Slavery In Escambia County

Improved Essays
Throughout Americas youthful years the growing country was able to enjoy a sense of prosperity in its economic dominance and increasing territory in relation to other nations across the world. Even with this great prosperity the issue regards to the legality of slavery seemed to plague the society of the growing country. Numerous areas of Florida including Escambia County began enacting certain laws and city codes which restricted the movement of African Americans as well as limited their societal freedoms. The impact leveled by the implementation of these restrictions against free blacks and mulattos was very widely publicized and criticize throughout Escambia county. The Florida Historic Quarterly discussed the direct affects of the legal …show more content…
The authors note that not only were the free blacks able to live peacefully amongst there white counterparts, but they were even respected within the community. Even with this high level of peace and esteem amongst both residing ethnicities in the area the general public outside of Escambia county saw the residence of free blacks and mulattos in Southern cities as an imminent threat to the stability of the Anglo Saxon dominated south. A territorial law in 1828 stated that free blacks were prevented from owning or carrying firearms or other military weaponry in Florida with the exception of Pensacola and St Augustine where free blacks could posses’ weapons that fell in accordance with the cities own guidelines. Both Pensacola and St Augustine were also the only cities in the Florida territory to allow slaves to buy their freedom from there masters without there masters having to incur a fifty-dollar fee from the governing county. Later in the article Ruth Barr and Modeste reference an 1851 Tallahassee newspaper which mentioned a Virginia and Alabama proposition which would make the settlement of free blacks in there repective states illegal. Unlike the neighboring regions, Escambia County in particular was still experiencing a high functioning relationship between the white and free black citizens in …show more content…
In 1845 the state of Florida leveled a tax against all free blacks between the age of 21 and 60 who did not have a white guardian legally assigned to them. This white guardian was to be there de facto owner who could force them into work if they failed to pay any government issued funds levied against them. In 1848 the state of Florida imposed an even more demeaning legal code against free blacks which required all black citizens over the age of 20 to have a white guardian. Many of the free black Pensacola citizens felt as if there were now being relegated to the status of a slave and the general consensus of the white citizens in the area was in agreement with the free blacks. After a second reiteration of the legal code in 1856 which made failure to possess guardianship of a white male a hefty fine and possible incarceration, the free blacks of the Escambia area decided to emigrate out of the country into Mexico. The vast majority of the free blacks in Escambia county sailed out from Palafox wharf sometime in 1856 before the deadline of the 1856 codes

Related Documents

  • Decent Essays

    Throughout the colonies in New England and southward, discriminatory laws were being emerged. After 1675, Africans, African Americans, and Native Americans were no longer allowed to own land, it was reserved for white men only. Even when Africans served in militias and fought alongside white men, after 1675, only white males held the privilege…

    • 248 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Chesapeake Blacks from the period of 1600’s to 1700’s lost their rights,…

    • 259 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    The author does not focus, this book around the history of slavery in New England. Instead Piersen concentrates on the processes of assimilation and creation of a subcultural from the black bondsman 's point of view. The book consist of 5 significant categories the author discuss in great detail for his readers to understand the steps that northern Negroes took to form a larger culture. The first section in the book is on African American immigrants and Black Yankees.…

    • 1287 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Jaspreet Sangha History 11 Paper #1 For much of the seventeenth century, Virginia’s labor force consisted largely of white indentured servants from England. Over time, a growing number of Africans, both free and enslaved, worked alongside, and lived among, these young white men. While black Virginians were always subject to prejudicial treatment at the hands of the majority population, they still enjoyed many of the same rights as other Virginians for years. By the early eighteenth century, however, life for black Virginians—whether enslaved or free—had become more difficult. Africans would work alongside with indentured servants.…

    • 717 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The article was successful in achieving its aim of telling the complete story of the Freedman Bureau in Florida, while also explaining extensively how it ultimately failed at its true purpose in the state. The article makes the bureau in many ways appear as simply manipulative government organization which was solely placed in the state to act as a strategic political pawn. Regardless of the negative nature of much of the article the author strays away from appearing openly bias to one political party throughout this article which openly deals with numerous controversial topics such as slavery and political factions. Instead the failures and success of the bureau is simply put into terms of effectiveness throughout the article which narrows out a lot of the biases in the. The article is also effective in its ability to retain relevancy as no new knowledge or breakthroughs on this historical topic have been made since the publishing of this article and none are likely to be made in the foreseeable…

