List of colonial governors of Florida
The colonial governors of Florida governed Florida during its colonial period (before 1821). The first European known to arrive there was Juan Ponce de León in 1513, but the governorship did not begin until 1565, when Pedro Menéndez de Avilés founded St. Augustine and was declared Governor and "Adelantado" of Florida. This district was subordinated to the Viceroyalty of New Spain. In 1763, following the transfer of Florida to Britain, the territory was divided into West Florida and East Florida, with separate governors. This division was maintained when Spain resumed control of Florida in 1783, and continued as provincial divisions with the Spanish Constitution of 1812. The Spanish transferred control of Florida to the United States in 1821, and the organized, incorporated Florida Territory was established on March 30, 1822. This became the modern State of Florida on March 3, 1845.
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.)