February 25, 2026 • 37 mins
Fort Mose was the first officially sanctioned settlement for free Black people in what’s now the United States. It was established as a place where people who escaped enslavement in the U.S. could live in the Spanish territory of Florida.
Research:
- Blumetti, Jordan. “The First Floridians.” The Bitter Southerner. https://bittersoutherner.com/the-first-floridians-fort-mose-st-augustine
- Cancio-Donlebún Ballvé, J. Á. (2021). The King of Spain’s Slaves in St. Augustine, Florida (1580–1618). Estudios del Observatorio / Observatorio Studies, 74, pp. 1-81. https://cervantesobservatorio.fas.harvard.edu/en/reports
- curtis, Marcus. “Fort Mose: Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose.” 3/2/2022. https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/2f5446036d2d4e109439baade4e1f4e7
- Dunlop, J.G. “Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose: A Free Black Town in Spanish Colonial Florida.” The American Historical Review , Feb., 1990, Vol. 95, No. 1 (Feb., 1990). https://www.jstor.org/stable/2162952
- org. “Francisco Menéndez.” https://enslaved.org/fullStory/16-23-92885/
- Florida Frontiers. “Fort Mose: America’s First Free Black Community.” 12/11/2016. https://www.pbs.org/video/florida-frontiers-fort-mose-americas-first-free-black-community/
- Florida Museum. “Fort Mose.” https://www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/histarch/research/st-augustine/fort-mose/
- Fort Mose Historical Society. “The Fort Mose Story.” https://fortmose.org/about-fort-mose/
- Halbirt, Carl D. “La Ciudad de San Agustín: A European Fighting Presidio in Eighteenth-Century ‘La Florida.’” Historical Archaeology , 2004, Vol. 38, No. 3, Presidios of the North American Spanish Borderlands (2004). Via JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/25617179
- Hurston, Zora Neale and John R. Lynch. “The Journal of Negro History , Oct., 1927, Vol. 12, No. 4 (Oct., 1927). https://www.jstor.org/stable/2714042
- Landers, Jane. “Black Frontier Settlements in Spanish Colonial Florida.” OAH Magazine of History , Spring, 1988, Vol. 3, No. 2, The Frontier (Spring, 1988). Via JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/25162596
- Landers, Jane. “Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose: A Free Black Town in Spanish Colonial Florida.” The American Historical Review , Feb., 1990, Vol. 95, No. 1 (Feb., 1990). https://www.jstor.org/stable/2162952
- Landers, Jane. “The Atlantic Transformations of Francisco Menéndez.” From Biography and the Black Atlantic. University of Pennsylvania Press. 2014.
- MacMahon, Darcie and Kathleen Deagan. “Legacy of Fort Mose.” Archaeology , September/October 1996, Vol. 49, No. 5 (September/October 1996). Via JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/41771187
- Proenza-Coles, Christina. “Freedom Seekers.” Lapham’s Quarterly. 3/19/2019. https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/freedom-seekers
- Wasserman, Adam. “Forming a nation: the free black settlement at Fort Mose.” From A People’s History of Florida. Via Libcom.org.6/28/2009. https://libcom.org/article/forming-nation-free-black-settlement-fort-mose
- Weiss, Daniel. “Freedom Fort.” Archaeology. Mar/Apr2024, Vol. 77 Issue 2, p36-41.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy B. Wilson
and I'm Holly Fry had various points on the show,
most recently in our episode on the rendition of Anthony Burns.
We have talked about people liberating themselves from enslavement and
escaping to Canada from the United States. Slavery was abolished
(00:33):
in some parts of what's now Canada in the seventeen nineties,
and then it was abolished all across the British Empire
that Canada was part of under the Slavery Abolition Act
of eighteen thirty three. It has not come up as often,
but we've also talked about people fleeing south to Mexico,
where slavery was abolished in eighteen twenty nine, and that
(00:56):
included people escaping from enslavement in Texas, which was part
of Mexico in eighteen twenty nine but was exempted from
the decree abolishing slavery just a few months after it
was issued. And of course people did also escape to
other US states and territories, although they still faced the
(01:16):
risk of re enslavement under the Fusive Slave Acts of
seventeen ninety three and eighteen fifty. I am not sure, though,
whether we have ever talked about the period in which
people were escaping to Florida. At the time, Florida was
Spanish territory and slavery had not been abolished there. And
(01:39):
that's at the heart of today's episode about the first
officially sanctioned settlement for free black people in what is
now the United States that was known as Fort Mosey,
just outside of Saint Augustine, Florida. In the eighteenth century.
Saint Augustine served as the capital of Spanish Florida or
La Florida, and it's the oldest continuous occupied city from
(02:01):
the colonial era of the United States. Listen, if you
grow up in Florida, you get told this all the time.
Let me assure you it was established in fifteen sixty five,
or more than forty years before the first permanent English
settlement of Jamestown, Virginia. Jamestown and the British origins of
the US do tend to get a lot more attention
(02:22):
in US history classes than Saint Augustine and Spain do,
and of course both of those usually get more attention
than the oldest continually occupied settlements established by indigenous peoples
like Acoma Pueblo and Oribi, which predates Saint Augustine by
centuries and are still occupied today. Yeah, my original draft
(02:43):
of this has said that Jamestown in the British origins
of the US tend to get a lot more attention,
unless maybe you live in Florida or in one of
the other places that was Spanish territory before becoming British
territory and then part of the United States. So Pedro
Menendez de Avilles established the city of Saint Augustine under
(03:05):
a license from King Felipe the Second, who wanted to
protect Spain's claims in the Americas from incursions by other
European powers. This included French Huguenots, who established a settlement
in what is now Florida in fifteen sixty two. Less
than a month after arriving in Florida. Three years later,
(03:27):
Pedro Menendez de avilleres led an expedition that killed nearly
all of those French colonists.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
When Spanish forces were tasked with building things like forts
and settlements in the Americas, it was typical for them
to bring workers who were enslaved to the crown. The
Spanish system of slavery also incorporated the idea of manumission.
People might be freed as a reward, or enslavers might
use the idea of earning freedom to try to control
(03:57):
their workforce. Spanish law yeah also recognized some limited rights
and protections for enslaved people, including the right to own
property and earn money, which made it somewhat easier for
people to purchase their own freedom than in societies or
that was not the case.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
Manumission was not guaranteed by any stretch of the imagination,
and most Africans in Spanish societies were enslaved. There was
also stigma associated with having been previously enslaved, and freed
people's records usually made reference to that earlier enslavement for
(04:35):
the rest of their lives. But this did mean that
Spain and its colonies had a somewhat larger population of
free black people than some of the other slaveholding societies
of this era. When Menendez d' avilles arrived in Florida,
he had both enslaved and free Africans with him. That
(04:57):
was something that was true in other Spanish colonies as well.
By the end of the sixteenth century, more than ten
percent of the population of Saint Augustine was black, and
a significant number of those people were free. When the
British started establishing their own colonies in the Americas, slavery
became part of the conflict between England and Spain. So
(05:18):
for context, Spain had claimed all of the Americas after
the voyages of Christopher Columbus at the end of the
fifteenth century. Other European powers mostly disregarded those claims, and
they started claiming territory and establishing colonies of their own,
most relevant to today's episode. In sixteen sixty three, England
(05:38):
established the province of Carolina under a royal charter. Its
southern border was close to the border between Florida and
Georgia today. A second charter in sixteen sixty five set
the Carolina border even farther south, with England claiming more
of Florida, including Saint Augustine. Disputes over this territory escalated
(05:59):
after English colonists established Charlestown that is now Charleston, South
Carolina in sixteen seventy. Spain had made some attempts to
colonize Florida but those attempts had not been very successful,
and Spanish authorities knew that if they lost Saint Augustine,
they would lose the whole peninsula. So they established forts
(06:21):
and they raised militias to try to defend this territory.
