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Now the fourth most populous state, a once
lowly-populated Florida
endured a history of violent struggles between European, American, and
Indian peoples. European
and northern encroachment on Seminole Indians, slavery, and racial
segregation ignited genocidal wars and civil rights struggles whose
effects linger in the social makeup of today’s Florida.
Long before, and for awhile after, becoming the 27th state in
1845, the territory
of Florida served as a ground
for contestation between European settlers from
Spain,
France, and England, and
between white settlers and the relatively large population of indigenous
Indians and slaves. Black
slaves, Indians, and even poor whites were frequently the pawns of these
wars, often serving at the convenience of the cotton industry and
imperial powers. These
marginalized, enslaved, and exploited groups were often used to
strategically destabilize other southern colonies through European and
U.S. policies that encouraged their immigration
into Florida, or, as in the case of the
Seminoles, were forced to emigrate west out of Florida.
 Going
back to the origins of Western settlers in Florida,
Juan Ponce de León, a Spanish conquistador from the early 16th century,
is credited with naming Florida.
La Florida is a
Spanish name that described Florida’s
“flowery” terrain as well as indicating the season of “Flowery Easter”
in which Ponce de León first touched down in
Florida.
It was the first territory in what is today’s
United States
to acquire a European name.
Ponce de León may have been amongst the early Western explorers of
Florida, but his role as the original Western discoverer of Florida is not as clear given that some
historical accounts claim he encountered Spanish-speaking indigenous
Floridians.
Over 50 years after Ponce de León made his way through the future
Sunshine State, the
Spanish Pensacola was established as the first European settlement in the
continental U.S.
This event only marked the inauguration of a centuries-long
back-and-forth warring between the Spanish and French colonialists, first
exhibited only a few decades thereafter when the French Huguenots gained a
settlement in the Jacksonville area.
The French Huguenots in northeastern Florida would later become entangled in a deadly battle
with Spanish settlers in St. Augustine, often
cited as the original colonial city of the U.S.
Things would end badly for these French settlers when many were struck by
extreme weather at sea, massacred by the Spanish on the banks of the
Matanzas (Spanish for “killings”) in St. Augustine, or blackmailed into Roman
Catholicism in exchange for their lives.
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 In
the 17th and 18th centuries, the French colonial threat to the
Spanish-ruled areas of Florida
continued, but that threat was joined by increased battles with the
English colonialists to the north of
Florida.
The English would burn down St. Augustine and its main cathedral several
times, succeeding in ways the French could not.
The English also used Indian tribes from the southeast to pose a
resistance to Spanish power by arming and emboldening the indigenous
peoples. Meanwhile, the
Spanish provided sanctuary to southern slaves in order to undermine the
economies of the other southern colonies.
The first legally-free black settlement is said to have been
created north of St. Augustine.
In exchange for this precarious freedom, the former slaves were
forced to convert to Catholicism and provided a “buffer” for
St. Augustine
against northern invaders.
The English would diplomatically acquire
Florida
through the Peace of Paris treaty in 1763, which ended the Seven Years’
War in Europe. This
would be a short-lived set-up, however, since the Spanish were able to
regain the territory once the British were defeated in the Revolutionary
War. Starting early in the
19th century, the U.S. Army would become constantly engaged in wars
against the Seminole Indians of Florida, beginning with tribes in
eastern Florida.
In 1819, the Spanish ceded Florida
to the U.S. through
the Adams-Onis Treaty in exchange for Texas
remaining under Spanish-rule after the Louisiana
Purchase, setting the stage for a series of “Seminole Wars”
that were largely credited to the anti-Indian zeal of President Andrew
Jackson.
Jackson
exploited the growing white resentment of the Seminole Indians due to
white encroachment on the state and the practice of Indians of providing
land and protection for black slaves from other states.
The third and final Seminole War (1850s) came after
Florida’s official statehood and book-ended a period where
the U.S.
government attempted to kill or forcefully remove all remaining
Seminoles from Florida.
Some Seminoles were able to hold out in the Everglades, though
most died or emigrated to the west of the
Mississippi River.
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 Racial strife continued when Florida then became a founding member of the Confederate
forces in the Civil War in 1861 after seceding from the
Union. Of the over
140,000 Floridians in 1860, roughly 44% were slaves.
After the Civil War, and largely continuing until the passage of the
Civil Rights bills of the 1960s,
Florida continued to disenfranchise blacks and poor people with poll taxes,
literacy requirements for voting, jobs, and office holding, and strict residency
requirements that amounted to racial apartheid.
Anti-black racial violence would erupt in the early 20th
century, which, along with a widespread destruction of cotton crops due to
bow-weevils, forced many blacks to migrate north.
The predominantly black town Rosewood,
Florida
was abandoned in 1923 after it was destroyed in the midst of racially-motivated
massacre. In 1964,
St. Augustine would again become a historically relevant town when
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. spent a night in a St. Augustine jail after staging a local
sit-in.
Florida began the 20th century as the least populated state in the
south, but gained immigrants once the boost of the national economy, a
growing tourism industry, and inexpensive land helped to encourage
growth. The Depression of the
1920s and 30s and a flurry of massive hurricanes, however, temporarily
ended the growth. Things would
pick up again after the Second World War when an improved economy and
the availability of air-conditioning appliances enticed those looking
for cheap real estate. Popular
industrial oddities like the Cape Canaveral space programs (1950s-), coastal fishing
industries, and Walt Disney World (1970s-), would attract more workers
and tourists as the century wore on. The
Sunshine State has struggled politically to reconcile its insistent
demand for business and real estate growth against its desire for a more
robust public infrastructure, economic stability, and environmental
preservation (given its unique natural environs), leaving it more
vulnerable than most other states to downswings in business and economic
trends, as evidenced by the great housing and banking crash of 2008.
For further information on Florida history, you may want to purchase a
book from our
Florida Nature Library. Don't miss our
"Florida Nature" slideshows set to
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