"A Class of People Neither Freemen Nor Slaves": From Spanish to American Race Relations in Florida, 1821-1861

Abstract

With a history of multi-national colonial experiences, Florida presents unique opportunities for students of comparative slavery and race relations. Under Spanish rule from 1565 until 1763, Florida became British for two decades, an interlude highlighted by African slave importation, plantation development, and warfare spilling south into loyalist Florida from the rebellious colonies to the north. In 1784 Spain resumed control, using its vast unoccupied lands to attract foreign planters with African slaves. Also attracted were American adventurers who fomented rebellions and invasions, prompting Spain to cede the province to the United States in 1821. This essay examines northeast Florida after Spain departed in 1821. It argues that Americans replaced a mild and flexible system of race relations with a severe definition of slavery which viewed African Americans as degraded members of a despised race, and which erected institutional and social barriers between whites and all persons of African descent. African American slaves were seen as inferior beings incapable of existing independently in a civilized society. Free blacks were thought of as aberrations: inherently inferior like their slave brethren, according to the dogma, yet feared as threatening contradictions to pro-slavery theory and incendiary inspirations for slave insurrections. Social control laws passed to regulate slaves were generally applied to free blacks as well. The United States brought a harsh, two-caste system of slavery with rigid racial dimensions to the new Florida territory.