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74-504: In the early years of the church, pew-holders included Benjamin Church , Caleb Davis , and Benjamin West. A fire in 1787 destroyed the church building. Architect Charles Bulfinch designed the replacement in 1788. In 1810–1811, a brick building replaced Bulfinch's wood structure. "The wooden age yields to the brick; comfort now aspires to elegance." The old Bulfinch building "was purchased by

148-573: A cipher letter addressed to a Major Cane, a British officer in Boston, through a former mistress. The letter was intercepted by another of the woman's ex-lovers, and was sent to Washington in September. When two teams of gentlemen decoded it, they found it contained an account of the American forces before Boston, though no disclosures of great importance. It did, however, declare Church's devotion to

222-679: A combination of factors. Primarily, the labor demands for establishing and maintaining European colonies resulted in the Atlantic slave trade . Slavery existed in every European colony in the Americas during the early modern period , and both Africans and indigenous peoples were targets of enslavement by Europeans during the era. As the Spaniards , French , Dutch , and British gradually established colonies in North America from

296-590: A disease the Africans were far less susceptible to than Native American slaves. During the 17th and 18th centuries, Native American slavery , the enslavement of Native Americans by European colonists , was common. Many of these Native slaves were exported to the Northern colonies and to off-shore colonies, especially the "sugar islands" of the Caribbean . The exact number of Native Americans who were enslaved

370-578: A future Congress. In accordance with this resolution, Church was confined at Norwich, Connecticut . Becoming ill, he was released from jail in January 1776, and was permitted considerable movement under guard. On May 13, he returned to Massachusetts under bond. He remained imprisoned until 1778, and was named in the Massachusetts Banishment Act of that year. Shortly thereafter he sailed from Boston, presumably for Martinique , but

444-743: A percentage higher than in the cities of Boston and Philadelphia , and second only to Charleston in the South. The French introduced legalized slavery into their colonies in New France both near the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River . They also used slave labor on their island colonies in the Caribbean: Guadeloupe and especially Saint-Domingue . After the port of New Orleans was founded in 1718 with access to

518-492: A reputation as a talented physician and a skillful surgeon. Church performed cataract surgery, and is also remembered for treating the eye ailments of John Adams. By 1769, he had acquired ownership over a slave named John Quamino, who later purchased his freedom with the earnings from a lottery ticket . With growing friction between the colonies and Great Britain , Church supported the Whig cause vigorously with his pen. There

592-744: A result of taking captives in raids and warfare, both before and after Europeans arrived. This practice continued into the 1800s. In some cases, especially for young women or children, Native American families adopted captives to replace members they had lost. Among those native to the modern Southeastern United States , the children of slaves were considered free. Slaves included captives from wars and slave raids; captives bartered from other tribes, sometimes at great distances; children sold by their parents during famines; and men and women who staked themselves in gambling when they had nothing else, which put them into servitude in some cases for life. In three expeditions between 1514 and 1525, Spanish explorers visited

666-707: A smaller part of the New England economy, which was based on yeoman farming and trades, than in the South, and a smaller fraction of the population, but they were present. Most were house servants, but some worked at farm labor. The Puritans codified slavery in 1641. The Massachusetts Bay royal colony passed the Body of Liberties , which prohibited slavery in some instances, but did allow three legal bases of slavery. Slaves could be held if they were captives of war, if they sold themselves into slavery, were purchased from elsewhere, or if they were sentenced to slavery by

740-436: A woman and her children (if she was still enslaved), education for the mixed-race children of the union, especially boys; and sometimes a property settlement. Free people of color became an intermediate social caste between whites and enslaved blacks; many practiced artisan trades, and some acquired educations and property. Some white fathers sent their mixed-race sons to France for education in military schools. Gradually in

814-602: Is evidence that during this period he was variously considered as an ardent Patriot and as a secret Tory sympathizer. He examined the body of Crispus Attucks and treated some of the wounded in the Boston Massacre on March 5, 1770. In 1773, he delivered the annual Massacre Day oration, To Commemorate the Bloody Tragedy of the Fifth of March 1770 , which marked him as an orator of high order. In 1774, Church

