The Spanish government emphasized its religious and humanitarian reasons for founding Fort Mose, but the village was also strategically placed to defend St. Although a white Catholic priest and a white Spanish officer were at the village, the governor considered Menéndez the head of the Fort Mose community and respected his military leadership. According to British accounts, the first fort built was of stone and the community lived in dwellings outside of it. There were nearly 40 free men and women at Fort Mose, including Menéndez and his wife María, who pledged to serve Spain and convert to Catholicism. Saint Teresa de Avilés was the town’s patron saint, and Mose was the name of the site prior to settlement. The appellation “Gracia Real” indicated that the king established the town. Menéndez and several others petitioned the government for freedom that year and in 1737 they received unconditional freedom from the new Florida governor, Manuel de Montiano.Īfter Montiano granted freedom to Menéndez, he established the village of Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mosé for black citizens of St. In 1733, the government in Spain outlawed the sale of runaway slaves to private citizens and offered the soldiers freedom after four additional years of service. Benavides, perhaps afraid of British retribution, sold several runaway slaves in 1729 to reimburse their British owners and did not free the militiamen, including Menéndez, despite their loyalty. He believed it only applied to slaves who arrived in Florida during wartime. Despite Spain’s promise of freedom, Governor Benavides ignored the broad view of King Charles II’s 1693 order to free fugitive slaves. Augustine from South Carolina with nine other slaves in 1724. Captain Menéndez was a black slave and a veteran of the Yamasee War of 1715. He appointed Francisco Menéndez to lead the militia. In 1726, Florida governor Antonio de Benavides created a black slave militia to help the white Spanish regiments defend St. Spain’s policy toward runaways took laborers from the British colony and boosted its own colonial population to oppose the British.įrom this boardwalk, visitors can look across the marshy landscape where the ruins of Fort Mose Site lay. This policy of refuge encouraged fugitive slaves to flee to Spanish Florida with the hope of a better life if they made it to a Spanish outpost, and it gave the Spanish a weapon to use against the British. Spanish records note at least six separate groups of slaves who escaped from South Carolina to St. Between the late 17th and the mid-18th centuries, an unknown number of slaves from South Carolina successfully escaped to Florida. The fugitive slaves from South Carolina who made it to Spanish Florida could expect to gain more control over their own lives, even as Spanish slaves. In 1693, King Charles II of Spain ordered his Florida colonists to give runaway slaves from British colonies freedom and protection if they converted to Catholicism and agreed to serve Spain. Spain’s flexible attitude toward slaves and black freedmen encouraged British slaves in South Carolina to escape to Florida. Despite slave rebellions in the Spanish American colonies, by the 18th century, Spanish Florida had a growing population of both free and enslaved black colonists. Augustine at its founding in 1565 as members of Pedro Menéndez de Avilés’s colonizing expedition. Black African slaves arrived in the Spanish colonies in the early 16th century, where they replaced the forced labor of the indigenous population. Slavery existed in Spain, but slaves had legal rights within the Spanish slave system, including the right to own property, sue in courts, keep their families together, and purchase their freedom. It was a product of war by which the victors enslaved rather than killed their enemy. According to Spanish law, slavery was not a natural state for any race. Catholic doctrine, Roman law, and Spanish policy influenced these laws. Spain established its slave laws in the 13th century. Slavery in Spain predated its colonization of the Americas. The Fort Mose Site, today a National Historic Landmark, is the location of the second Fort Mose. Fort Mose is the only known free black town in the present-day southern United States that a European colonial government sponsored. In the 18th century, two Fort Mose sites existed, one that the Spanish occupied between 17, and another occupied between 17. Augustine, the capital of Spanish Florida, and founded a town called Fort Mose. In the 1730s, a black Spanish community formed in St. To destabilize British colonization in the north, Spain encouraged British slaves to escape to Florida, where they could convert to Catholicism and become Spanish citizens. Competition between Spain and Britain made Florida a haven for colonial South Carolina’s fugitive slaves in the 18th century.
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