In 1818, Mobilians were still illegally smuggling African slaves into the U.S. through the Spanish in Pensacola. General Jackson ruined one of their schemes when he captured the slave ship Constitution under the guns of Fort Barrancas during his possession of Pensacola in the First Seminole War. At the same time two more slave ships at sea were captured by U.S. Navy Lieutenant McKeever who turned them over to U.S. Customs officer Curtis Lewis (McKeever was the Navy man who first saw the Royal Navy's North American Invasion Fleet come over the horizon at Dauphin Island in 1814 and Curtis Lewis made the first U.S. chart of Mobile Bay and he married Major Farmar's granddaughter who was heir to a claim to all of Dauphin Island. Lewis was probably the one who named the Baldwin County shoal across from Sand Island light REVENUE POINT.) . Both McKeever and Lewis made claims for prize money from the U.S. government for these slaves. After an incredible series of frauds and forgeries, all of the Africans ended up being illegally sold into slavery in Alabama. Gilbert Russell (namesake for Russell County, Alabama and the U.S. Army commander who supervised the 1815 Andrew Jackson-ordered execution of the Tennessee militiamen on the shore of Mobile Bay) was made a U.S. Deputy Marshall  to try to reclaim the slaves on behalf of the U.S. government. Four of these unfortunate Africans were allegedly transported through Tuscaloosa in 1821 on their way to Tennessee. (from the May 19, 1821 NATCHEZ GAZETTE)