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"A class of people neither freemen nor slaves": from Spanish to American race relations in Florida, 1821-1861
Journal of Social History, Spring, 1993 by Daniel L. Schafer
In municipalities like Jacksonville, flee blacks were impressed for manual labor projects, whipped for misdemeanor offenses, restricted to a 9:00 p.m. curfew unless they carried passes from guardians, and were forbidden to congregate without a permit from the mayor. They paid a $5 annual fee to register with their guardians or faced between ten and twenty-nine lashes with a cowhide whip. In 1852 the fee increased to $10.50 and the punishment to 39 lashes. (19)
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Free blacks tried to block passage of the discriminatory laws, and they later protested enforcement. In St. Johns County they petitioned the territorial council in 1823, wrote letters to newspaper editors, and sought justice in the courts. St. Augustine resident Robert Brown's 1824 letter to the East Florida Herald is especially compelling. Calling himself a man of "common sense" born in East Florida, and a land owner, Brown said he had asked his white neighbors about the precedent for the $8 annual poll tax levied by the county on free blacks at age fifteen (whites paid only $1, at age twenty-one). The common replies were: "such is the case in Georgia, an old and well regulated state," and that whites were expected to provide more services to the government than free blacks. Brown disagreed, calling the poll taxes "unequal" and "consequently unconstitutional," and suggested that Georgia's laws had been passed to "fence and shore up" the evil of slavery in that state. "Whites as well as colored men of this country," Brown said, "ought to deprecate precedents from the negro laws of Georgia, as they would from the blue laws of Connecticut, that tried witches by dunking and flogged husbands for kissing their wives on Sunday." (20)
Brown conceded that free blacks had none of the burdens that came with "elections and legislations," but pointed out that they also were barred from any participation in self-government. Speaking for others of his caste, Brown continued
If we have none of the burdens of jurors neither are we tried by our
peers. If we have none of the cares, labours, responsibilities and dangers
of civil and military offices neither have we any of their profits and
honors. But they say we have more time. This is True. But how is it so?
Why they have taken all else to themselves and left us only time as the
consideration. It is not that we would not take our part in all these and
glad of the opportunity of doing so but we are declared so far degraded as
to be rendered incapable. They would have us to pay for the degradation
that has been laid on us? This would be the effect of any taxation or
contribution bearing unequally on us. (21) At least one white official in East Florida agreed that the new poll taxes were discriminatory. In November 1824, County Court Judge Joseph L. Smith ruled on a petition from James Clarke, a free black from St. Augustine, seeking to stop St Johns County from collecting a "discriminatory and unconstitutional" poll tax. The Herald reported: "Judge Smith has decided in favour of the petitioner." (22)
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