Drake himself says: "Our island was visited almost weekly by agents from Cuba, New York, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Boston and New Orleans, ... the seasoned and instructed slaves were taken to Texas or Florida, overland, and to Cuba, in sailing boats. As no squad contained more than half a dozen, no difficulty was found in posting them to the United States, without discovery, and generally without suspicion.... The Bay Island plantation sent ventures weekly to the Florida Keys. Slaves were taken into the great American swamps, and there kept till wanted for market. Hundreds were sold as runaways from the Florida wilderness. We had agents in every slave State, and our coasters were built in Maine and came out with lumber. I could tell curious stories ... of this business of smuggling Bozal negroes into the United States. It is growing more profitable every year, and if you should hang all the Yankee merchants engaged in it, hundreds would fill their places."[54]
Owing to the increasing demand, and to the high price of slaves from 1845 to 1860, and to the fact that the Southern people were becoming more and more favorable to the reopening of the African slave trade, thus making it easier to practice smuggling successfully, we have no reason to doubt the truth of these accounts of this illicit traffic.
Stephen A. Douglas said in 1859 it was his confident opinion that more than fifteen thousand slaves had been imported in the preceding year, and that the trade had been carried on extensively for a long while.[55] About 1860 it was stated that twenty large cities and towns in the South were depots for African slaves and sixty or seventy cargoes of slaves had been introduced in the preceding eighteen months.[56] It was estimated in 1860 that eighty-five vessels which had been fitted out from New York City during eighteen months of 1859 and 1860, would introduce from thirty thousand to sixty thousand annually.[57]
From what has been said it seems to us certain that at least 270,000 slaves were introduced into the United States from 1808 to 1860 inclusive.[58] These we would distribute as follows: Between 1808 and 1820, sixty thousand; 1820 to 1830, fifty thousand; 1830 to 1840, forty thousand; 1840 to 1850, fifty thousand and from 1850 to 1860 seventy thousand. We consider these very moderate and even low estimates.
It will be seen later that these figures are of prime importance in accounting for the presence of certain slaves in the States of the extreme South.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] A. Helps: The Spanish Conquest of America, Vol. I., 30-32.
[2] Ibid., 35-36.
[3] Helps: Sp. Con. of Am., Vol. I., 40.
[4] Edwards: British West Indies, Vol. II., 44. Brock: Va. Hist. So. Collection, Vol. VI., 2.