This included militias specifically for black, indigenous, and multi racial people.
And this is something else that was really typical across
the Spanish colonies and some other colonies. There just weren't
enough Europeans to defend all of the claims and the
Americas without help from other people. So typically there were
(06:45):
fighting forces of the European colonists as well as enslaved
and free black people, enslaved indigenous people, and indigenous allies.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
The establishment of the first free black settlement in the
United States grew out of the consulate between England and
Spain and the fact that the idea of manumission was
already part of the Spanish institution of slavery. In sixteen
eighty seven, eight men, two women, and a three year
old girl arrived in Saint Augustine by canoe after liberating
(07:15):
themselves from enslavement in the province of Carolina. It's possible
that they were not the first people to flee to
Florida from Carolina, and that earlier arrivals just were not documented.
It is also possible that other people had tried to
make it through the swampy landscapes between England's settlements and
Saint Augustine and just had not survived, and it's likely
(07:37):
that these eleven people had the help of indigenous people
as they traveled through this territory along the coast to
get there. With the exception of the three year old,
probably these were people who had been enslaved in Africa
and transported to North America. At this point, slave traders
were transporting people to Carolina, mainly from parts of central
(08:00):
and western Africa, where Portuguese merchants had been operating since
the fourteen hundreds, so it's possible that at least some
of these people were familiar with Catholicism as a religion.
Some of them may have spoken Portuguese, which would have
helped them communicate with the Spanish authorities in Saint Augustine.
It's even possible that they might have known about laws
(08:23):
and customs that would afford them some protection if they
asked for religious sanctuary, and about the possibility of manumission,
which Portugal and Spain treated fairly similarly. We really have
no way of knowing any of this for sure, but
according to Spanish accounts, after arriving in Saint Augustine, these
(08:43):
refugees asked to be baptized into the true faith, that
being Catholicism. After being baptized and after Catholic marriage, ceremonies
were provided for the couples. Six of the men were
put to work helping to build the Castillo de San Marcos,
that is, a masonry fort that was built to protect
Saint Augustine from both English forces and from pirates. The
(09:08):
other two men worked for a blacksmith, suggesting that they
were probably already experienced in that trade. The women did
domestic work in the governor's house. All of these adults
were paid for their labor a paso per day for
the men and half a paso per day for the women.
They were housed with various residents of Saint Augustine.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
In sixteen eighty eight, James Culleton, Governor of Carolina, dispatched
Major William Dunlop on a diplomatic mission to Saint Augustine.
Among other things, he was instructed to demand the return
of the people who had escaped to Saint Augustine the
year before, who Coulton claimed had been stolen in a
(09:50):
Spanish raid on Edisto Island.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
Diego de Queroga. Ilusada, acting governor of Spanish Florida, refused
to return them, cite that they had all been baptized
into the Catholic faith and were now employed in Saint Augustine,
and that some of them had married local people. He did, however,
offer monetary restitution to be paid to their former enslavers.
(10:14):
One man named Mingo was also accused of having committed
murder during the escape. Kiroga Ilosada told Dunlop that if
there was evidence of this murder, and if Mingo was
prosecuted and convicted, that he would be executed for that crime.
Kiroga Ilosada also assured Dunlop that if other enslaved people
(10:35):
escaped from Carolina to Florida in the future, they would
be quote, from time to time faithfully restored in their
own proper persons to the Governor of Carolina or any
sent by him. But that is not what happened. We'll
have more after a sponsor break it did not take
(11:05):
long for word to spread around the province of Carolina
that a group of people had escaped to Saint Augustine
and the Spanish governor had refused to return them. Soon
more people started liberating themselves and fleeing to the south.
This was enough of an issue that within a year
of William Dunlop's negotiations with the Spanish, the Lord's Proprietors
(11:28):
of Carolina, which held joint ownership of the Carolina Colony,
told Governor James Cullton that he needed to put a
stop to it.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
For the next few years, there wasn't an official policy
in Spanish Florida about what to do when Africans arrived
seeking refuge. Decisions were at the discretion of whoever was
acting as governor, but a general practice did evolve. People
who agreed to be baptized as Catholics, swear their allegiance
to Spain, and work for the colony were treated is free. Eventually,
(12:02):
after authorities from Spanish Florida made several requests for some
more specific guidance from the Crown, the Council of the
Ends recommended formalizing what the governors had most of the
time already been doing on their own. In sixteen ninety three,
King Carlos the Ion of Spain issued a decree that
(12:23):
liberty would be given to anyone who arrived in Spanish
Florida and accepted Catholicism. A similar edict had done the
same in the Spanish Caribbean a little more than a
decade before this. The reason Carlos gave for this was quote,
so that by their example and by my liberality, others
will do the same. But he was not in any
(12:45):
way advocating for abolition, and his motivations were more pragmatic
than humanitarian. If Spanish Florida accepted refugees from the province
of Carolina, those people could bolster the size of the
Spanish militia. They often brought skills and knowledge from work
that they had been forced to do while enslaved, which
could benefit the Spanish. And if enslaved people knew there
(13:08):
was a possible haven in the south where they could
be free, it could encourage more people to liberate themselves,
which could destabilize England's colonial efforts. Yeah, they might also
have specialized skills and knowledge from before they were enslaved.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
Regardless, though, like he made that sounds.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
Like it was really out of the goodness of his
own heart and to set a good example for the
rest of the world.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
But it was because they were assets.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
Yeah, they were assets, and he understood that they could
have an effect and if enough people left Carolina. So
over the span of about fifty years, more than one
hundred people are known to have successfully made their way
from the British colonies to Saint Augustine, where they were
granted asylum and freedom in exchange for conversion to Catholicism
(13:59):
and allegiance to Spain. In seventeen thirty eight, their population
had reached a size that Spanish authorities decided to establish
Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose, just north of
the city, also known as Fort Mose. This was the
first officially sanctioned free black settlement in North America.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
This was, of course, a segregation effort, and one of
its motivations was straightforward racial prejudice. Also, since slavery was
legal in Saint Augustine, there were enslaved people living there
and enslaved people who tried to escape from there, so
officials thought it was prudent to have the free black
population just live somewhere else, and it was also an
(14:43):
attempt to establish another line of defense between the colonial
capital and British territory. We just described it as a
free black settlement, which it was, but Fort mose also
became a multi racial and multicultural settlement. Its African residents
came from at least four different ethnic groups. In addition
to the freed people, there were also enslaved Africans, indigenous people,
(15:07):
and Europeans who married into the community and their multi
racial children. Fort mose was also assigned a Spanish administrator
who does not appear to have actually lived there, and
a Franciscan student priest who did. Captain Francisco Menendez was
tasked with leading the militia that was stationed at Fort Mosey,
(15:27):
and in many other ways he was seen as a
leader in the community. So we're going to back up
a little bit and talk about his backstory. He was Mendinga,
that's a Mande speaking ethnic group from West Africa. He
was probably born somewhere in the Gambia River region, and
the Mendinga in that area are predominantly Muslim. We don't
(15:48):
know exactly when he was born or what his original
name was the name Francisco Menendez came from someone who
enslaved him after he was in North America. The province
of Carolina was officially separated into the colonies of North
and South Carolina in seventeen twelve, and Menendez was enslaved
(16:09):
in South Carolina by seventeen fifteen. Prior to that, the
timeline was a little vague. That year seventeen fifteen, the
Yamasi people and their allies, including the Creek and catawbinations,
as well as enslaved Africans, went to war against the
English colonists. This followed years of exploitation by white traders,
(16:32):
including forcing indigenous people into debt through unfair trading practices
and then enslaving them over non payment of that debt.
