sident
Madison again, in 1816, urged Congress to act on account of the
"violations and evasions which, it is suggested, are chargeable on
unworthy citizens, who mingle in the slave trade under foreign flags,
and with foreign ports; and by collusive importations of slaves into the
United States, through adjoining ports and territories."[81] The
executive was continually in receipt of ample evidence of this illicit
trade and of the helplessness of officers of the law. In 1817 it was
reported to the Secretary of the Navy that most of the goods carried to
Galveston were brought into the United States; "the more valuable, and
the slaves are smuggled in through the numerous inlets to the westward,
where the people are but too much disposed to render them every possible
assistance. Several hundred slaves are now at Galveston, and persons
have gone from New-Orleans to purchase them. Every exertion will be
made to intercept them, but I have little hopes of success."[82] Similar
letters from naval officers and collectors showed that a system of slave
piracy had arisen since the war, and that at Galveston there was an
establishment of organized brigands, who did not go to the trouble of
sailing to Africa for their slaves, but simply captured slavers and sold
their cargoes into the United States. This Galveston nest had, in 1817,
eleven armed vessels to prosecute the work, and "the most shameful
violations of the slave act, as well as our revenue laws, continue to be
practised."[83] Cargoes of as many as three hundred slaves were arriving
in Texas. All this took place under Aury, the buccaneer governor; and
when he removed to Amelia Island in 1817 with the McGregor raid, the
illicit traffic in slaves, which had been going on there for years,[84]
took an impulse that brought it even to the somewhat deaf ears of
Collector Bullock. He reported, May 22, 1817: "I have just received
information from a source on which I can implicitly rely, that it has
already become the practice to introduce into the state of Georgia,
across the St. Mary's River, from Amelia Island, East Florida, Africans,
who have been carried into the Port of Fernandina, subsequent to the
capture of it by the Patriot army now in possession of it ...; were the
legislature to pass an act giving compensation in some manner to
informers, it would have a tendency in a great degree to prevent the
practice; as the thing now is, no citizen will take the trouble of
searching for