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888-620: Is not clear if it exported any slaves. Native Americans were enslaved by the Spanish in Florida under the encomienda system. New England and the Carolinas captured Native Americans in wars and distributed them as slaves. Native Americans captured and enslaved some early European explorers and colonists. Larger societies structured as chiefdoms kept slaves as unpaid field laborers. In band societies , owning enslaved captives attested to

962-686: Is unknown because vital statistics and census reports were at best infrequent. Historian Alan Gallay has estimated that from 1670 to 1715, slave traders in the Province of Carolina sold between 24,000 and 51,000 Native Americans into slavery as part of the Indian slave trade in the American Southeast . Andrés Reséndez estimates that between 147,000 and 340,000 Native Americans were enslaved in North America, excluding Mexico. Even after

1036-674: The Medical Service of the Continental Army from July 27, 1775, to October 17, 1775. He was also active in Boston's Sons of Liberty movement in the years before the war. However, early in the American Revolution , Church was also sending secret information to General Thomas Gage , the British commander, and when one of his letters into Boston was intercepted, he was tried and convicted of "communicating with

1110-605: The Narváez expedition in Florida. The group headed south on the mainland in 1529, trying to reach Spanish settlements. They were captured and held by Native Americans until 1535. They traveled northwest to the Pacific Coast, then south along the coast to San Miguel de Culiacán , which had been founded in 1531, and then to Mexico City. Spanish Texas had few African slaves, but the colonists enslaved many Native Americans. Beginning in 1803, Spain freed slaves who escaped from

1184-633: The Narváez expedition in Tampa Bay in April 1528 and marched north with the expedition until September, when they embarked on rafts from the Wakulla River , heading for Mexico. African slaves arrived again in Florida in 1539 with Hernando de Soto , and in the 1565 founding of St. Augustine, Florida . When St. Augustine was founded in 1565, the site already had enslaved Native Americans, whose ancestors had migrated from Cuba. The Spanish settlement

1258-418: The Province of North Carolina . The first African slaves in what is now Georgia arrived in mid-September 1526 with Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón 's establishment of San Miguel de Gualdape on the current Georgia coast. They rebelled and lived with indigenous people, destroying the colony in less than 2 months. Two centuries later, Georgia was the last of Britain's Thirteen Colonies to be established and

1332-519: The Seven Years' War . Spain evacuated its citizens from St. Augustine, including the residents of Fort Mose, transporting them to Cuba . As British colonists developed the colony for plantation agriculture, the percentage of slaves in the population in twenty years rose from 18% to almost 65% by 1783. An African slave, Estevanico , reached Galveston island in November 1528, with the remnants of

1406-606: The West Indies . Historian Alan Gallay estimates that between 1670 and 1715, an estimated 24,000 to 51,000 captive Native Americans were exported from South Carolina to the Caribbean. This was a much higher number than the number of Africans imported to the English mainland colonies during the same period. In 1733, royal governor George Burrington complained that no ships brought their slave cargoes from Africa directly to

1480-436: The 1640s. These groups conducted enslaving raids in what is now Georgia, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, and possibly Alabama. The Carolina slave trade, which included both trading and direct raids by colonists, was the largest among the British colonies in North America, estimated at 24,000 to 51,000 Native Americans by Gallay. Historian Ulrich Phillips argues that Africans were inculcated as slaves and

1554-424: The 16th century onward, they began to enslave indigenous people , using them as forced labor to help develop colonial economies. As indigenous peoples suffered massive population losses due to imported diseases , Europeans quickly turned to importing slaves from Africa, primarily to work on slave plantations that produced cash crops . The enslavement of indigenous people in North America was later replaced during

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1628-459: The 18th century by the enslavement of black African people. Concurrent with the development of slavery, racist ideology was developed among Europeans, the rights of free people of color in European colonies were curtailed, slaves were legally defined as chattel property, and the condition of slavery as hereditary . The Thirteen Colonies of northern British America , were for much or all of