Another factor in this war was the ongoing encroachment of
the English onto indigenous lands. The colonists faced huge casualties
in this war and were vastly outnumbered by an alliance
(16:54):
of indigenous peoples from all over the Carolinas. Eventually, this
alliance had Charlestown almost entirely surrounded by land. The tide
only turned after reinforcements arrived from Virginia and North Carolina,
along with supplies from New England, and the Cherokee, who
had initially remained neutral, joined the colonist's side. After that,
(17:17):
many of the indigenous and African combatants fled south to Florida.
This included Menendez and his wife, known as Anna Maria
de Escobar. She was also Mendinga, and the name we
know her by today also came from an enslaver.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
Based on that sixteen ninety three decree from King Carlos
the Second. Menandez and his wife and the other Africans
who arrived in Spanish territory after the Yamasi War should
have been considered free, but during their retreat to the south,
a Yamasi man known as Pedro Bravo turned on them
and declared that about thirty Africans in the group were
(17:55):
his slaves. He sold them to the acting governor of Florida,
who then sold them to Francisco Menendez Marquees, which is
where Francisco Menendez got his name. Francisco Menendez made repeated
petitions for his own freedom, along with that of his
wife and the other people who had escaped with him.
(18:15):
This included petitions that were written and signed in Spanish,
with the whole document in the same handwriting, which suggests
that he wrote it himself and that he had become
literate in Spanish while still enslaved. He was made commander
of a militia for freed people. In seventeen thirty three,
King Felippe the fifth of Spain issued an edict forbidding
(18:37):
compensation to the British for the loss of enslaved people
who escaped to Florida. He also reiterated the policy of
offering freedom to people who escaped to Spanish Florida. Not
long after that, he modified that earlier edict, saying that
people would have to serve the crown for four years
(18:57):
before being freed. This point, Menendez, his wife, and the
other people who had escaped with them had all been
enslaved since seventeen eighteen, and Menendez's enslaver was a royal accountant,
so even if that stipulation of four years of service
to the crown, which had not existed before, had suddenly
been applied to him, he would have met that criteria already,
(19:22):
but he and the others were still considered enslaved.
Speaker 1 (19:26):
Finally, in seventeen thirty eight, a Yamasee chief known as Jorge,
advocated for Menendez, citing his actions during the war against
the British and describing Pero Bravo as a heathen who
did not know any better when he enslaved them. Jorge
also argued that the Spanish, on the other hand, should
have known better than to purchase Menendez and his compatriots
(19:47):
from Pero Bravo. On March fifteenth, seventeen thirty eight, Governor
Manuel de Montiano finally granted unconditional freedom to everyone who
had escaped from South Carolina, even though so they really
should have been free this whole time under existing royal decrees.
The people who had purportedly bought them were very annoyed
(20:07):
about this loss of their free labor. Francisco Menendez was
finally free, and he became captain of the militia at
Fort Mose. Fort Mose defended Saint Augustine against attacks from
the north in September of seventeen thirty nine. It was
also probably the planned destination of enslaved people who rose
(20:28):
up in the Stono River area south of Charleston. The
Stono Rebellion was one of the largest slave insurrections in
US history, in which between twenty and thirty white people
and between thirty and fifty Africans were killed. This rebellion
led South Carolina to pass new laws restricting the lives
(20:49):
and the movements of enslaved people, and it probably inspired
later uprisings in South Carolina and Georgia, which had also
been separated out from South Carolin in seventeen thirty two.
Fort Mose was also part of the defense of Saint
Augustine during a war between England and Spain. We're going
to talk about that after we paused for another sponsor break.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
In seventeen thirty nine, England and Spain went to war
in what came to be known as the War of
Jenkins Ear. That moniker traces back to seventeen thirty one,
when the British ship Rebecca was stopped and boarded by
a Spanish Coast Guard ship under the command of Captain
Juan de Leon Fandinho. According to the Rebecca's captain Robert Jenkins,
(21:45):
in the process of pillaging the ship and setting everybody
aboard a drift, the Spanish had cut off his ear.
Jenkins reported this to the House of Commons in seventeen
thirty eight and showed them the ear, which he had
preserved and kept.
Speaker 1 (22:03):
This became a pretext for a war with Spain, but
there were other tensions that fed into it, including issues
that were connected to slavery. In seventeen thirteen, the Treaty
of Utrek that ended the War of the Spanish Succession
had given the British South Sea Company a license to
sell enslaved Africans in Spanish America and to send one
(22:24):
trading ship to Spanish America each year. But a whole
lot of illicit trade operated under the cover of these
authorized voyages, and the legitimate ones also became their own
source of conflict in the context of the ongoing border
disputes in Florida. The War of Jenkins's Ear gave James Oglethorpe,
(22:44):
governor of Georgia Territory, his own pretext to invade Florida.
This point in the episode is where just Florida becomes
a battleground for a long time. A lot of things
happened Owlethorpe's forced raided forts along the coast of Florida
and the Saint John's River, and in May of seventeen
(23:05):
forty they lay sieged to Saint Augustine and established a
naval blockade. Some of Oglethorpe's Indigenous allies killed some of
the defenders at Fort mose and its Black militia and
civilian residents were evacuated to Castillo de San Marcos and
Saint Augustine. Before they left, they destroyed the fort's gates
(23:25):
and made holes in its fortifications so that the British
could not use the fort for their own defense. While
the fort was no longer well fortified or secure, the
British force, which included Black troops, indigenous allies, and units
of Scottish Highlanders, decided to use it as a camp,
and before dawn on June twenty sixth, the Free Black
(23:48):
militia under the command of Francisco Menendez, regular Spanish Army
troops and Seminole allies launched a surprise attack to retake it.
More than half of the one hundred and seventy British
occupiers and their allies were either killed or captured, while
only ten people were killed and twenty wounded on the
Spanish side, and this battle was nicknamed Bloody Moseic. After
(24:13):
this defeat, the British withdrew their naval blockade of Saint Augustine,
and not long after that Spanish reinforcements arrived from Cuba.
Oglethorpe's forces ultimately retreated back to Georgia. Since Fort Mose
had been almost entirely destroyed, its former residents remained in
Saint Augustine, and that's where most of them lived for
(24:34):
the next decade. That was true of Francisco Menandez's wife
and children. But he felt that he had earned an
officer's salary. He joined a corsairship, hoping to make his
way to Spain to make his case before the king.
But in seventeen forty one, the ship he was on
was captured by the British, who figured out who he was,
(24:55):
tortured him, re enslaved him, and sent him to the Bahamas.
The details are not documented anywhere, but somehow he escaped again,
and he made his way back to Saint Augustine and
rejoined his family.
Speaker 2 (25:10):
In seventeen fifty two, Florida Governor Fulgencio Garcia de Solice
decided to rebuild Fort Mose and return the Free Black
militia to it. This was not something that most of
those men wanted to do. We have not really spelled
this out, but Spain's offer of freedom came with a
lot of conditions. People who escaped to Florida were not
(25:33):
considered enslaved anymore, but for men, that militious service was mandatory.
The fort was also remote and swampy. Its housing was austere.
