Plantations of Leon County, Florida

The forced-labor farms of Leon County were numerous and vast.

Leon County, Florida, was a hub of cotton production.

From the 1820s through 1850s Leon County's fertile red clay soils and long growing season attracted cotton planters from Georgia, Virginia, Maryland, North and South Carolina, among other states as well as countries abroad.

For some time before the early stages of the Civil War Leon County was the fifth-largest producer of cotton in Georgia and Florida.

[3] In 1860, 73% of the population of Leon County consisted of enslaved black persons;[4] as was true elsewhere in the South,[5] the value of those enslaved persons far exceeded the value of all the land in the county.