1702-526: The 18th century. African slaves arrived on August 9, 1526, in Winyah Bay (off the coast of present-day South Carolina ) with a Spanish expedition. Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón brought 600 colonists to start a colony at San Miguel de Gualdape . Records say the colonists included enslaved Africans, without saying how many. After a month Ayllón moved the colony to what is now Georgia. Until the early 18th century, enslaved Africans were difficult to acquire in

1776-548: The British mainland colonies. Most were sold from Africa to the West Indies for the labor-intensive sugar trade. The large plantations and high mortality rates required continued importation of slaves. One of the first major centers of African slavery in the English North American colonies occurred with the founding of Charles Town and the Province of Carolina (later, South Carolina) in 1670. The colony

1850-468: The Carolinas and enslaved Native Americans, who they took to their base on Santo Domingo . The Spanish Crown's charter for its 1526 colony in the Carolinas and Georgia was more restrictive. It required that Native Americans be treated well, paid, and converted to Christianity, but it also allowed already enslaved Native Americans to be bought and exported to the Caribbean if they had been enslaved by other Native Americans. This colony did not survive, so it

1924-658: The Catholic faith, implying that Africans were human beings endowed with a soul, an idea that had not been acknowledged until then. The Code Noir forbade interracial marriages, but interracial relationships were formed in La Louisiane from the earliest years. In New Orleans society particularly, a formal system of concubinage, known as plaçage , developed. Usually formed between young white men and African or African-American women, these relationships were formalized with contracts that sometimes provided for freedom for

1998-567: The Christian Indians documented how hundreds of Praying Indians , who were allied with the New England Colonies , were enslaved and sent to the West Indies in the aftermath of King Philip's War by the colonists. Captive indigenous opponents, including women and children, were also sold into slavery at a substantial profit, to be transported to West Indies colonies. African and Native American slaves made up

2072-525: The Crown, and it asked for directions for continuing the correspondence. The matter was placed before a court of inquiry made up of general officers, Washington presiding, to whom Church admitted the authorship of the letter, but explained that it was written with the object of impressing the enemy with the strength and position of the colonial forces in order to prevent an attack while the Continental army

2146-667: The Director of the Hospital. About a week ago, Mr. Secretary Ward, of Providence, sent up one Wainwood, an inhabitant of Newport, to me with a letter directed to Major Cane in Boston, in occult letters, which he said had been left with Wainwood some time ago by a woman who was kept by Doctor Church. She had before pressed Wainwood to take her to Captain Wallace, Mr. Dudley, the Collector, or George Rowe, which he declined. She gave him

2220-773: The English colonies, slavery became known as a racial caste system that generally encompassed all people of African descent, including those of mixed race. From 1662, Virginia defined social status by the status of the mother, unlike in England, where under common law fathers determined the status of their children, whether legitimate or natural. Thus, under the doctrine of partus sequitur ventrum , children born to enslaved mothers were considered slaves, regardless of their paternity. Similarly, children born to mothers who were free were also free, whether or not of mixed-race. At one time, Virginia had prohibited enslavement of Christian individuals, but lifted that restriction with its 1662 law. In

2294-649: The Gulf Coast, French colonists imported more African slaves to the Illinois Country for use as agricultural or mining laborers. By the mid-eighteenth century, slaves accounted for as much as one-third of the limited population in that rural area. Slavery was much more extensive in lower colonial Louisiana , where the French developed sugar cane plantations along the Mississippi River. Slavery

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2368-542: The Hospital Department of the first Army Hospital and of the first headquarters of regimental surgeons (located in the Henry Vassall House , Cambridge, MA). In the meantime, on July 2, General George Washington had arrived at Cambridge to take command of the colonial forces, and Church was one of the committee appointed to receive him. Church had difficulty administering his department, and