The population was a fraction of Saint Augustine's, so there
were not nearly as many opportunities for things like social
lives and education. This forced relocation was also obviously an
(25:56):
effort to once again remove the free black population out
of Saint Augustine because of their race. Ultimately, they didn't
really have a choice. Fort Mose was rebuilt, and by
seventeen fifty nine it was home to thirty seven men,
fifteen women, and fifteen children. Seven of those children were boys.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
And eight were girls. The fort also had a wooden
church where everyone worshiped and where a priest lived. As
had been true of its earlier iteration, the second fort's
residence came from multiple African ethnic groups, as well as
European and indigenous people who married one of the fort's
African residents. It's likely that even though its population was small,
(26:41):
the community at The fort was multilingual, with English, Spanish, Arabic,
and different indigenous languages from Africa and North America all
being spoken there. This rebuilt fort continued to serve as
an outer line of defense for the city of Saint Augustine.
In seventeen sixty two, as this region became involved in
(27:01):
the French and Indian War, an earthwork fortification was built
from one corner of the fort, extending west southwest for
about three quarters of a mile. The French and Indian
War is the name of the North American component of
the Nine Years War between France and the United Kingdom,
which was also connected with the Seven Years War, which
(27:22):
involved pretty much all of Europe. Everybody gets to name
their part their own thing, and it makes it very
confusing for the rest of us. This war ended with
the Treaty of Paris of seventeen sixty three, and under
that treaty, Spain seeded all of Florida to England in
exchange for Cuba, which England had occupied the year before.
(27:43):
England divided Florida into the two colonies of East and
West Florida, which set the stage for later disputes over
control of those two parts, which we are not going
to even try to get into here. Spain evacuated its
population from Florida, including relocated eating the free black population
of Fort Mose to Cuba. Yeah, even though there were
(28:05):
two colonies of East and West Florida, and sometimes things
applied to one of them and not the other. We're
just going to continue to talk about all of it
is Florida for the most part, because it became a
lot to try to explain every nuance of it. Francisco
Menendez and his family and about fifty other people were
(28:26):
all relocated abord a schooner called Our Lady of Sorrows
in August of seventeen sixty three. Each family was granted
some land and given supplies and an enslaved person to
help them establish a homestead. This land was in what
was thought of as the frontier around Matanzas, about sixty
miles or one hundred kilometers east of Havana, but it
(28:50):
was rocky, not very good for farming, and most of
them eventually returned to the area more directly around Havana.
These folks mostly disappear from the historical record. The United States,
of course, declared its independence from England in seventeen seventy
six during the Revolutionary War. That war ended.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
With the Treaty of Paris of seventeen eighty three, which
returned Florida to Spain. It is possible that some of
Fort Mosees's former residents or their descendants went back to
Saint Augustine after this, but there's no documentation, so we
really don't know. Yeah, it's possible that there are records
somewhere that someone could unearth and pick through, but not
(29:37):
in what's available right now. After retaking control of Florida,
Spain continued to have a policy of treating people who
escaped to Spanish territory as free That ended on May seventeenth,
seventeen ninety, when King Carlos the Fourth issued a decree
abolishing all those earlier orders regarding the treatment of escaped slaves.
(29:59):
At that point, the United States Constitution had come into
effect and Thomas Jefferson had become the first Secretary of State.
This decree followed negotiations between Spain and the United States,
with the US trying to get Spain to put a
stop to this practice. Of course, this was also interconnected with,
(30:19):
like the United States getting on its own footing as
a newly established nation.
Speaker 1 (30:26):
People still fled to Florida, though, but instead of trying
to get to Spanish territory, they tried to take refuge
in Seminole territory. So the name Seminole came into.
Speaker 2 (30:38):
Use in the late eighteenth century for indigenous people who
were already living in the southeast and fled to this
part of Florida in the face of violence from British
colonists and other indigenous nations. The Spanish granted some of
these people land with the hope of maintaining a buffer
between its settlements and the border with the United States.
(30:58):
Black Seminoles eventually became their own distinct ethnic group. In
eighteen twelve, in the face of rising tensions between the
United States and the United Kingdom would of course be
eventually the War of eighteen twelve, US officials intentionally stoked
fears of what would happen if Spain lost control of
(31:20):
East Florida, leaving it vulnerable to a British attack and occupation.
In response, the US attacked parts of northern Florida with
the goal of claiming it for the United States. Some
of the forces involved with this on the American side
were US military and militias from Georgia and Tennessee, and
(31:41):
they were at least tacitly supported by President James Monroe.
But there was also a group calling themselves the Patriot Army,
who were civilians who were basically acting on their own,
like the government had intentionally stoked people's fears about this,
the military involvement kind of like on the edge of
(32:01):
official the Patriot Army just.
Speaker 1 (32:04):
Doing their thing, just do it a vigilante style. These
combined US forces fought against the Spanish and against the Seminole,
and this conflict, known as the Patriot War, can be
seen as a precursor to the Seminole Wars that started
in eighteen sixteen. During the Patriot War, some of the
American forces who invaded Florida occupied Fort Moseic. They were
(32:29):
defeated and in the process what was left of that
fort was destroyed. The United States once again gained control
of Florida under the Onise Adams Treaty of eighteen nineteen,
in which the United States got Florida and exchanged for
taking responsibility for about five million dollars in American damage
(32:49):
claims against Spain, tracing back to the Seminole Wars that
we mentioned a moment ago, and then, of course Florida
became a US state in eighteen forty five. The ruins
of the second Fort Mose were eventually overtaken by swamp,
while the site of the original fort was flooded due
to dredging operations in the late nineteenth century. The site
(33:12):
of the second fort was discovered in the nineteen sixties
by Frederick Eugene Williams. The third it was on land
owned by the Saint Augustine Historical Society, which Williams purchased
in nineteen sixty eight. It became a state park and
a series of archaeological projects were undertaken there starting in
the nineteen eighties, with work done by doctor Kathleen Deagan
(33:34):
of the Florida Museum of Natural History. The story of
this rediscovery, the archaeological work, and the creation of the
park is quite long, and it's complicated, As many such stories,
it's a bit messy, and it's chronicled in an article
in Bitter Southerner called the First Floridians, which was written
by Jordan Bluemetti.
Speaker 2 (33:54):
Fort Mose was named a National Historic Landmark in nineteen
ninety five, and it is now part of Florida's Black
Heritage Trail. A recreation of the seventeen thirty eight fort
was built there just last year, surrounded by a historically
accurate moat. This reproduction was made to meet modern building
and fire codes while also appearing as historically accurate as possible.
(34:18):
The park also hosts re enactors for militia musters and
a recreation of the Bloody Mose Battle every year. The
next Bloody Mose reenactment is scheduled for June twenty seventh,
twenty twenty six. The Gullageechee Cultural Heritage Corridor was established
by an Act of Congress in two thousand and six.
(34:38):
The Gullageechee are descendants of people who are enslaved in
western and Central Africa and brought to the coasts of
North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, where they developed
their own distinct culture and traditions. Fort mose is part
of the Gullageechee Corridor, and this corridor has also been
documented as a primary route for people who escaped to
(34:59):
s Augustine and Fort Mosey. So that is Fort mose
Do you have a listener mail for us. I do
I have such incredibly short listener mail, but it's so
cute great.
Speaker 1 (35:11):
It just says, Hi, it's a key, We're out almost.
Speaker 2 (35:15):
This is from Jennifer. Jennifer says Hello, Holly Frye and
Tracy W.
Speaker 1 (35:19):
Wilson.
