The consul at Havana reported, in 1836, that whole cargoes of slaves fresh from Africa were being daily shipped to Texas in American vessels, that 1,000 had been sent within a few months, that the rate was increasing, and that many of these slaves “can scarcely fail to find their way into the United States.”  Moreover, the consul acknowledged that ships frequently cleared for the United States in ballast, taking on a cargo at some secret point.[61] When with these facts we consider the law facilitating “recovery” of slaves from Texas,[62] the repeated refusals to regulate the Texan trade, and the shelving of a proposed congressional investigation into these matters,[63] conjecture becomes a practical certainty.  It was estimated in 1838 that 15,000 Africans were annually taken to Texas, and “there are even grounds for suspicion that there are other places ... where slaves are introduced."[64] Between 1847 and 1853 the slave smuggler Drake had a slave depot in the Gulf, where sometimes as many as 1,600 Negroes were on hand, and the owners were continually importing and shipping.  “The joint-stock company,” writes this smuggler, “was a very extensive one, and connected with leading American and Spanish mercantile houses.  Our island[65] 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 the market.  Hundreds were sold as captured 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."[66] Inherent probability and concurrent testimony confirm the substantial truth of such confessions.  For instance, one traveller discovers on a Southern plantation Negroes who can speak no English.[67] The careful reports of the Quakers “apprehend that many [slaves] are also introduced into the United States."[68] Governor Mathew of the Bahama Islands reports that “in more than one instance, Bahama vessels with coloured crews have been purposely wrecked on the coast of Florida, and the crews forcibly sold.”  This was brought to the notice of the United States authorities, but the district attorney of Florida could furnish no information.[69]

Such was the state of the slave-trade in 1850, on the threshold of the critical decade which by a herculean effort was destined finally to suppress it.