2442-526: The Indian Slave Trade ended in 1750 the enslavement of Native Americans continued in the west, and also in the Southern states mostly through kidnappings. Slavery of Native Americans was organized in colonial and Mexican California through Franciscan missions, theoretically entitled to ten years of Native labor, but in practice maintaining them in perpetual servitude, until their charge

2516-624: The Louisiana territory, recently acquired by the United States. More African-descended slaves were brought to Texas by American settlers. The first recorded Africans in Virginia arrived in late August 1619. The White Lion , a privateer ship owned by Robert Rich, 2nd Earl of Warwick but flying a Dutch flag, docked at what is now Old Point Comfort (located in modern-day Hampton) with approximately 20 Africans. They were captives from

2590-705: The South Congregational Society. In 1883-1884 the church congregation erected a new building in the Back Bay area of Boston, on Newbury Street at Exeter Street. It was designed by architect George Meacham. Ministers included Edward Everett Hale . In 1887 the New Hollis Street Church congregation joined the South Congregational Society, which in 1925 merged with the First Church of Boston . The old Hollis Street building

2664-552: The Union Religious Society of Braintree and Weymouth , ... taken down piece by piece, floated on a raft to Braintree and rebuilt on Quincy Ave near Commercial St. next to the railroad tracks. The church design was slightly altered and a new bell, forged by Paul Revere, was placed in the clock tower. First services were held in the church in November 1810." By 1825, some of the congregation sought to create another church to alleviate overcrowding, and so established

2738-528: The area of present-day Angola and had been seized by the privateer's crew from a Portuguese slave ship, the "São João Bautista". To obtain the Africans, the Jamestown colony traded provisions with the ship. Some number of these individuals appear to have been treated like indentured servants , since slave laws were not passed until later, in 1641 in Massachusetts and in 1661 in Virginia. But from

2812-479: The army and, on March 7, voted them the sum of five hundred pounds for the purchase of such supplies. On May 8, 1775, after the Revolutionary War had begun, Church became a member of an examining board for surgeons for the army. A June 19 resolution ordered "that Dr. Church, Dr. Taylor, and Dr. Whiting be a committee to consider what method is proper to take to supply the hospitals with surgeons and that

2886-524: The assembly had made a public decision to enslave Native Americans. In the years to follow, other laws resulted in Native Americans being grouped with other non-Christian servants who had been imported to the colonies (Negro slaves) as slaves for life. Puritan New England, Virginia, Spanish Florida, and the Carolina colonies engaged in large-scale enslavement of Native Americans, often through

2960-1026: The beginning, in accordance with the custom of the Atlantic slave trade , most of this relatively small group, appear to have been treated as slaves, with "African" or "negro" becoming synonymous with "slave". Virginia enacted laws concerning runaway slaves and 'negroes' in 1672. Some number of the colony's early Africans earned freedom by fulfilling a work contract or for converting to Christianity. At least one of these, Anthony Johnson , in turn, acquired slaves or indentured servants for workers himself. Historians such as Edmund Morgan say this evidence suggests that racial attitudes were much more flexible in early 17th-century Virginia than they would later become. A 1625 census recorded 23 Africans in Virginia. In 1649 there were 300, and in 1690 there were 950. Over this period, legal distinctions between white indentured servants and "Negros" widened into lifelong and inheritable chattel-slavery for Africans and people of African descent. The 1677 work The Doings and Sufferings of

3034-575: The best answer to the labor shortage in the New World because Native American slaves were more familiar with the environment, and would often successfully escape into the frontier territory they knew. Africans had more difficulty surviving in unknown territory. Africans were also more familiar with large scale indigo and rice cultivation, of which Native Americans were unfamiliar. The early colonial America depended heavily on rice and indigo cultivation producing disease-carrying mosquitoes caused malaria ,

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3108-488: The captor's military prowess. Some war captives were subjected to ritualized torture and execution. Alan Gallay and other historians emphasize differences between Native American enslavement of war captives and the European slave trading system, into which numerous native peoples were integrated. Richard White , in The Middle Ground , elucidates the complex social relationships between Native American groups and