Speaker 2 (35:21):
I giggled when I saw the podcast on Rickets come
up in my feed. This is Rickets. What follows is
a picture of a black kitty cat on an animal
print blanket. Behind this kitty cat is a zebra print
pillow and like a dark burgundy pair of pillows. The
(35:45):
look on this cat's face to me is like I'm
lonely and I'm thinking about my friend, and I want
my friend to come over here. But this animal print
fuzzy blanket that I'm on is so comfortable that I
also don't want to get up to go look for
my friend. But I'm lonely. So the email goes on
(36:06):
to say, I built an.
Speaker 1 (36:09):
Emotionally complicated backstory for this cat.
Speaker 2 (36:13):
I mean black cats can be very expressive in their
facial expressions. Yes, So that email goes on to say,
I adopted Rickets Ricky to be a companion to my
other cat Scurvy. I considered writing illustrated children's books about
their adventures. That's all I needed to say, exclamation point, Jennifer,
(36:35):
and I wanted to read this email to say, I
want some children's books about two cats named Rickets and
Scurvy and their adventures. I would be very into this.
And I love that these kitty cats are named Rickets
and Scurvy.
Speaker 1 (36:50):
I think that's great.
Speaker 2 (36:52):
And then we love black cats in this household and podcast,
so all of these things together, I said, I want
to read that. Thank you so much for this picture
and for giving such great names so these cats, and
for having the idea of illustrated children's books about Ricky Ricky,
(37:15):
also Rickets and Scurvy. If you would like to write us,
we are at history podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. If
you want to read the source lists for all of
our episodes, that is at the website missinhistory dot com.
And if you want to subscribe to our show, you
can do so on the iHeartRadio app or anywhere else
(37:36):
you'd like to get your podcasts. Stuff you Missed in
History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts
from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio, app, Apple podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy B. Wilson
and I'm Holly Fry had various points on the show,
most recently in our episode on the rendition of Anthony Burns.
We have talked about people liberating themselves from enslavement and
escaping to Canada from the United States. Slavery was abolished
(00:33):
in some parts of what's now Canada in the seventeen nineties,
and then it was abolished all across the British Empire
that Canada was part of under the Slavery Abolition Act
of eighteen thirty three. It has not come up as often,
but we've also talked about people fleeing south to Mexico,
where slavery was abolished in eighteen twenty nine, and that
(00:56):
included people escaping from enslavement in Texas, which was part
of Mexico in eighteen twenty nine but was exempted from
the decree abolishing slavery just a few months after it
was issued. And of course people did also escape to
other US states and territories, although they still faced the
(01:16):
risk of re enslavement under the Fusive Slave Acts of
seventeen ninety three and eighteen fifty. I am not sure, though,
whether we have ever talked about the period in which
people were escaping to Florida. At the time, Florida was
Spanish territory and slavery had not been abolished there. And
(01:39):
that's at the heart of today's episode about the first
officially sanctioned settlement for free black people in what is
now the United States that was known as Fort Mosey,
just outside of Saint Augustine, Florida. In the eighteenth century.
Saint Augustine served as the capital of Spanish Florida or
La Florida, and it's the oldest continuous occupied city from
(02:01):
the colonial era of the United States. Listen, if you
grow up in Florida, you get told this all the time.
Let me assure you it was established in fifteen sixty five,
or more than forty years before the first permanent English
settlement of Jamestown, Virginia. Jamestown and the British origins of
the US do tend to get a lot more attention
(02:22):
in US history classes than Saint Augustine and Spain do,
and of course both of those usually get more attention
than the oldest continually occupied settlements established by indigenous peoples
like Acoma Pueblo and Oribi, which predates Saint Augustine by
centuries and are still occupied today. Yeah, my original draft
(02:43):
of this has said that Jamestown in the British origins
of the US tend to get a lot more attention,
unless maybe you live in Florida or in one of
the other places that was Spanish territory before becoming British
territory and then part of the United States. So Pedro
Menendez de Avilles established the city of Saint Augustine under
(03:05):
a license from King Felipe the Second, who wanted to
protect Spain's claims in the Americas from incursions by other
European powers. This included French Huguenots, who established a settlement
in what is now Florida in fifteen sixty two. Less
than a month after arriving in Florida. Three years later,
(03:27):
Pedro Menendez de avilleres led an expedition that killed nearly
all of those French colonists.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
When Spanish forces were tasked with building things like forts
and settlements in the Americas, it was typical for them
to bring workers who were enslaved to the crown. The
Spanish system of slavery also incorporated the idea of manumission.
People might be freed as a reward, or enslavers might
use the idea of earning freedom to try to control
(03:57):
their workforce. Spanish law yeah also recognized some limited rights
and protections for enslaved people, including the right to own
property and earn money, which made it somewhat easier for
people to purchase their own freedom than in societies or
that was not the case.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
Manumission was not guaranteed by any stretch of the imagination,
and most Africans in Spanish societies were enslaved. There was
also stigma associated with having been previously enslaved, and freed
people's records usually made reference to that earlier enslavement for
(04:35):
the rest of their lives. But this did mean that
Spain and its colonies had a somewhat larger population of
free black people than some of the other slaveholding societies
of this era. When Menendez d' avilles arrived in Florida,
he had both enslaved and free Africans with him. That
(04:57):
was something that was true in other Spanish colonies as well.
By the end of the sixteenth century, more than ten
percent of the population of Saint Augustine was black, and
a significant number of those people were free. When the
British started establishing their own colonies in the Americas, slavery
became part of the conflict between England and Spain. So
(05:18):
for context, Spain had claimed all of the Americas after
the voyages of Christopher Columbus at the end of the
fifteenth century. Other European powers mostly disregarded those claims, and
they started claiming territory and establishing colonies of their own,
most relevant to today's episode. In sixteen sixty three, England
(05:38):
established the province of Carolina under a royal charter. Its
southern border was close to the border between Florida and
Georgia today. A second charter in sixteen sixty five set
the Carolina border even farther south, with England claiming more
of Florida, including Saint Augustine. Disputes over this territory escalated
(05:59):
after English colonists established Charlestown that is now Charleston, South
Carolina in sixteen seventy. Spain had made some attempts to
colonize Florida but those attempts had not been very successful,
and Spanish authorities knew that if they lost Saint Augustine,
they would lose the whole peninsula. So they established forts
(06:21):
and they raised militias to try to defend this territory.
This included militias specifically for black, indigenous, and multi racial people.
And this is something else that was really typical across
the Spanish colonies and some other colonies. There just weren't
enough Europeans to defend all of the claims and the
Americas without help from other people. So typically there were
(06:45):
fighting forces of the European colonists as well as enslaved
and free black people, enslaved indigenous people, and indigenous allies.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
The establishment of the first free black settlement in the
United States grew out of the consulate between England and
Spain and the fact that the idea of manumission was
already part of the Spanish institution of slavery. In sixteen
eighty seven, eight men, two women, and a three year
old girl arrived in Saint Augustine by canoe after liberating
(07:15):
themselves from enslavement in the province of Carolina. It's possible
that they were not the first people to flee to
Florida from Carolina, and that earlier arrivals just were not documented.
It is also possible that other people had tried to
make it through the swampy landscapes between England's settlements and
Saint Augustine and just had not survived, and it's likely
(07:37):
that these eleven people had the help of indigenous people
as they traveled through this territory along the coast to
get there. With the exception of the three year old,
probably these were people who had been enslaved in Africa
and transported to North America. At this point, slave traders
were transporting people to Carolina, mainly from parts of central
(08:00):
and western Africa, where Portuguese merchants had been operating since
the fourteen hundreds, so it's possible that at least some
of these people were familiar with Catholicism as a religion.
