There was, and it was ironic in one sense. Again, there was no definition of Bowie knife in the law which made the prohibition very open ended.
You can find historical statutes for some states. In the case of TX, the focus on weapons/objects seems to have come about after the civil war. The most obvious explanation is that they were intended to be enforced selectively to keep the freed slaves from carrying weapons. There used to be a historical quote from a FL state supreme court justice online that flat out stated as much, but the link no longer works--here's the quote.
...Florida Supreme Court Justice Buford's concurring opinion in Watson v. Stone (1941), in which a conviction for carrying a handgun without a permit was overturned, because the handgun was in the glove compartment of a car:
I know something of the history of this legislation. The original Act of 1893 was passed when there was a great influx of negro laborers in this State drawn here for the purpose of working in turpentine and lumber camps. The same condition existed when the Act was amended in 1901 and the Act was passed for the purpose of disarming the negro laborers and to thereby reduce the unlawful homicides that were prevalent in turpentine and saw-mill camps and to give the white citizens in sparsely settled areas a better feeling of security. The statute was never intended to be applied to the white population and in practice has never been so applied.