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: Grits for Breakfast

Early Texans couldn't get enough slave patrols, but didn't want to pay for them.

A bit more on slave patrols, which county commissioners courts were authorized to enact in the 1st Texas Legislature in 1846, the year after Texas became a state. We've discussed these antebellum slave-catcher patrol operations briefly: Created by county commissioners courts, comprised of local districts, sometimes many of them, with 4-6 officers in each. But I wanted to know more about them. Here are some related anecdotes from early Texas newspapers in the 1840s and '50s, found online at the University of North Texas' excellent "Portal to Texas History" site.In 1858, during a legislative debate, state Representative Powell from Montgomery County implied some Texans felt the slave patrollers weren't doing much on the job. He attributed this to slave catchers for whom the work was just a paycheck but who had no connection to slave-owner culture and values: "Heretofore patrols have been appointed by the County Courts, and they have frequently been men who felt no responsibility resting on them, who rode when it suited their convenience and who, when it did not, did not know their duties or if they ever knew, did not perform them...continue to full post

Full post as published by Grits for Breakfast on September 02, 2020 (boomark / email).