremely interested in the fate of the fledgling nation. Slave
owners in Texas were vigilant about the separation of the races in their nation because they wanted to keep
their human property. Mexico, a free nation, was too near and too enticing for runaway slaves and
thousands of them fled south of the border of the Republic of Texas.
      Frederic Law Olmsted wrote a book about his trip through the southwestern frontier where he met
slaves who had run to freedom in Mexico. Here is his account of a conversation with one man whom he
met on the street.
      He very civilly informed me, in answer to inquiries, that he had been born in Virginia and had been
brought South by a trader and sold to a gentleman who had brought him to Texas from whom he had run
away four or five years ago. He would like…to see old Virginia again, that he would -- if he could be free.
He was a mechanic, and could turn a dollar very easily, by his trade every day. He could speak Spanish
fluently, and had traveled extensively in Mexico, sometimes on his own business, and sometimes as a
servant or muleteer. Once he had been beyond Durango, or nearly to the Pacific; and northward to
Chihuahua, and he professed to be competent as a guide, to any part of Northern Mexico. He had joined the
Catholic Church, he said, and he was very satisfied with the country.
      Runaways were constantly arriving here; two had got over, as I had been informed, the night before.  
He could not guess how many came in a year, but he could count forty, that he had known of in the last
three months. At other points, further down the river, a great many more came than here. (
Taylor)
      In Austin, Texas' "national" capital, slave owners watched with dismay as black enslaved people and
Mexicans became friends. Such fraternization, they thought, gave enslaved people “ideas of freedom.” The
newspapers of the day are replete with advertisements about runaway slaves. “A party of 25 Negroes ran
away from Bastrop,” one 1845 account said. “It is supposed that some Mexican has enticed them to flee to
the Mexican settlements west of the Rio Grande. Several of the citizens of Bastrop have gone in pursuit of
them; their fears are entertained that they will not be overtaken.” (
Smith, 1996)
      An 1850 newspaper story told of a plantation owner returning to Austin from Mexico after finding his
slave had taken a Mexican wife and was doing well. The plantation owner brought the slave back to Texas
“though not without a little brush with his father-in-law and others of his new relatives.”(
Smith, 1996)
Newspapers in Houston and elsewhere also carried ads for the return and stories about runaways. In a few
cases, runaways were shot by slave catchers (
Fuller, 2000).
      According to newspapers of those days, not all slaves were happy with their escape. One slave-owner
said his runaway asked him to take him back because peonage in Mexico was worse than slavery. Others,
having been raised in bondage, were very ill-equipped to take care of themselves in a foreign country where
they had few job skills. Some saved money for freedom only to give it away to Mexican women, or they
could not get work because they didn’t speak Spanish. (
Taylor)
      These self-liberated Africans were poor, but if they were determined and learned Spanish, they could
make a life in Mexico where they were treated as free citizens. Some of the escapees learned new skills
from vaqueros or Mexican cowboys and started the tradition of the black cowboy (
Fuller, 2009).
      Mexico began to be thought of as a haven for escaping slaves (
Barr, 2004; Franklin, 1999). As many
as 4,000 to 5,000 enslaved Africans fled to freedom in Mexico (
Wilkins, 2006).  Most Tejanos were
opposed to slavery, and many were willing to escort enslaved people into Mexico. Historian Arnoldo de  
León, (
Smith, 1996) called this the southern route of an Underground Railroad. It was very informal and
not as strictly organized as the northern and more famous Underground Railroad. Much of our knowledge is
anecdotal. There is the story of the large mulatto who was being brought back at gunpoint from Mexico for
the third time when a writer saw him. It is not clear if this stubborn and persistent runaway ever achieved
his goal (
Taylor). Certainly some escapees still have descendants living in Mexico who may not know or
acknowledge a family history of American enslavement.
