Texas seceded from the United States in 1861 and joined the Confederate States of America on the eve of the American Civil War. It replaced the pro-Union governor, Sam Houston, in the process. During the war, slavery in Texas was little affected, and prices for enslaved people remained high until the last few months of the war. The number of enslaved people in the state increased dramatically as the Union Army occupied parts of Arkansas and Louisiana. Slaveholders in those areas often moved their enslaved to Texas to avoid having them freed. By 1865 there were an estimated 250,000 enslaved people in Texas. Many planters, however, lost part of their workforce temporarily to the Confederate Army, which impressed one-quarter of the enslaved on each plantation to construct defensive earthworks for the Texas coast and to drive military supply wagons.Barr (1996), p. 36. Anyone convicted of providing arms to enslaved people during the war was sentenced to between two and five years of hard labor.
