FORT
America’ s First
In 1687, a group of eight men, two women and a child traveled by dugout seeking freedom from enslavement in a Carolina colony. They found it in St. Augustine. Four years later, the Spanish King Carlos II issued the first official crown position on runaway enslaved people that made their way to Spanish Florida. In the royal cedula, called‘ Cedula Real de Gracia de 1693’, the king granted“ liberty to all … so that by their example and by my liberality others will do the same.”
The grant of freedom, however, was not without a price. The former enslaved were required to swear an oath to the Spanish crown and convert to Catholicism.
While the Spanish may have been motivated by“ liberality” in recognizing the essential humanity and rights of formerly enslaved people, the policy of granting runaway enslaved people their freedom was also a political and military necessity for a nation competing for colonial lands in the New World.
Initially, former enslaved people who found refuge in St. Augustine lived in the city and were put to work. The eight men in that first group became ironsmiths and waged laborers building the new stone fort that would become the Castillo do San Marcos. But because
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