Sidetrack:
Texan efforts to gain extradition of fugitive slaves in Mexico
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Duval’s efforts played successfully off Texans’ long-standing concerns about
their slaves escaping to Mexico. Even before Texas gained independence from
Mexico in 1836, slaves running south had been a concern among planters. Mexico
abolished slavery in 1829. As early as 1831, her statesmen were contemplating
the benefits of encouraging fugitive slaves to colonize the sparsely populated
northern region. Large-scale colonization never took place, but by the 1850s
reports in the U.S. claimed there were between three and four thousand fugitive
American slaves in Mexico, including the former property of prominent statesmen
like Sam Houston.
In 1847, Houston’s secretary petitioned President James K. Polk to initiate a
treaty of extradition* with Mexico whereby Texans could reclaim fugitive slaves
and Mexicans could seek the return of indentured laborers who had absconded to
Texas. Efforts at obtaining such a treaty persisted into the U.S. Civil War, but
Mexico never agreed to surrender fugitive slaves.
  
:
Tyler 2-12, Montgomery 116-118. ©
Part 4, Freedom: l
*An extradition treaty with Mexico was a political cause
celebre for many Texans of the period, also for southern
expansionists and proponents of manifest destiny. See, for
example, the call for an extradition treaty in Cora
Montgomery’s memoir of her time in Eagle Pass in the 1850s,
Eagle Pass, or, Life on the Border, where she lambastes
Daniel Webster and members of the U.S. Senate for failing to
advance such a treaty. Montgomery 116-118. |