Some of them may have spoken Portuguese, which would have
helped them communicate with the Spanish authorities in Saint Augustine.
It's even possible that they might have known about laws
(08:23):
and customs that would afford them some protection if they
asked for religious sanctuary, and about the possibility of manumission,
which Portugal and Spain treated fairly similarly. We really have
no way of knowing any of this for sure, but
according to Spanish accounts, after arriving in Saint Augustine, these
(08:43):
refugees asked to be baptized into the true faith, that
being Catholicism. After being baptized and after Catholic marriage, ceremonies
were provided for the couples. Six of the men were
put to work helping to build the Castillo de San Marcos,
that is, a masonry fort that was built to protect
Saint Augustine from both English forces and from pirates. The
(09:08):
other two men worked for a blacksmith, suggesting that they
were probably already experienced in that trade. The women did
domestic work in the governor's house. All of these adults
were paid for their labor a paso per day for
the men and half a paso per day for the women.
They were housed with various residents of Saint Augustine.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
In sixteen eighty eight, James Culleton, Governor of Carolina, dispatched
Major William Dunlop on a diplomatic mission to Saint Augustine.
Among other things, he was instructed to demand the return
of the people who had escaped to Saint Augustine the
year before, who Coulton claimed had been stolen in a
(09:50):
Spanish raid on Edisto Island.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
Diego de Queroga. Ilusada, acting governor of Spanish Florida, refused
to return them, cite that they had all been baptized
into the Catholic faith and were now employed in Saint Augustine,
and that some of them had married local people. He did, however,
offer monetary restitution to be paid to their former enslavers.
(10:14):
One man named Mingo was also accused of having committed
murder during the escape. Kiroga Ilosada told Dunlop that if
there was evidence of this murder, and if Mingo was
prosecuted and convicted, that he would be executed for that crime.
Kiroga Ilosada also assured Dunlop that if other enslaved people
(10:35):
escaped from Carolina to Florida in the future, they would
be quote, from time to time faithfully restored in their
own proper persons to the Governor of Carolina or any
sent by him. But that is not what happened. We'll
have more after a sponsor break it did not take
(11:05):
long for word to spread around the province of Carolina
that a group of people had escaped to Saint Augustine
and the Spanish governor had refused to return them. Soon
more people started liberating themselves and fleeing to the south.
This was enough of an issue that within a year
of William Dunlop's negotiations with the Spanish, the Lord's Proprietors
(11:28):
of Carolina, which held joint ownership of the Carolina Colony,
told Governor James Cullton that he needed to put a
stop to it.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
For the next few years, there wasn't an official policy
in Spanish Florida about what to do when Africans arrived
seeking refuge. Decisions were at the discretion of whoever was
acting as governor, but a general practice did evolve. People
who agreed to be baptized as Catholics, swear their allegiance
to Spain, and work for the colony were treated is free. Eventually,
(12:02):
after authorities from Spanish Florida made several requests for some
more specific guidance from the Crown, the Council of the
Ends recommended formalizing what the governors had most of the
time already been doing on their own. In sixteen ninety three,
King Carlos the Ion of Spain issued a decree that
(12:23):
liberty would be given to anyone who arrived in Spanish
Florida and accepted Catholicism. A similar edict had done the
same in the Spanish Caribbean a little more than a
decade before this. The reason Carlos gave for this was quote,
so that by their example and by my liberality, others
will do the same. But he was not in any
(12:45):
way advocating for abolition, and his motivations were more pragmatic
than humanitarian. If Spanish Florida accepted refugees from the province
of Carolina, those people could bolster the size of the
Spanish militia. They often brought skills and knowledge from work
that they had been forced to do while enslaved, which
could benefit the Spanish. And if enslaved people knew there
(13:08):
was a possible haven in the south where they could
be free, it could encourage more people to liberate themselves,
which could destabilize England's colonial efforts. Yeah, they might also
have specialized skills and knowledge from before they were enslaved.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
Regardless, though, like he made that sounds.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
Like it was really out of the goodness of his
own heart and to set a good example for the
rest of the world.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
But it was because they were assets.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
Yeah, they were assets, and he understood that they could
have an effect and if enough people left Carolina. So
over the span of about fifty years, more than one
hundred people are known to have successfully made their way
from the British colonies to Saint Augustine, where they were
granted asylum and freedom in exchange for conversion to Catholicism
(13:59):
and allegiance to Spain. In seventeen thirty eight, their population
had reached a size that Spanish authorities decided to establish
Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose, just north of
the city, also known as Fort Mose. This was the
first officially sanctioned free black settlement in North America.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
This was, of course, a segregation effort, and one of
its motivations was straightforward racial prejudice. Also, since slavery was
legal in Saint Augustine, there were enslaved people living there
and enslaved people who tried to escape from there, so
officials thought it was prudent to have the free black
population just live somewhere else, and it was also an
(14:43):
attempt to establish another line of defense between the colonial
capital and British territory. We just described it as a
free black settlement, which it was, but Fort mose also
became a multi racial and multicultural settlement. Its African residents
came from at least four different ethnic groups. In addition
to the freed people, there were also enslaved Africans, indigenous people,
(15:07):
and Europeans who married into the community and their multi
racial children. Fort mose was also assigned a Spanish administrator
who does not appear to have actually lived there, and
a Franciscan student priest who did. Captain Francisco Menendez was
tasked with leading the militia that was stationed at Fort Mosey,
(15:27):
and in many other ways he was seen as a
leader in the community. So we're going to back up
a little bit and talk about his backstory. He was Mendinga,
that's a Mande speaking ethnic group from West Africa. He
was probably born somewhere in the Gambia River region, and
the Mendinga in that area are predominantly Muslim. We don't
(15:48):
know exactly when he was born or what his original
name was the name Francisco Menendez came from someone who
enslaved him after he was in North America. The province
of Carolina was officially separated into the colonies of North
and South Carolina in seventeen twelve, and Menendez was enslaved
(16:09):
in South Carolina by seventeen fifteen. Prior to that, the
timeline was a little vague. That year seventeen fifteen, the
Yamasi people and their allies, including the Creek and catawbinations,
as well as enslaved Africans, went to war against the
English colonists. This followed years of exploitation by white traders,
(16:32):
including forcing indigenous people into debt through unfair trading practices
and then enslaving them over non payment of that debt.
Another factor in this war was the ongoing encroachment of
the English onto indigenous lands. The colonists faced huge casualties
in this war and were vastly outnumbered by an alliance
(16:54):
of indigenous peoples from all over the Carolinas. Eventually, this
alliance had Charlestown almost entirely surrounded by land. The tide
only turned after reinforcements arrived from Virginia and North Carolina,
along with supplies from New England, and the Cherokee, who
had initially remained neutral, joined the colonist's side. After that,
(17:17):
many of the indigenous and African combatants fled south to Florida.
This included Menendez and his wife, known as Anna Maria
de Escobar. She was also Mendinga, and the name we
know her by today also came from an enslaver.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
Based on that sixteen ninety three decree from King Carlos
the Second. Menandez and his wife and the other Africans
who arrived in Spanish territory after the Yamasi War should
have been considered free, but during their retreat to the south,
a Yamasi man known as Pedro Bravo turned on them
and declared that about thirty Africans in the group were
(17:55):
his slaves. He sold them to the acting governor of Florida,
who then sold them to Francisco Menendez Marquees, which is
where Francisco Menendez got his name. Francisco Menendez made repeated
petitions for his own freedom, along with that of his
wife and the other people who had escaped with him.
