Editing Leon County, Florida (section)

==History==
{{main|History of Leon County}}
Originally part of [[Escambia County, Florida|Escambia]] and later [[Gadsden County, Florida|Gadsden County]], Leon County was created in 1824.<ref>{{cite book|title=Publications of the Florida Historical Society|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=WZQ-AAAAYAAJ&pg=RA2-PA32|year=1908|publisher=Florida Historical Society.|page=32}}</ref> It was named after [[Juan Ponce de León]], the [[Spain|Spanish]] [[List of explorers|explorer]] who was the first [[Europe]]an to reach Florida.<ref>{{cite book|last=Gannett|first=Henry|title=The Origin of Certain Place Names in the United States|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=9V1IAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA185|year=1905|publisher=U.S. Government Printing Office|page=185}}</ref>
The United States finally acquired this territory in the 19th century. In the 1830s, it attempted to conduct [[Indian Removal]] of the [[Seminole]] and [[Creek people]]s, who had migrated south to escape European-American encroachment in Georgia and Alabama. After many Seminole were forcibly removed from the area or moved south to the Everglades during the [[Seminole Wars]], planters developed cotton plantations based on enslaved labor.

By the 1850s and 1860s, Leon County had become part of the Deep South's "cotton kingdom". It ranked fifth of all [[Florida]] and [[Georgia (U.S. state)|Georgia]] counties in cotton production from the 20 major plantations. Uniquely among Confederate capitals east of the [[Mississippi River]], in the [[American Civil War]] Tallahassee was never captured by Union forces. No Union soldiers set foot in Leon County until the [[Reconstruction Era]].