Slave Owners and Slave Catchers in San Antonio
There were few large Plantations near San Antonio, but one did exist on the Cibolo Creek in the Cibolo Valley (Kosub, 2019). Large plantations required large numbers of slaves, usually under the control of an overseer who was often white but sometimes black. Those that owned human beings paid large sums of money for the purchase of enslaved people, and owning human beings on the Cibolo Creek were their most important source of riches. Controlling them, to prevent slave insurrections, was one of the most important duties in this brutal system of Confederate and pre-Confederate slavery. The planters demanded and received the support of the City of San Antonio and the Bexar County Commissioners Court to keep slaves under control and to prevent them from using the Underground Railroad to Mexico in the 1850s.
Some planters lived in a schizophrenic world, at peace with their traditions of a noble life, sipping sweet julep tea and eating sweet chicken dinners, while at the same time terrified, afraid to sleep at night, fearing their throats would be cut, upon hearing about slave rebellion or simply seeing the large number of slaves working about the plantation and in close proximity. Some would invent fake stories of slaves revolting to organize slave catchers, kill a few for sport, and torture slaves.
In San Antonio, the rules and customs concerning slavery were different from the Deep South, the customs and legal rules of racial etiquette did not completely exist in Bexar County. This was true in part because of the close proximity to Mexico and freedom. The city did have a bell that rang at 9:00 pm each night and that meant that all blacks had to be off the street at that time or face lashings and jail time. With concerns about reports of black Seminole Indians threatening to liberate slaves planters went before the Bexar County Commissioners Court to calm their fears in the 1850s. According to Kosub, Bexar County created “Slave Patrols” and San Antonio passed slave laws that regulated “the conduct of slaves, free people of color, and whites according to the wishes of the planters.”
The City’s ordinance, Section 16 said, “That it shall be the duty of the Marshal or assistant Marshal upon written request of the owner, or person having legal charge and control of any slave, to whip such slave, not to exceed thirty-nine lashes, upon the bare back, for which he shall be entitled to receive from such owner or person having such charge and control, the sum of one, dollar, to be paid upon the presentation of such request” San Antonio newspapers reported from Eagle Pass that a Black Seminole named “Wild Cat” was active in freeing slaves in Texas. This prompted three area slave owners, J.D. Wyatt, Claiborne Rector, and J. S. McClennan to approach the Bexar County Commissioners Court and demand slave catcher patrols.
In 1865 the city enacted a curfew to keep blacks from coming into the area by using vagrancy laws by forcing them back to the plantation to prevent them from voting. Bexar county planters were able to use the legal system to sentence blacks for counterfeit crimes forcing them to work for free. Some Bexar County roads were actually constructed by men that were falsely arrested. Research has shown that when blacks refused to pick cotton on the Cibolo Creek in eastern Bexar County they were poisoned using “Paris Green,” a deadly green toxic powder that was used to kill rodents. Unbelievably, according to researcher James Smallwood in Time of Hope, Time of Despair (1981), the planters denied the claim of murder and said “blacks died from eating Green watermelons.”