3182-409: The colony fell to the English in the 1660s, the company freed all its slaves, which created an early nucleus of free Negros in the area. The English continued to import slaves to New York. Slaves in the colony performed a wide variety of skilled and unskilled jobs, mostly in the burgeoning port city and surrounding agricultural areas. In 1703 more than 42% of New York City 's households held slaves,

3256-601: The degree of Church's guilt . It is now clear that he was supplying the British military with information in early 1775. Church's widow and family were pensioned by the British government. Slavery in the colonial history of the United States The institution of slavery in the European colonies in North America , which eventually became part of the United States of America , developed due to

3330-554: The early empires, including 'slave' culture and scalping. Robbie Ethridge states, Let there be no doubt...that the commercial trade in Indian slaves was not a continuation and adaptation of pre-existing captivity patterns. It was a new kind of slave, requiring a new kind of occupational specialty ... organized militaristic slavers. One example of militaristic slaving can be seen in Nathaniel Bacon 's actions in Virginia during

3404-725: The enemy". He was jailed but eventually released, likely dying somewhere in the Caribbean Sea in 1778. Church was born in Newport , Colony of Rhode Island , the son of Benjamin Church, a merchant of Boston and deacon of the Hollis Street Church conducted by the Rev. Mather Byles . His great-grandfather, Colonel Benjamin Church , took a prominent part in the war with the Narragansett Indians and led

3478-846: The force which hunted King Philip to his death on August 12, 1676. Church (the third Benjamin Church) was a Mayflower descendant through his great-great-grandmother Elizabeth Warren Church, who was the daughter of Richard Warren, one of the Mayflower passengers. Benjamin's sister Alice married Boston printer John Fleeming . The third Benjamin attended the Boston Latin School and graduated from Harvard College in 1754. He studied medicine with Joseph Pynchon , later continuing his studies in London . While there, he married Hannah Hill of Ross, Herefordshire . Returning to Boston he built up

3552-649: The form of domestic labor or doing other forms of unpaid work alongside non-enslaved counterparts. The American Revolution led to the first abolition laws in the Americas, although the institution of chattel slavery would continue to exist and expand across the Southern United States until finally being abolished at the time of the American Civil War in 1865. Native Americans enslaved members of their own and other tribes, usually as

3626-445: The furthest south (Florida was not one of the Thirteen Colonies). Founded in the 1730s, Georgia's powerful backers did not necessarily object to slavery as an institution, but their business model was to rely on labor from Britain (primarily England's poor) and they were also concerned with security, given the closeness of then Spanish Florida, and Spain's regular offers to enemy-slaves to revolt or escape. Despite agitation for slavery, it

3700-509: The governing authority. The Body of Liberties used the word "strangers" to refer to people bought and sold as slaves, as they were generally not native born English subjects. Colonists came to equate this term with Native Americans and Africans. The New Hampshire General Court passed "An Act To Prevent Disorders In The Night" in 1714, prefiguring the development of sundown towns in the United States: Whereas great disorders, insolencies and burglaries are oft times raised and committed in

3774-410: The late 1670s. In June 1676, the Virginia assembly granted Bacon and his men what equated to a slave-hunting license by providing that any enemy Native Americans caught were to be slaves for life. They also provided soldiers who had captured Native Americans with the right to "reteyne and keepe all such Indian slaves or other Indian goods as they either have taken or hereafter shall take." By this order,

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3848-405: The letter with strict injunctions to deliver it to either of these gentleman. He, suspecting some improper correspondence, kept the letter and after some time opened it, but not being able to read it, laid it up, where it remained until he received an obscure letter from the woman, expressing an anxiety as to the original letter. He then communicated the whole matter to Mr. Ward, who sent him up with

3922-611: The nascent province of New Netherland . The Dutch colony expanded across the North River (Hudson River) to Bergen (in today's New Jersey). Later, slaves were also held privately by settlers in the area. Although enslaved, the Africans had a few basic rights and families were usually kept intact. They were admitted to the Dutch Reformed Church and married by its ministers, and their children could be baptized. Slaves could testify in court, sign legal documents, and bring civil actions against whites. Some were permitted to work after hours earning wages equal to those paid to white workers. When