(18:15):
This included petitions that were written and signed in Spanish,
with the whole document in the same handwriting, which suggests
that he wrote it himself and that he had become
literate in Spanish while still enslaved. He was made commander
of a militia for freed people. In seventeen thirty three,
King Felippe the fifth of Spain issued an edict forbidding
(18:37):
compensation to the British for the loss of enslaved people
who escaped to Florida. He also reiterated the policy of
offering freedom to people who escaped to Spanish Florida. Not
long after that, he modified that earlier edict, saying that
people would have to serve the crown for four years
(18:57):
before being freed. This point, Menendez, his wife, and the
other people who had escaped with them had all been
enslaved since seventeen eighteen, and Menendez's enslaver was a royal accountant,
so even if that stipulation of four years of service
to the crown, which had not existed before, had suddenly
been applied to him, he would have met that criteria already,
(19:22):
but he and the others were still considered enslaved.
Speaker 1 (19:26):
Finally, in seventeen thirty eight, a Yamasee chief known as Jorge,
advocated for Menendez, citing his actions during the war against
the British and describing Pero Bravo as a heathen who
did not know any better when he enslaved them. Jorge
also argued that the Spanish, on the other hand, should
have known better than to purchase Menendez and his compatriots
(19:47):
from Pero Bravo. On March fifteenth, seventeen thirty eight, Governor
Manuel de Montiano finally granted unconditional freedom to everyone who
had escaped from South Carolina, even though so they really
should have been free this whole time under existing royal decrees.
The people who had purportedly bought them were very annoyed
(20:07):
about this loss of their free labor. Francisco Menendez was
finally free, and he became captain of the militia at
Fort Mose. Fort Mose defended Saint Augustine against attacks from
the north in September of seventeen thirty nine. It was
also probably the planned destination of enslaved people who rose
(20:28):
up in the Stono River area south of Charleston. The
Stono Rebellion was one of the largest slave insurrections in
US history, in which between twenty and thirty white people
and between thirty and fifty Africans were killed. This rebellion
led South Carolina to pass new laws restricting the lives
(20:49):
and the movements of enslaved people, and it probably inspired
later uprisings in South Carolina and Georgia, which had also
been separated out from South Carolin in seventeen thirty two.
Fort Mose was also part of the defense of Saint
Augustine during a war between England and Spain. We're going
to talk about that after we paused for another sponsor break.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
In seventeen thirty nine, England and Spain went to war
in what came to be known as the War of
Jenkins Ear. That moniker traces back to seventeen thirty one,
when the British ship Rebecca was stopped and boarded by
a Spanish Coast Guard ship under the command of Captain
Juan de Leon Fandinho. According to the Rebecca's captain Robert Jenkins,
(21:45):
in the process of pillaging the ship and setting everybody
aboard a drift, the Spanish had cut off his ear.
Jenkins reported this to the House of Commons in seventeen
thirty eight and showed them the ear, which he had
preserved and kept.
Speaker 1 (22:03):
This became a pretext for a war with Spain, but
there were other tensions that fed into it, including issues
that were connected to slavery. In seventeen thirteen, the Treaty
of Utrek that ended the War of the Spanish Succession
had given the British South Sea Company a license to
sell enslaved Africans in Spanish America and to send one
(22:24):
trading ship to Spanish America each year. But a whole
lot of illicit trade operated under the cover of these
authorized voyages, and the legitimate ones also became their own
source of conflict in the context of the ongoing border
disputes in Florida. The War of Jenkins's Ear gave James Oglethorpe,
(22:44):
governor of Georgia Territory, his own pretext to invade Florida.
This point in the episode is where just Florida becomes
a battleground for a long time. A lot of things
happened Owlethorpe's forced raided forts along the coast of Florida
and the Saint John's River, and in May of seventeen
(23:05):
forty they lay sieged to Saint Augustine and established a
naval blockade. Some of Oglethorpe's Indigenous allies killed some of
the defenders at Fort mose and its Black militia and
civilian residents were evacuated to Castillo de San Marcos and
Saint Augustine. Before they left, they destroyed the fort's gates
(23:25):
and made holes in its fortifications so that the British
could not use the fort for their own defense. While
the fort was no longer well fortified or secure, the
British force, which included Black troops, indigenous allies, and units
of Scottish Highlanders, decided to use it as a camp,
and before dawn on June twenty sixth, the Free Black
(23:48):
militia under the command of Francisco Menendez, regular Spanish Army
troops and Seminole allies launched a surprise attack to retake it.
More than half of the one hundred and seventy British
occupiers and their allies were either killed or captured, while
only ten people were killed and twenty wounded on the
Spanish side, and this battle was nicknamed Bloody Moseic. After
(24:13):
this defeat, the British withdrew their naval blockade of Saint Augustine,
and not long after that Spanish reinforcements arrived from Cuba.
Oglethorpe's forces ultimately retreated back to Georgia. Since Fort Mose
had been almost entirely destroyed, its former residents remained in
Saint Augustine, and that's where most of them lived for
(24:34):
the next decade. That was true of Francisco Menandez's wife
and children. But he felt that he had earned an
officer's salary. He joined a corsairship, hoping to make his
way to Spain to make his case before the king.
But in seventeen forty one, the ship he was on
was captured by the British, who figured out who he was,
(24:55):
tortured him, re enslaved him, and sent him to the Bahamas.
The details are not documented anywhere, but somehow he escaped again,
and he made his way back to Saint Augustine and
rejoined his family.
Speaker 2 (25:10):
In seventeen fifty two, Florida Governor Fulgencio Garcia de Solice
decided to rebuild Fort Mose and return the Free Black
militia to it. This was not something that most of
those men wanted to do. We have not really spelled
this out, but Spain's offer of freedom came with a
lot of conditions. People who escaped to Florida were not
(25:33):
considered enslaved anymore, but for men, that militious service was mandatory.
The fort was also remote and swampy. Its housing was austere.
The population was a fraction of Saint Augustine's, so there
were not nearly as many opportunities for things like social
lives and education. This forced relocation was also obviously an
(25:56):
effort to once again remove the free black population out
of Saint Augustine because of their race. Ultimately, they didn't
really have a choice. Fort Mose was rebuilt, and by
seventeen fifty nine it was home to thirty seven men,
fifteen women, and fifteen children. Seven of those children were boys.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
And eight were girls. The fort also had a wooden
church where everyone worshiped and where a priest lived. As
had been true of its earlier iteration, the second fort's
residence came from multiple African ethnic groups, as well as
European and indigenous people who married one of the fort's
African residents. It's likely that even though its population was small,
(26:41):
the community at The fort was multilingual, with English, Spanish, Arabic,
and different indigenous languages from Africa and North America all
being spoken there. This rebuilt fort continued to serve as
an outer line of defense for the city of Saint Augustine.
In seventeen sixty two, as this region became involved in
(27:01):
the French and Indian War, an earthwork fortification was built
from one corner of the fort, extending west southwest for
about three quarters of a mile. The French and Indian
War is the name of the North American component of
the Nine Years War between France and the United Kingdom,
which was also connected with the Seven Years War, which
(27:22):
involved pretty much all of Europe. Everybody gets to name
their part their own thing, and it makes it very
confusing for the rest of us. This war ended with
the Treaty of Paris of seventeen sixty three, and under
that treaty, Spain seeded all of Florida to England in
exchange for Cuba, which England had occupied the year before.
