In 1817-1819 slaves were very high and in great demand in the South. As a consequence great numbers of them were smuggled in at various places. The evidence of this is quite convincing.
Amelia Island and the town of St. Mary's became notorious as two of the principal rendezvous of smugglers. A writer in "Niles' Register" in 1818 says that a regular chain of posts was established from the head of St. Mary's river to the upper country, and through the Indian nation by means of which slaves are hurried to every part of the country. The woodmen along the river side rode like so many Arabs loaded with slaves ready for market. When ready to form a caravan, an Indian alarm was created that the woods might be less frequented, and if pursued in Georgia they escaped to Florida.[43]
Mr. M'Intosh, Collector of the Port of Darien, in a letter in 1818, says: "I am in possession of undoubted information that African and West Indian negroes are almost daily illicitly introduced into Georgia, for sale or settlement, or passing through it to the territories of the United States."[44]
In 1817 it was reported to the Secretary of the Navy that "most of the goods carried to Galveston are introduced into the United States, the most bulky and least valuable regularly through the custom house; the most valuable and the slaves are smuggled in through the numerous inlets to the westward where the people are but too much disposed to render them every possible assistance. Several hundred slaves are now at Galveston."[45]
"Niles' Register," in 1818, quoting from the "Democrat Press," has a very interesting account of how the law against the importation of slaves was evaded at New Orleans: An agent would be sent to the West Indies and even to Africa to purchase a cargo of slaves. On the return when the slave ship got near Balize the agent would leave her, go in haste to New Orleans and inform the proper authorities that a certain vessel had come into the Mississippi, said to be bound for New Orleans and having on board a certain number of negroes contrary to the law of the United States. The vessel and cargo would be libelled and the slaves sold at public auction. One half of the purchase money would go to the informer and the other to the United States.[46] The informer and agent was the same man and a partner in the transaction. This was a profitable business and about ten thousand slaves a year are said to have been thus introduced.[47]
It is quite evident that the illicit slave trade at this time was very great. In 1819 Mr. Middleton, of South Carolina, said in Congress that in his opinion thirteen thousand Africans were annually smuggled into the United States, and Mr. Wright, of Virginia, estimated the number at fifteen thousand.[48]
In 1818, 1819 and 1820 Congress passed acts to supplement and render more effective the act of 1807.[49] Du Bois says that for a decade after 1825 there appears little positive evidence of a large illicit importation, but thinks notwithstanding that slaves were largely imported.[50]
Captain J.E. Alexander in a book published in 1833 says that he was assured by a planter of forty years' standing that persons in New Orleans were connected with slave traders in Cuba, and that at certain seasons of the year they would go up the Mississippi River and meet slave ships off the coast. They would relieve these of their cargoes, return to the main stream of the river, drop down in flat boats and dispose of the negroes to those who wished them.[51] Thomas Powell Buxton makes the statement, upon what he claims to be high authority, that fifteen thousand negroes were imported into Texas from Africa in one year, about 1838.[52]
The "Liberator" quoting the "Maryland Colonization Herald," says a writer in that paper was assured, in 1838, by Pedro Blanco, one of the largest slave traders on the coast of Africa, that for the preceding forty years the United States had been his best market through the west end of Cuba and Texas.[53]
"Between 1847 and 1853," says Du Bois, "the slave smuggler Drake had a slave depot in the Gulf, where sometimes as many as sixteen hundred negroes were on hand, and the owners were continually importing and shipping."