The Forgotten Colony of Fort Mose
Almost no Americans know that the first free black community in what is now the continental United States was established in Florida in 1738.
Long before the formation of the United States, slavery and freedom were deeply contested questions across the Atlantic world. While most people learn about early colonial settlements like Jamestown and Plymouth, much less is known about a unique community founded nearly three centuries ago just north of present-day St. Augustine, Florida: Fort Mose, the first legally sanctioned free black settlement in what would become the United States.
Fort Mose was born out of the rivalries between European colonial powers and the struggles of enslaved Africans for freedom. In the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, Spain controlled Florida while the British controlled the neighboring colonies of Carolina and Georgia. The British colonies were rapidly expanding, fueled by the labor of enslaved Africans forced to work on plantations. In contrast, Spain adopted a different approach, partly out of necessity and partly in keeping with its own colonial policies.
In 1693, Spain’s King Charles II issued a royal edict declaring that any runaway slave from the British colonies who made it to Spanish Florida would be granted freedom, provided they converted to Catholicism and pledged loyalty to the Spanish Crown. Over the ensuing decades, word of this decree spread among enslaved people throughout the southern English colonies. Many risked everything to escape brutal life on plantations and undertook the perilous journey south, traveling by night, hiding in swamps, and navigating unfamiliar terrain to reach sanctuary.
By the 1730s, so many runaways had arrived that the Spanish authorities decided to formalize the arrangement. In 1738, under the leadership of Florida Governor Manuel de Montiano, the Spanish government founded a fortified settlement called Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose, commonly referred to as Fort Mose. The settlement was located about two miles north of the Spanish city of St. Augustine and was to serve both as a buffer against British attacks and as a place of refuge for free blacks and their families.
At its peak, Fort Mose was home to around 100 residents—African men, women, and children who had successfully escaped from British slavery. Its newly appointed leader, Francisco Menéndez, was himself a Mandinga-born former slave who had become an accomplished soldier and a symbol of resistance. Residents built homes, cultivated crops, formed a militia to defend the fort, and established their own church and traditions under the Spanish flag.
Life at Fort Mose was never entirely secure. The settlement was on the front lines of colonial conflict and frequently threatened by attacks from the British and their Native American allies. In 1740, during the so-called War of Jenkins’ Ear, British forces besieged St. Augustine, and Fort Mose was captured, sacked, and briefly held by the British before the Spanish and black militia successfully staged a daring counterattack to reclaim it. Although the fort was damaged and temporarily abandoned, it was rebuilt and continued to serve as an outpost and haven for free blacks for another two decades.
When Spain eventually ceded Florida to Britain in 1763, residents of Fort Mose evacuated with the Spanish to Cuba rather than face re-enslavement under British rule. The fort fell into obscurity and was reclaimed by the swamp. Its existence was largely forgotten, ignored in most mainstream historical narratives about colonial America.
It wasn’t until the 1980s, after archaeologists rediscovered and excavated the site, that the full story of Fort Mose began to re-emerge. Today, Fort Mose Historic State Park preserves the site and tells the story of the people who built the first free black community on what would become United States soil—a story that remains astonishingly little known to most Americans. The tale of Fort Mose complicates traditional histories of slavery and freedom, challenging the notion that the American South was uniformly hostile to African liberty and revealing instead a hidden chapter where enslaved people seized opportunities to build lives of their own design.
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