(27:43):
England divided Florida into the two colonies of East and
West Florida, which set the stage for later disputes over
control of those two parts, which we are not going
to even try to get into here. Spain evacuated its
population from Florida, including relocated eating the free black population
of Fort Mose to Cuba. Yeah, even though there were
(28:05):
two colonies of East and West Florida, and sometimes things
applied to one of them and not the other. We're
just going to continue to talk about all of it
is Florida for the most part, because it became a
lot to try to explain every nuance of it. Francisco
Menendez and his family and about fifty other people were
(28:26):
all relocated abord a schooner called Our Lady of Sorrows
in August of seventeen sixty three. Each family was granted
some land and given supplies and an enslaved person to
help them establish a homestead. This land was in what
was thought of as the frontier around Matanzas, about sixty
miles or one hundred kilometers east of Havana, but it
(28:50):
was rocky, not very good for farming, and most of
them eventually returned to the area more directly around Havana.
These folks mostly disappear from the historical record. The United States,
of course, declared its independence from England in seventeen seventy
six during the Revolutionary War. That war ended.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
With the Treaty of Paris of seventeen eighty three, which
returned Florida to Spain. It is possible that some of
Fort Mosees's former residents or their descendants went back to
Saint Augustine after this, but there's no documentation, so we
really don't know. Yeah, it's possible that there are records
somewhere that someone could unearth and pick through, but not
(29:37):
in what's available right now. After retaking control of Florida,
Spain continued to have a policy of treating people who
escaped to Spanish territory as free That ended on May seventeenth,
seventeen ninety, when King Carlos the Fourth issued a decree
abolishing all those earlier orders regarding the treatment of escaped slaves.
(29:59):
At that point, the United States Constitution had come into
effect and Thomas Jefferson had become the first Secretary of State.
This decree followed negotiations between Spain and the United States,
with the US trying to get Spain to put a
stop to this practice. Of course, this was also interconnected with,
(30:19):
like the United States getting on its own footing as
a newly established nation.
Speaker 1 (30:26):
People still fled to Florida, though, but instead of trying
to get to Spanish territory, they tried to take refuge
in Seminole territory. So the name Seminole came into.
Speaker 2 (30:38):
Use in the late eighteenth century for indigenous people who
were already living in the southeast and fled to this
part of Florida in the face of violence from British
colonists and other indigenous nations. The Spanish granted some of
these people land with the hope of maintaining a buffer
between its settlements and the border with the United States.
(30:58):
Black Seminoles eventually became their own distinct ethnic group. In
eighteen twelve, in the face of rising tensions between the
United States and the United Kingdom would of course be
eventually the War of eighteen twelve, US officials intentionally stoked
fears of what would happen if Spain lost control of
(31:20):
East Florida, leaving it vulnerable to a British attack and occupation.
In response, the US attacked parts of northern Florida with
the goal of claiming it for the United States. Some
of the forces involved with this on the American side
were US military and militias from Georgia and Tennessee, and
(31:41):
they were at least tacitly supported by President James Monroe.
But there was also a group calling themselves the Patriot Army,
who were civilians who were basically acting on their own,
like the government had intentionally stoked people's fears about this,
the military involvement kind of like on the edge of
(32:01):
official the Patriot Army just.
Speaker 1 (32:04):
Doing their thing, just do it a vigilante style. These
combined US forces fought against the Spanish and against the Seminole,
and this conflict, known as the Patriot War, can be
seen as a precursor to the Seminole Wars that started
in eighteen sixteen. During the Patriot War, some of the
American forces who invaded Florida occupied Fort Moseic. They were
(32:29):
defeated and in the process what was left of that
fort was destroyed. The United States once again gained control
of Florida under the Onise Adams Treaty of eighteen nineteen,
in which the United States got Florida and exchanged for
taking responsibility for about five million dollars in American damage
(32:49):
claims against Spain, tracing back to the Seminole Wars that
we mentioned a moment ago, and then, of course Florida
became a US state in eighteen forty five. The ruins
of the second Fort Mose were eventually overtaken by swamp,
while the site of the original fort was flooded due
to dredging operations in the late nineteenth century. The site
(33:12):
of the second fort was discovered in the nineteen sixties
by Frederick Eugene Williams. The third it was on land
owned by the Saint Augustine Historical Society, which Williams purchased
in nineteen sixty eight. It became a state park and
a series of archaeological projects were undertaken there starting in
the nineteen eighties, with work done by doctor Kathleen Deagan
(33:34):
of the Florida Museum of Natural History. The story of
this rediscovery, the archaeological work, and the creation of the
park is quite long, and it's complicated, As many such stories,
it's a bit messy, and it's chronicled in an article
in Bitter Southerner called the First Floridians, which was written
by Jordan Bluemetti.
Speaker 2 (33:54):
Fort Mose was named a National Historic Landmark in nineteen
ninety five, and it is now part of Florida's Black
Heritage Trail. A recreation of the seventeen thirty eight fort
was built there just last year, surrounded by a historically
accurate moat. This reproduction was made to meet modern building
and fire codes while also appearing as historically accurate as possible.
(34:18):
The park also hosts re enactors for militia musters and
a recreation of the Bloody Mose Battle every year. The
next Bloody Mose reenactment is scheduled for June twenty seventh,
twenty twenty six. The Gullageechee Cultural Heritage Corridor was established
by an Act of Congress in two thousand and six.
(34:38):
The Gullageechee are descendants of people who are enslaved in
western and Central Africa and brought to the coasts of
North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, where they developed
their own distinct culture and traditions. Fort mose is part
of the Gullageechee Corridor, and this corridor has also been
documented as a primary route for people who escaped to
(34:59):
s Augustine and Fort Mosey. So that is Fort mose
Do you have a listener mail for us. I do
I have such incredibly short listener mail, but it's so
cute great.
Speaker 1 (35:11):
It just says, Hi, it's a key, We're out almost.
Speaker 2 (35:15):
This is from Jennifer. Jennifer says Hello, Holly Frye and
Tracy W.
Speaker 1 (35:19):
Wilson.
Speaker 2 (35:21):
I giggled when I saw the podcast on Rickets come
up in my feed. This is Rickets. What follows is
a picture of a black kitty cat on an animal
print blanket. Behind this kitty cat is a zebra print
pillow and like a dark burgundy pair of pillows. The
(35:45):
look on this cat's face to me is like I'm
lonely and I'm thinking about my friend, and I want
my friend to come over here. But this animal print
fuzzy blanket that I'm on is so comfortable that I
also don't want to get up to go look for
my friend. But I'm lonely. So the email goes on
(36:06):
to say, I built an.
Speaker 1 (36:09):
Emotionally complicated backstory for this cat.
Speaker 2 (36:13):
I mean black cats can be very expressive in their
facial expressions. Yes, So that email goes on to say,
I adopted Rickets Ricky to be a companion to my
other cat Scurvy. I considered writing illustrated children's books about
their adventures. That's all I needed to say, exclamation point, Jennifer,
(36:35):
and I wanted to read this email to say, I
want some children's books about two cats named Rickets and
Scurvy and their adventures. I would be very into this.
And I love that these kitty cats are named Rickets
and Scurvy.
Speaker 1 (36:50):
I think that's great.
Speaker 2 (36:52):
And then we love black cats in this household and podcast,
so all of these things together, I said, I want
to read that. Thank you so much for this picture
and for giving such great names so these cats, and
for having the idea of illustrated children's books about Ricky Ricky,
(37:15):
also Rickets and Scurvy. If you would like to write us,
we are at history podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. If
you want to read the source lists for all of
our episodes, that is at the website missinhistory dot com.
And if you want to subscribe to our show, you
can do so on the iHeartRadio app or anywhere else
(37:36):
you'd like to get your podcasts. Stuff you Missed in
History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts
from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio, app, Apple podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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