    • 842 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Sinha discusses some of the major sectional crises of the antebellum era--including nullification, the conflict over the expansion of slavery into western territories, and secession--and offers an important reevaluation of the movement to reopen the African slave trade in the 1850s. In the process she reveals the central role played by South Carolina planter politicians in developing proslavery ideology and the use of states' rights and constitutional theory for the defense of slavery.…

    • 73 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Era of Reconstruction happened after the Civil War. The Era of Reconstruction was when America was being recreated and trying to figure what to do with all the African Americans. African Americans still did not gain their freedom during the era of reconstruction. Sharecropping was very bad even after the slave’s became free.…

    • 443 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    All throughout History, we have continuously asked ourselves why African Americans lived a much more restricted life from that of the White. Most of us know that African Americans were enslaved workers and slave owners. Being a property meant that they had to follow every rule and do as told. Around the eighteenth century, the slavery of African Natives became a notable source of labor for the Southern plantation system. The development of plantations made the use of slaves more necessary.…

    • 760 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    A War After the Civil War, a war between the north side and the south side of the United States, ended, the two sides reunited back into a whole and abolished slavery altogether. Since most of the war was fought on The South, the sides had to rebuild back farms, towns, and cities of the south territory, which is now known as the Reconstruction era. During the Reconstruction era, from 1865-1877, President Andrew Johnson implemented many laws and policies between the African Americans and the whites, like the Black Codes that limited the former slaves, or the freedpeople, and the sharecropping contract that was like a compromise. The South claimed that African Americans have freedom and that they are freed people.…

    • 877 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Slavery was a factor that led to the growth of population throughout the colonies. Enslaved Africans worked on plantations while very few did housework. The slave code was laws to regulate enslaved Africans. The strict rules controlled the behavior and punishment of the enslaved Africans. Many colonies had their own slave codes some restricted teaching to read and write most were not allowed to gather in large groups.…

    • 126 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Nat Turner Rebellion

    • 1177 Words
    • 5 Pages

    The further-restriction of the freedoms of the African American slaves was just enough pressure to blow the lid off of the conformity of living in a society of unequal’s, “marking a turning point for the Old South” (Give Me Liberty!,…

    • 1177 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Ever since 1787, and even before, African-Americans have struggled to gain political, legal, social, and economic equality. Although some national and state government programs were constructed to help African-Americans with this perpetual problem, it is also the same state and national government policies that expanded this problem. In fact, this is still a problem that persists today. The national and state governments definitely have gone a long way in providing African Americans with political, legal and social opportunities; however constant setbacks have lessened their effectiveness. Beginning in 1787 there was an unspoken guarantee that all states had the option to decide whether or not they wanted to be slave sates.…

    • 1951 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    In general, slavery played a major part in American colonization and became the standard for all colonies and the African American slaves were heavily populated in the Northern and Southern colonies because of the Southern colonies had tobacco plantations and they needed laborers to work their land so, they can make a profit. In short, the Atlantic Slave Trade was established by the Spanish colonists in the Sixteenth century to help solve a need and because they were the most experience sea mariners during that time (Robin, Kelley, Lewis, 2005, p. 7). Therefore, slaves became the cheapest laborers in the colonies and this forced labor continue for centuries and some people of the colonies began to believe that this was the way of life. The…

    • 1778 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Slavery: Life In Virginia

    • 1246 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Slavery was not a subject that could get treated as a textbook black and white situation. All slaves were supposed to be known as property. However, depending on the masters and where they stayed some slaves lived better lives than others. Slavery had a lot to do with the political practices that was done during that time. In some states, there were slaves in which could work to get their freedom.…

    • 1246 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Slavery Among the Cherokee Nation The Cherokee slaves of the 1842 slave riot attempted escape but were unsuccessful. The Cherokee culture made a huge push to become more like the white Americans (10 Incredible). Being more like the white Americans, they decided to capture slaves to help them work on their farm and have them help around the town. Thinking that slaves will help them for only these reasons, they were very surprised by the end of the riot.…

    • 554 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays