History of slavery in Florida
Few enslaved Africans were imported into Florida from Cuba in the period of Spanish colonial rule, as there was little for them to do—no mines, no plantations.
Starting in 1687, slaves escaping from English colonies to the north were freed when they reached Florida and accepted Catholic baptism.
Slavery in Florida was theoretically abolished by the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation issued by President Lincoln, though as the state was then part of the Confederacy this had little immediate effect.
Some of the characteristics of slavery, such as inability to leave an abusive situation, continued under sharecropping, convict leasing, and vagrancy laws.
[3] The first European known to have explored the coasts of Florida was the Spanish explorer and governor of Puerto Rico, Juan Ponce de León, who likely ventured in 1513 as far north as the vicinity of the future St. Augustine, naming the peninsula he believed to be an island "La Florida" and claiming it for the Spanish crown.
[10][11] When the Spanish founded the colonial settlement of San Agustín in 1565, the site already had enslaved Native Americans, whose ancestors had migrated from Cuba.
[12]: 8 In October 1687, eleven enslaved Africans made their way from Carolina to Florida in a stolen canoe, and were emancipated by the Spanish authorities.
Once the slaves reached Florida, the Spanish freed them if they converted to Roman Catholicism; males of age had to complete a military obligation.
The church started recording baptisms and deaths there in 1735, and a fort was built in 1738, part of the perimeter defenses of San Agustin.
The freed slaves knew the border areas well and led military raids, under their own black officers, against the Carolinas, and against Georgia, founded in 1731.
[3] Another smaller group settled along the Apalachicola River in remote northwest Florida, centered on Prospect Bluff, future site of the famous Negro Fort.
Former slaves also found refuge among the Creek and Seminole, Native Americans who had established settlements in Florida at the invitation of the Spanish government.
In 1771, Governor John Moultrie wrote to the Board of Trade that "It has been a practice for a good while past, for negroes to run away from their Masters, and get into the Indian towns, from whence it proved very difficult to get them back.
"[15] When British colonial officials in Florida pressured the Native Americans to return the fugitive slaves, they replied that they had "merely given hungry people food, and invited the slaveholders to catch the runaways themselves.
"[15] After the American Revolution, slaves from the State of Georgia and the South Carolina Low Country continued to escape to Florida.
[16] The U.S. Army led increasingly frequent incursions into Spanish territory, including the 1817–1818 campaign by Andrew Jackson that became known as the First Seminole War.
He treated his enslaved well, allowed them to save for and buy their freedom (at a 50% discount), and taught them crafts like carpentry, for which reason his highly-trained, well-behaved slaves sold for a premium.
[21] Hundreds of Black Seminoles and fugitive slaves escaped in the early nineteenth century from Cape Florida to the Bahamas, where they settled on Andros Island,[22] founding Nicholls Town [sic], named for the Anglo-Irish commander and abolitionist who fostered their escape, Edward Nicolls [sic].
Legislation became more forceful; the free negro had to accept his new role or leave the state, as in fact half the black population of Pensacola and St. Augustine immediately did (they left the country).
[24]: 10 American settlers began to establish cotton plantations in northern Florida, which required numerous laborers, which they supplied by buying slaves in the domestic market.
Many Florida slaves working in these coastal industries escaped to the relative safety of Union-controlled enclaves during the American Civil War.
Beginning in 1862, Union military activity in East and West Florida encouraged slaves in plantation areas to flee their owners in search of freedom.
Some worked on Union ships and, beginning in 1863, with the Emancipation Proclamation, more than a thousand enlisted as soldiers and sailors in the United States Colored Troops of the military.
