Source: WTL photograph© 2007.
Image: After passing a simple fence, you enter the grounds of Fort Mose Historic State Park. Near the parking lot you see this sign, and beyond it part of the park's ranger's welcome and interpretative center.
Comments: Most, but not all, of the information on this sign is accurate. Actually, the Spanish Indian mission was much closer to the walls of old San Agustín. The site here at Mose was designated specifically for blacks, both free and slave. Furthermore, it is accurate to say that all black slaves who escaped from the (Anglo-) American colonies to Spanish Florida were instantly given legal freedom provided they converted at least nominally to Catholicism, which they all instantly did. This political fact created immense friction between Spanish Florida and the English slaveholders in the English colonies. Ultimately, it is one of the principal causes--but not the only one--for the collapse of Spanish Florida. When Thomas Jefferson was President he, too, as a slaveholding Virginian, forced Spain to modify its policy of granting freedom to English colonial slaves escaping to Florida. When this change occurred, many black slaves moved west into the interior of the Florida peninsula where the sought and got refuge among the remaining Timucuan Indians, who were more or less allied with the Spanish government. In turn, this movement of black slaves to Alachua and surrounding counties caused new invasions from whites and their own Indian allies in America's southern colonies, thus bringing about the end of both Timucuan culture and, until 1865 or 1963, free black culture.