Joseph May John Berry Meachum Mary Meachum William M. Mitchell Solomon Northup John Parker Elijah F. Pennypacker Mary Ellen Pleasant John Wesley Posey Amy and Isaac Post John Rankin Alexander Milton Ross David Ruggles Gerrit Smith George Luther Stearns William Still John Ton Charles Turner Torrey William Troy Harriet Tubman Martha Coffin Wright John Van Zandt Bernardhus Van Leer Silvia Hector Webber South to Florida and Mexico Background Beginning in the 16th century, Spaniards brought enslaved Africans to New Spain, including Mission Nombre de Dios in what would become the city of St. Augustine in Spanish Florida. Over time, free Afro-Spaniards took up various trades and occupations and served in the colonial militia. After King Charles II of Spain proclaimed Spanish Florida a safe haven for escaped slaves from British North America, they began escaping to Florida by the hundreds from as far north as New York. The Spanish established Fort Mose for the free Blacks in the St. Augustine area in 1738. In 1806, enslaved people arrived at the Stone Fort in Nacogdoches, Texas seeking freedom. They arrived with a forged passport from a Kentucky judge. The Spanish refused to return them back to the United States. More freedom seekers traveled through Texas the following year. Enslaved people were emancipated by crossing the border from the United States into Mexico, which was a Spanish colony into the nineteenth century. In the United States, enslaved people were considered property. That meant that they did not have rights to marry and they could be sold away from their partners. They also did not have rights to fight inhumane and cruel punishment. In New Spain, fugitive slaves were recognized as humans. They were allowed to join the Catholic Church and marry. They also were protected from inhumane and cruel punishment. During the War of 1812, U.S. Army general Andrew Jackson invaded Spanish Florida in part because enslaved people had run away from plantations in the Carolinas and Georgia to Florida. Some of the runaways joined the Black Seminoles who later moved to Mexico. Mexico sent mixed signals, though, on their position against slavery. Sometimes they allowed enslaved people to returned to slavery and they allowed Americans to move into Spanish territorial property in order to populate the North, where the Americans would then establish cotton plantations, bringing enslaved people to work the land. In 1829, Mexican president Vicente Guerrero (who was a