3996-513: The night time by Indian, Negro, and Molatto Servants and Slaves to the Disquiet and hurt of her Majesty's subjects, No Indian, Negro, or Molatto is to be from Home after 9 o'clock. Notices emphasizing and re-affirming the curfew were published in The New Hampshire Gazette in 1764 and 1771. The Dutch West India Company introduced slavery in 1625 with the importation of eleven enslaved blacks who worked as farmers, fur traders, and builders to New Amsterdam (present day New York City), capital of

4070-441: The papers to me. I immediately secured the woman, but for a long time she was proof against every threat and persuasion to discover the author. However she was at length brought to a confession and named Doctor Church. I then immediately secured him and all his papers. Upon the first examination he readily acknowledged the letter and said that it was designed for his brother, etc. The army and country are exceedingly irritated. Church

4144-623: The period less dependent on slavery than the Caribbean colonies, or those of New Spain, or Brazil, and slavery did not develop significantly until later in the colonial era. Nonetheless, slavery was legal in every colony prior to the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783), and was most prominent in the Southern Colonies (as well as, the southern Mississippi River and Florida colonies of France, Spain, and Britain), which by then developed large slave-based plantation systems. Slavery in Europe's North American colonies which did not have warm climates and ideal conditions for plantations to exist primarily took

4218-432: The present-day United States of America arrived in Puerto Rico in the early 16th century, at the hands of the Portuguese . The island's native population was conquered by the Spanish settler Juan Ponce de León with the help of a free West African conquistador, Juan Garrido , by 1511. The slave population on the island grew after the Spanish crown granted import rights to its citizens, but did not reach its peak until

4292-426: The regimental surgeons. A storm of complaints poured into Army headquarters, and Washington was compelled to order an investigation of the Medical Service. In his own defense, Church complained that rivals were jealous of his position and reportedly asked for permission to leave the Army. In the meantime, an incident arose which brought him before an Army court martial on October 4, 1775. In July 1775, Church had sent

4366-425: The room of" Church, and on November 7 passed the following resolution: That Doctor Church be close confined in some secure jail in the Colony of Connecticut , without use of pen, ink and paper, and that no person be allowed to converse with him except in the presence and hearing of a magistrate of the town or the sheriff of the county where he is confined, and in the English language, until further orders from this or

4440-404: The same gentlemen be a committee to provide medicine and other necessaries for hospitals." As the chairman of a subcommittee of the Committee of Safety, he signed a report on May 12 which recommended a system of defensive works on Prospect Hill and Bunker Hill . Colleagues noted, however, that he had insisted on entering Boston soon after the Battle of Lexington and Concord , and while there he

4514-560: The slave trade and the institution of slavery in the French colonies. As a result, Louisiana and the Mobile, Alabama areas developed very different patterns of slavery compared to the British colonies. As written, the Code Noir gave some rights to slaves, including the right to marry. Although it authorized and codified cruel corporal punishment against slaves under certain conditions, it forbade slave owners to torture slaves, to separate married couples, and to separate young children from their mothers. It required owners to instruct slaves in

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4588-431: The use of Indian proxies to wage war and acquire the slaves. In New England, slave raiding accompanied the Pequot War and King Philip's War but declined after the latter war ended in 1676. Enslaved Native Americans were in Jamestown from the early years of the settlement, but large-scale cooperation between slave-trading English colonists and the Westo and Occaneechi peoples, whom they armed with guns, did not begin until

4662-417: The vessel on which he took passage was never heard from again. When scholars were able to open General Gage's files early in the 20th century, they discovered earlier letters with significant intelligence about the American forces that could only have come from Church. The files included notes that had been entrusted to him to carry into and out of Boston. Until then, historians had had difficulty estimating

