TAMPA – On May 6, 1864, Union troops landed in Tampa and, with no opposition, captured the city and announced liberation for the Black citizens who were slaves there. This event took place in the city.
After a few days, the troops had already left and were on their way to fight in other conflicts. Historians have long held the belief that not all of the enslaved people were set free when there was no enforcement of the law.
That is demonstrated by a record that was uncovered by the Tampa Bay Times.
The handwritten ticket, which was discovered between the pages of a Hillsborough County book that chronicled land purchases in the 1800s, is 158 years old. It details the sale of two children, Jefferson, who was 16 years old, and Isam, who was either 12 or 13 years old, for $2,200 from William H. Meredith to John Pearce.
The transaction was documented on March 14, 1865, which was over a year after the enslaved people in the area were freed.
According to Rodney Kite Powell, who works at the Tampa Bay History Center, the receipt is the first “documented proof” that the slave trade persisted here after liberation was declared.
Professor of Africana Studies and Anthropology at the University of South Florida Cheryl Rodriguez commented, “That makes sense.” “After the Union troops had withdrawn, Tampa made a concerted effort to return things to their previous state of normalcy. Slavery was an accepted practice among them. It was ingrained in their way of life and a fundamental component of their culture.
According to the census statistics, Pearce was a farmer in Hillsborough, however, it is unknown where he actually resided.
Canter Brown, a Florida historian who has concentrated on Tampa’s pioneering Black population, stated that “the Union had taken away all the slaves they could gather.” “But the majority of Hillsborough’s slaves were out in the countryside,” which was an area that was never visited by Union soldiers.
Brown suggested that Pearce may have concealed the people whom he had enslaved.
Despite this, the receipt indicates that the sale was made in January 1861, which is over three years before emancipation, despite the fact that the record was not officially documented until March 1865.
Brown characterized that as being typical. “Deeds were sometimes recorded long after a purchase and sale, including the slaves.”
According to Kite-Powell, the fact that the sale of persons was documented by the county government in March 1865, which had its headquarters in downtown Tampa, even if it occurred a few years earlier, demonstrates that the slave trade was still functioning in the Tampa Bay area at that time. It was a legitimate business transaction, which validates what I and others had thought all along.
According to Brown, Pearce most likely made the decision to make the sale formal with the county in order to “protect his rights of ownership.”
It took some time for word of the decree to permeate throughout the state, but on May 20, 1865, Union troops arrived in Tallahassee, where they read the Emancipation Proclamation to officially free the enslaved throughout the state. However, it did not take long for Union troops to leave the city.
Brown stated that the enslaved people at Bartow were informed of their impending emancipation in June by the arrival of Black federal troops with the news.
Kite-Powell believes that Tampa Emancipation Day should continue to be celebrated on May 6 of each year as it has been doing historically, so that tradition can be preserved. “There is no way to pinpoint the exact day when the last person who was enslaved in Tampa was freed,” the sentence reads.
