Revolutions

This chapter shows how settlers commanded enslaved labor to implant a slaveholding society on Native lands. The Harrell family, for example, migrated from South Carolina to Spanish West Florida starting in 1802. They and their contemporaries forced captives from Africa, the Caribbean, continental North America, and even one from China to perform the arduous labor of implanting a society. In the West Florida Rebellion of 1810, a small group of colonists revolted against Spanish officials and briefly maintained independence before being annexed by the US. One year later Africans launched a spectacular revolt of their own in the German Coast Rebellion of 1811. After defeat by public and private armed forces, statehood, and the War of 1812, the region became integrated into the early republic.