4736-482: Was briefly incarcerated in a room of the Henry Vassall House in Cambridge, where his carved name can be seen today. The Massachusetts Provincial Congress arraigned Church on November 2. Despite an eloquent appeal in his own defense, he was unanimously expelled as a member of the House due to other "coded documents" of his being found in the trial proceedings that Congress regarded as proving his guilt. The Continental Congress on October 17, 1775, elected John Morgan "in

4810-433: Was elected a delegate to the Massachusetts Provincial Congress and later made a member of its Committee of Safety , which was in charge of preparing for armed conflict. Around the same time, Gen. Gage began receiving detailed intelligence on the Provincial Congress's activities. On February 21, 1775, the Provincial Congress appointed Church and Joseph Warren a committee to make an inventory of medical supplies necessary for

4884-435: Was founded mainly by sugar planters from Barbados , who brought relatively large numbers of African slaves from that island to develop new plantations in the Carolinas. To meet agricultural labor needs, colonists also practiced Indian slavery for some time. The Carolinians transformed the Indian slave trade during the late 17th and early 18th centuries by treating such slaves as a trade commodity to be exported, mainly to

4958-537: Was later fortified. There were two known Fort Mose sites in the eighteenth century, and the men helped defend St. Augustine against the British. It is "the only known free black town in the present-day southern United States that a European colonial government-sponsored. The Fort Mose Site, today a National Historic Landmark , is the location of the second Fort Mose." During the nineteenth century, this site became marsh and wetlands. In 1763, Great Britain took over Florida in an exchange with Spain after defeating France in

5032-561: Was maintained during the French (1699–1763, and 1800–1803) and Spanish (1763–1800) periods of government. The first people enslaved by the French were Native Americans, but they could easily escape into the countryside which they knew well. Beginning in the early 18th century, the French imported Africans as laborers in their efforts to develop the colony. Mortality rates were high for both colonists and Africans, and new workers had to be regularly imported. Implemented in colonial Louisiana in 1724, Louis XIV of France 's Code Noir regulated

5106-399: Was not until a defeat of the Spanish by Georgia colonials in the 1740s that arguments for opening the colony to slavery intensified. To staff the rice plantations and settlements, Georgia's proprietors relented in 1751, and African slavery grew quickly. After becoming a royal colony, in the 1760s Georgia began importing slaves directly from Africa. One African slave, Estevanico arrived with

5180-410: Was revoked in the mid-1830s. Following the 1847–48 invasion by U.S. troops , the "loitering or orphaned Indians" were de facto enslaved in the new state from statehood in 1850 to 1867. Slavery required the posting of a bond by the slave holder and enslavement occurred through raids and a four-month servitude imposed as a punishment for Indian " vagrancy ". The first African slaves in what would become

5254-402: Was seen in conference with British General Thomas Gage ; he claimed to have been arrested and released. In May, Church went to Philadelphia , Pennsylvania , to consult the Continental Congress about the defense of Massachusetts colony. On July 27, that body authorized the establishment of a Medical Department of the Army with a Director General and Chief Physician who would be head of both

5328-561: Was sold, and later the site became the Hollis Street Theatre . 42°21′0.22″N 71°3′52.14″W  /  42.3500611°N 71.0644833°W  / 42.3500611; -71.0644833 Benjamin Church (physician) British Army Benjamin Church (August 24, 1734 – 1778) was effectively the first Surgeon General of the United States Army , serving as the "Chief Physician & Director General" of

5402-406: Was sparse and they held comparatively few slaves. The Spanish promised freedom to refugee slaves from the English colonies of South Carolina and Georgia in order to destabilize English settlement. If the slaves converted to Catholicism and agreed to serve in a militia for Spain, they could become Spanish citizens. By 1730 the black settlement known as Fort Mose developed near St. Augustine and

5476-541: Was still short of ammunition and in hopes of aiding to bring about an end to hostilities. The court considered that Church had carried on a criminal correspondence with the enemy and recommended that the matter be referred to the Continental Congress for its action. The report of Washington to the President of Congress stated: I have now a painful though necessary duty to perform, respecting Doctor Church,

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