      The problem of the southern route of the Underground Railroad became so vexing to the white slave-
owners that they decided to crack down in Austin where ordinances already forbade friendships among
blacks and Mexicans. National law in the Republic of Texas prohibited free blacks, including those who had
fought in the war that gave birth to the republic, from living in the state unless they had “special
permission.” The clear intent of this prohibition was to keep those who were in bondage from witnessing the
lives of free blacks, and to keep free blacks out of Texas. The only blacks desired in the republic were those
who labored in the fields without being paid.
      In Austin, white leaders were not satisfied that they had done enough to keep their slaves from running
away. In 1850, they formed a vigilance committee to enforce these ordinances.  They asked Mexicans to
leave Travis County “or else.” Good Mexicans could stay. By the time they got rid of all the disreputable
Mexicans only 20 with Spanish last names remained in the county. Latinos did not start returning to Travis
County until after the Civil War. (
Smith, 1996)
      After the Republic of Texas ended with the annexation of Texas to the U.S., war with Mexico became
inevitable. Mexico saw the annexation as an act of war against it, and the U.S. was only too happy to take
the opportunity to start a war. In April 1844, Secretary of State John C. Calhoun told the British envoy that
a war was necessary to protect slavery in the U.S. General Ulysses S. Grant who fought in the U.S.-Mexico
war, later reflected, “I do not think there was ever a more wicked war than that waged by the United States
on Mexico. I thought so at the time, when I was a youngster, only I had not more courage enough to
resign…Texas had no claim beyond the Nueces River, and yet we pushed on to the Rio Grande and crossed
it.” (
Katz, 1987)
      Loss of the U.S.-Mexico War was costly for Mexico. In the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo, it lost half
its territory, including the current California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, and parts of Colorado,
Nevada, and Utah. The border became the Rio Grande River. Of the areas wrenched from Mexico, only
Texas joined the U.S. as a slaveholding state which later seceded from the Union in 1861 to become part of
the Confederate States of America. It took two years after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed by
President Abraham Lincoln in 1863 freeing the slaves,for word of freedom to arrive officially in Texas. June
19, 1865 is remembered in African American communities in Texas and across the nation as Black
Emancipation Day, Juneteenth, a holiday celebrating freedom.  


Works Cited

  • Barr, Alwyn. The African Texans. Texas A & M University Press: College Station, TX. 2004. Print.
  • De León, Arnoldo. Preface. They Called them Greasers: Anglo Attitudes Toward Mexicans in Texas,
    1821-1900. By De León. 1983. Print.
  • Franklin, John Hope, Loren Schweninger. Runaway Slaves: Rebels on the Plantation. Oxford
    University Press: New York. 1999. Print.
  • Fuller, John H. “Ben Kinchlow:  A Trail Driver on the Chisholm Trail.” Black Cowboys of Texas. Ed.
    Sara R. Massey. Texas A & M University Press: College Station, TX. 2009. Print.
  • Gonzalez, Juan. Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in America. Penguin Books: New York.
    2011. Print.
  • Katz, William Loren. The Black West, 3rd ed. Seattle, WA: Open Hand Publishing, 1987. Print.
  • Segrest, Mab. “On Being White and Other Lies: A History of Racism.” Sing, Whisper, Shout, Pray!:
    Feminist Visions for a Just World. Ed. M. Jacqui Alexander, et. al. Edge Work Books: Toronto,
    Canada. 2003. Print.
  • Smith, Starita. “1800s Hispanics Paid a Price for Escape of Slaves.” Austin American-Statesman.
    Austin American-Statesman, 29 Sept. 1996. Web.
  • Taylor, Quintard. “Slavery in the Antebellum West.” Course Reading from The History of African
    Americans in the West, University of Washington. Web.
  • Wilkins, Ron. “Mexico Welcomed Fugitive Slaves and African American Jobseekers.” Global
    Research, 4 May, 2006. Web.
  • Women in Texas History: A Project of the Ruthe Winegarten Memorial Foundation for Texas  
    Women’s History. Womenintexashistory.org. 2007. Web.
By Starita Smith, Ph.D.
Sociologist, writer