Competition between Spain and Britain made Florida a haven for colonial
South Carolina’s fugitive slaves in the 18th century. 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. In the 1730s, a black Spanish community formed in St.
Augustine, the capital of Spanish Florida, and founded a town called
Fort Mose. In the 18th century, two Fort Mose sites existed, one that
the Spanish occupied between 1737 and 1740, and another occupied
between 1752 and 1763. Fort Mose is the only known free black town in
the present-day southern United States that a European colonial
government sponsored. The Fort Mose Site, today a National Historic
Landmark, is the location of the second Fort Mose.
Slavery in Spain predated its colonization of the Americas.
Spain established its slave laws in the 13th century. Catholic
doctrine, Roman law, and Spanish policy influenced these laws.
According to Spanish law, slavery was not a natural state for any race.
It was a product of war by which the victors enslaved rather than
killed their enemy. 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. Black African slaves arrived in the Spanish colonies in
the early 16th century, where they replaced the forced labor of the
indigenous population. Enslaved Africans first set foot in St. Augustine
at its founding in 1565 as members of Pedro Menéndez de Avilés’s
colonizing expedition. 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.
Spain’s flexible attitude toward slaves and black freedmen
encouraged British slaves in South Carolina to escape to Florida. 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. 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. Between the
late 17th and the mid-18th centuries, an unknown number of slaves from
South Carolina successfully escaped to Florida. Spanish records note
at least six separate groups of slaves who escaped from South Carolina
to St. Augustine between 1688 and 1725. 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. Spain’s policy toward runaways took
laborers from the British colony and boosted its own colonial population
to oppose the British.
From this boardwalk, visitors can look across the marshy landscape where the ruins of Fort Mose Site lay.
Courtesy of Ebyabe on Wikimedia Commons
In 1726, Florida governor Antonio de Benavides created a
black slave militia to help the white Spanish regiments defend St.
Augustine from British attacks. He appointed Francisco Menéndez to lead
the militia. Captain Menéndez was a black slave and a veteran of the
Yamasee War of 1715. He escaped to St. Augustine from South Carolina
with nine other slaves in 1724. Despite Spain’s promise of freedom,
Governor Benavides ignored the broad view of King Charles II’s 1693
order to free fugitive slaves. He believed it only applied to slaves
who arrived in Florida during wartime. 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. 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. 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.
After Montiano granted freedom to Menéndez, he established
the village of Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mosé for black citizens of
St. Augustine. The appellation “Gracia Real” indicated that the king
established the town. Saint Teresa de Avilés was the town’s patron
saint, and Mose was the name of the site prior to settlement. Fort Mose
was its unofficial name. 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. According to British accounts, the
first fort built was of stone and the community lived in dwellings
outside of it. 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.
The Spanish government emphasized its religious and
humanitarian reasons for founding Fort Mose, but the village was also
strategically placed to defend St. Augustine against British attacks.
In 1739, African slaves in South Carolina killed over 20 British
colonists and then tried but failed to escape to St. Augustine in a
revolt called the Stono Rebellion. After the rebellion, an
international war in Europe intensified competition between the
colonies and their uneasy peace broke down.
In 1740, colonial governor James Oglethorpe of Georgia
invaded Florida and burned Spanish outposts along the St. Johns River,
as he led his force of British colonists and American Indian allies
south to St. Augustine. They attacked the Florida capital and quickly
captured Fort Mose. Because they lacked the fortifications to hold off
Oglethorpe’s army, the Fort Mose community evacuated the town before the
British arrived and escaped to St. Augustine. Soon afterward, the
Fort Mose militia returned to take back their village from the British
and won a conflict called the Battle of Bloody Mose. Beaten and unable
to take the city, Oglethorpe retreated. The governor praised the
bravery of Menéndez and his militia in a report of the battle to the
king. After Oglethorpe’s attack, the Spanish abandoned the first Fort
Mose and the black community returned to St. Augustine, where they
integrated into mainstream Spanish colonial life.
Reenactors at Fort Mose Site State Historic Park portray black regimentals in the Battle of Bloody Mose.
Courtesy of the Fort Mose Historical Society
Despite their successes in the capital, in 1752 Governor
Fulgencio García de Solís ordered the black St. Augustine citizens to
rebuild Fort Mose at a new site north of the city. The second Fort
Mose, which Captain Menéndez again led, lasted until Spain gave Florida
to Britain in 1763. In 1759, 67 people lived at Fort Mose. Most
households were married couples and children. After the North American
Seven Years War, known by the British as the French and Indian War,
Spain abandoned Florida. The Spanish, including the Fort Mose
community, left the continent and resettled in Matanzas, Cuba, on the
Spanish frontier. Although the Spanish government outfitted them and
gave them land, the Fort Mose refuges found life in Matanzas was rough.
Refugees, including Francisco Menéndez, eventually moved to Havana,
Cuba. The black Spanish community never returned to Fort Mose, but
there is evidence of Spanish activity at Fort Mose after the American
Revolution when Spain resettled Florida.
Beginning in the 1970s, ongoing archeological excavations at
the site of the second Fort Mose uncovered a moat, log stockade, and
earthwork fort walls. Evidence within the earthwork walls dates
structures back to the first Spanish occupation. In 1759, according to a
Spanish census, Fort Mose had 22 dwellings. Archeologists believe they
were located in and around the main fort. The second Fort Mose also had
a large wooden parish church with a thatched roof. At the site,
archeologists discovered beads, nails, glass, buttons, American Indian
ceramics, Mexican majolica, English wares, and food remains. During the
Spanish colonial period, the Fort Mose site was dry farmland. It
evolved into a marsh during the late 19th century. The site today is
Florida’s Fort Mose Historic State Park, where reenactors and rangers
interpret the lives of Spanish Florida’s freed men and women. The
visitor center provides information about the history of the site and
its museum exhibit highlights artifacts from the Spanish colonial
period. Beyond the museum, visitors can walk across a wooden boardwalk
that extends from the public parking lot into the open marshland to see
the site of the second Fort Mose.