| Slavery and Sanctuary in Colonial Florida | Close |
|
In history books, the heading "The Age of Discovery," brings to mind tiny wooden ships in great oceans, canvas sails billowing in the wind, gallant sailors and determined explorers relying on compasses, astrolabes, sextants, and the stars. However, it was also the era of colonization, when European powers conquered native people in Africa, Asia, and the Americas. At first, the Spanish enslaved Native Americans; however, disease, war, and slavery killed millions. In time, all of Spain’s colonizing efforts in the New World would include African slaves as well as Spanish soldiers, missionaries, and settlers. First Spanish Period (1565-1763) On Easter Sunday (Pascua Florida) in 1513, Juan Ponce de León claimed and named new North American lands for Spain--Florida. Native Americans fought back and tropical hardships claimed many Spanish lives. In 1565, Pedro Menéndez de Avilés established San Agustín (St. Augustine), the first permanent Spanish settlement in Florida. Under the terms of King Philip’s asiento (agreement to colonize Florida), Menéndez had three years to import 500 Africans slaves to Florida. Evidence suggests that African slaves from Havana, Cuba, were among St. Augustine’s first settlers. The Spanish destroyed the existing North Florida French settlement of Fort Caroline, but they continued to feel threatened by both European competitors and native Floridians, such as the Timucuan confederation. In 1672, the Spanish crown decided to build a coquina fortress, the Castillo de San Marcos, in St. Augustine. Pay records prove that African slaves worked on the fort as stonemasons and metalworkers. Other slaves helped to construct seawalls, bridges, missions, and public buildings. During Florida’s First Spanish Period (1565-1763), the Spanish used three types of enslaved workers. The first were Native Americans who served on Spanish haciendas (farms). The second were ladinos, skilled slaves brought from Spain, who were allowed to work apart from their owners in exchange for payment under an arrangement called jornal. The third were African bozales, who performed heavy labor in fields and mines. After 200 years of colonization and despite the hard work of settlers, free persons and slaves, there were only 3,104 Spanish subjects in all of Florida. In 1763, Spain lost Florida to Britain under terms of the Treaty of Paris, which ended the French and Indian War (Seven Years War). Eight transport ships took Spanish Floridian refugees to Cuba in March 1764. Spanish officials noted that 420 (13.5%) were of African origin. Within the group, 350 were slaves, but 80 (almost one-fifth) were free. Florida: Sanctuary for Slaves The English colonization of the Carolinas and Georgia threatened Spanish Florida. English raiders enslaved and killed thousands of Native Americans, so Spain fought back by offering sanctuary to English slaves. The first eleven fugitive slaves from Charleston, South Carolina arrived by boat in October 1687; they were granted refuge by Governor Cendoya. On November 7, 1693, Spanish King Charles II issued a cedula (proclamation) promising that any English slave (maroon) who came to Spanish territory would be free. He said he was "giving liberty to all…the men as well as the women…so that by their example and by my liberality others will do the same." Several hundred English slaves fled by foot, horse, and boat to the sanctuary of Spanish Florida. Although Spain provided some soldiers to the presidio (military post) of St. Augustine, there were not enough regular soldiers to defend Florida. By 1683, St. Augustine’s black and mulatto residents had formed a militia company. They pledged to "spill their last drop of blood in defense of the Great Crown of Spain and the Holy Faith, and to be the most cruel enemies of the English." These units distinguished themselves during English and Native American raids. A member of one of the units, Francisco Menéndez, a Mandingo from Africa, petitioned Governor Manuel de Montiano for a grant of land. In 1738, Montiano authorized a settlement, Gracia Reál de Santa Terésa de Mosé. Approximately 100 free black men, women, and children moved onto homesteads and erected a fort. Fort Mosé guarded the northern land and water approaches to St. Augustine. In May 1740, the British governor of Georgia, General James Oglethorpe, launched an invasion of Florida. Fort Mosé’s troops fell back to protect the civilian settlers. On June 26, a 300-man force of Spanish troops, black militiamen, and Yamasee Indians took back Fort Mosé, killing 68 of Oglethorpe’s men and taking another 34 prisoner. British Colonial Period (1763-1783) The British intended to make Florida successful like the Carolinas, so they established plantations to grow profitable crops, including sugar, indigo (blue dye), sea-island cotton, and rice. These crops required large numbers of workers. To meet the demand for labor, the British mixed recently imported Africans with "seasoned" slaves born in the West Indies, Carolinas, and Georgia on Florida’s plantations. By 1775, Florida’s slave population jumped to 3,000. Florida’s slaves were no longer concentrated in St. Augustine but spread through remote rural areas, like the Mosquito Coast (near modern Daytona Beach). During the American Revolution, additional free blacks and slaves moved into Florida. Black soldiers who helped Bernardo de Gálvez recapture the port of Pensacola in British West Florida settled there as "free men of color." In contrast, during the closing days of the American Revolution in 1782, Tories fled from the Carolinas to Florida, bringing 13,000 slaves with them. An undetermined number of these slaves escaped from their owners before the Tories relocated to the Bahamas, many settling with fugitive Seminoles in the interior of Florida. Second Spanish Period (1784-1821) The British lost Florida to Spain under the 1783 Treaty of Paris, which ended the American Revolution. The Spanish reinstated their 1693 fugitive slave policy, reaffirmed their liberal stand on the "education, treatment, and occupation of slaves," and freed 250 slaves who were baptized as Catholics. Most of these free blacks lived in St. Augustine; many were skilled craftspeople, including tanners, barbers, butchers, and trader-translators between the Seminole and Spanish merchants. St. Augustine’s 1789 census revealed of a total population of 1,592 residents, 483 slaves (30.3%) and 102 free blacks (6.4%). Florida’s demand for African agricultural workers was much higher during the second Spanish period because of the plantation economy. Yet, in 1787, half of the plantations had fewer than four slaves. Nearly 70% of slaves sold in West Florida (Baton Rouge) were African-born. Most worked according to the "task system," wherein, once slaves completed daily assignments, they were free to work in their own garden plots, hunt or fish, or work in their own households sewing or cooking. However, task loads could be heavy and free time was scarce. Spanish Slavery vs. English Slavery The Spanish considered slavery to be an accidental and unnatural condition for humans. They did not believe slavery was hereditary. Both the law of the Catholic Church and the Spanish legal code (the 13th century Siete Partidas of King Alfonso X) treated slaves as humans rather than as property. The Partidas guaranteed protection of slaves from abusive masters or freeman and allowed slaves to testify in court against their masters. Additionally, because the Catholic Church treats marriage as a holy sacrament and views the family unit as sacred, slave owners could not split up a family by sale. A cedula (royal proclamation) of 1526 allowed slaves to purchase their freedom or coartación. Manumission (an owner granting freedom to a slave), while rare, occurred more frequently under Spanish law than British law. Further, unlike the English, the Spanish used white European slaves, so they did not equate slavery with race. In contrast, the laws of economics had a much greater impact on British-American slavery than the laws of the Anglican Church or English common law. English colonists quickly adopted permanent, hereditary, race-defined slavery. English law defined slaves as commercial property (like the 1856 U.S. Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision) rather than as humans performing a type of labor. English colonial assemblies passed "Negro Acts" that prohibited slaves from growing food, assembling, earning money, testifying in court, or being educated. Enforcement of slave codes, as well as individual discipline, depended on each slave’s owner and was often arbitrary. Notwithstanding the contrasting Spanish approach to slavery, Spanish administrators were not entirely color-blind. They segregated militia units based on race. Sentencing records indicate they punished petty criminals of African background more severely than they punished those of Spanish heritage. The life of a slave in colonial Florida was not necessarily better than the life of a British slave in Virginia. However, the institutions of government and church offered Spanish slaves better legal protection and more opportunity for freedom. Click here for a more in-depth essay on Florida’s past regarding slavery. Click here for a lesson using this essay. This essay was written by Jean M. West, a social studies education consultant in Port Orange, Florida. Sources Books
Deagan, Kathleen and Darcie MacMahon. Colonial America's Black Fortress of Freedom. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1995. Henderson, Ann L. and Gary Mormino, ed. Spanish Pathways in Florida. Sarasota: Pineapple Press, 1991. Landers, Jane. Black Society in Spanish Florida. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1999. TePaske, John J., ed. Three American Empires. New York: Harper and Row, 1967. Articles
Johnson, Ralph B. "Freedom’s Trail: The Florida Cuba Connection." Conference paper for Places of Cultural Memory: African Reflections on the American Landscape, 2001. | |