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Slavery in Florida occurred among indigenous tribes and during Spanish rule. Florida's purchase by the United States from Spain in 1819 (effective 1821) was primarily a measure to strengthen the system of slavery on Southern plantations, by denying potential runaways the formerly safe haven of Florida. Florida became a slave state, seceded, and passed laws to exile or enslave free blacks. Even after abolition, forced labor continued.
Few enslaved Africans were imported into Florida from Cuba in the period of Spanish colonial rule, as there was little for them to do—no mines, no plantations. Starting in 1687, slaves escaping from English colonies to the north were freed when they reached Florida and accepted Catholic baptism. Black slavery in the region was widely established after Florida came under British then American control. Slavery in Florida was theoretically abolished by the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation issued by President Lincoln, though as the state was then part of the Confederacy this had little immediate effect.
Slavery in Florida did not end abruptly on one specific day. As news arrived of the end of the Civil War and the collapse of the Confederacy in the spring of 1865, slavery unofficially ended, as there were no more slave catchers or other authority to enforce the peculiar institution. Newly emancipated African Americans departed their plantations, often in search of relatives who were separated from their family. The end of slavery was made formal by the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment in December 1865. Some of the characteristics of slavery, such as inability to leave an abusive situation, continued under sharecropping, convict leasing, and vagrancy laws. In the 20th and 21st centuries, conditions approximating slavery are found among marginal immigrant populations, especially migrant farm workers and trafficked sex workers. The Florida Slavery Memorial is planned.