Editing History of Florida (section)

===Statehood (1845)===
[[File:Florida Capitol 1845.jpg|thumb|250px|The brick [[Florida State Capitol|Capitol]] as built in 1845.]]
On March 3, 1845, Florida became the 27th state of the United States of America. Its first governor was [[William Dunn Moseley]].<ref>{{Cite web |title=Gov. William Dunn Moseley |url=https://www.nga.org/governor/william-dunn-moseley/#:~:text=WILLIAM%20DUNN%20MOSELEY%2C%20Florida's%20first,practice%20in%20Wilmington%2C%20North%20Carolina. |access-date=December 22, 2024 |website=National Governors Association}}</ref>

Almost half the state's population were enslaved African Americans working on large cotton and sugar [[Plantations in the American South|plantations]], between the [[Apalachicola River|Apalachicola]] and [[Suwannee River|Suwannee]] rivers in the north central part of the state.<ref name=tebeau/>{{rp|158}} Like the people who owned them, many slaves had come from the coastal areas of Georgia and the Carolinas. They were part of the [[Gullah]]–[[Geechee]] culture of the [[Lowcountry]]. Others were enslaved African Americans from the upper South who had been sold to traders taking slaves to the deep South.{{sfn|Smith|2017|pp=9–11}}

In the 1850s, with the potential transfer of ownership of federal land to the state, including Seminole land, the federal government decided to convince the remaining Seminoles to emigrate. The Army reactivated Fort Harvie and renamed it to [[Fort Myers, Florida|Fort Myers]]. Increased Army patrols led to hostilities, and eventually a Seminole attack on Fort Myers which killed two United States soldiers.<ref name=tebeau/>{{rp|155}} The [[Third Seminole War]] lasted from 1855 to 1858 which ended with most of the remaining Seminoles, mostly women and children moving to Indian Territory. In 1859, another 75 Seminoles surrendered and were sent to the West, but a small number continued to live in the Everglades.<ref name=tebeau/>{{rp|156}}

On the eve of the Civil War, Florida had the smallest population of the Southern states. It was invested in plantation agriculture, which was dependent on the labor of enslaved African Americans. By 1860, Florida had 140,424 people, of whom 44% were enslaved and fewer than 1,000 were [[free black|free people of color]].<ref name=tebeau/>{{rp|157}} Florida also had one of the highest per capita murder rates prior to the Civil War, thanks to a weakened central government, the institution of slavery, and a troubled political history.<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Denham|first1=James M.|last2=Roth|first2=Randolph|year=2007|title=Why Was Antebellum Florida Murderous? A Quantitative Analysis of Homicide in Florida, 1821–1861|journal=The Florida Historical Quarterly|volume=86|number=2|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/25594611|pages=216–217|jstor=25594611 }}</ref>