Maritime history of Florida
Spain ceded Florida to the United States as part of the Adams–Onís Treaty of 1819, and Florida became a U.S. territory in 1821. Coastal trade with other markets continued to expand and towns like Jacksonville, Pensacola and Tampa became important ports. After becoming a U.S. territory, the federal government began building a series of lighthouses as aids to navigation along the coasts of Florida to mark dangerous headlands, shoals, bars and reefs.
History of slavery in Florida
American settlers began to establish cotton plantations in northern Florida, which required numerous laborers, which they supplied by buying slaves in the domestic market. On March 3, 1845, Florida became a slave state of the United States of America. Almost half the state's population were enslaved African Americans working on large cotton and sugar plantations, between the Apalachicola and Suwannee rivers in the north central part of the state. Like the people who owned them, many slaves had come from the coastal areas of Georgia and the Carolinas. They were part of the Gullah-Gee Chee culture of the South Carolina Lowcountry. Others were enslaved African Americans from the Upper South who had been sold to traders taking slaves to the Deep South. By 1860, Florida had 140,424 people, of whom 44% were enslaved and fewer than 1,000 free people of color. Their labor accounted for 85 percent of the state's cotton production. The 1860 Census also indicated that in central Leon County (Tallahassee), which was the center both of the Florida slave trade and of Florida’s plantation industry (see Plantations of Leon County), slaves constituted 73% of the population. As elsewhere, their value was greater than all the land of the county. (References in History of Tallahassee, Florida#History of black Tallahassee.)