Editing History of the Bahamas (section)

==19th century==
{{Moresources|section|date=July 2023}}
In the early 1820s, following the [[Adams–Onís Treaty]] ceding Florida from Spain to the United States, hundreds of African slaves and [[Black Seminoles]] escaped from Florida, most settling on [[Andros Island]] in the Bahamas. Three hundred escaped in a mass flight in 1823.<ref name="nps">[http://www.nps.gov/subjects/ugrr/ntf_member/ntf_member_details.htm?SPFID=9173&SPFTerritory=Florida&SPFType=Site&SPFKeywords=Bill%20Baggs%20Cape%20Florida%20State%20Park "Bill Baggs Cape Florida State Park"], ''Network to Freedom,'' National Park Service, 2010, accessed 10 April 2013.</ref> While the flow was reduced by federal construction of a lighthouse at [[Cape Florida Lighthouse|Cape Florida]] in 1825, slaves continued to find freedom in the Bahamas.<ref name="nps"/> In August 1834, the traditional plantation life ended with the [[Slavery Abolition Act 1833|British emancipation of slaves throughout most of its colonies]]. [[Freedmen]] chose to work on their own small plots of land when possible.

In the 1830s and 1840s, tensions rose between Britain and the United States after American merchant ships, part of the coastwise slave trade, put into Nassau or were wrecked on its reefs. These included the ''[[Hermosa (slave ship)|Hermosa]]'' (1840) and the ''[[Creole case|Creole]]'' (1841), the latter brought in after a slave revolt on board. Britain had notified nations that slaves brought into Bahama and Bermuda waters would be forfeited and freed the slaves, refusing US efforts to recover them.<ref name="horne">[https://books.google.com/books?id=XTLFKrmJPgcC&dq=%22children+of+the+enterprise%22+musson Gerald Horne, ''Negro Comrades of the Crown: African Americans and the British Empire Fight the U.S. Before Emancipation''], New York University (NYU) Press, 2012, pp. 107-108</ref> In 1853 Britain and the US signed a claims treaty and submitted to arbitration for claims dating to 1814; they paid each other in 1855.

With emancipation, Caribbean societies inherited a rigid racial stratification that was reinforced by the unequal distribution of wealth and power. The three-tier race structure, of whites, [[mixed-race]], and primarily blacks, who comprised the large majority, existed well into the 1940s and in some societies beyond. Like African Americans, many also have European and Native American ancestry. Caribbean societies continue to struggle with racial issues.

The [[Bahamas and the American Civil War|Bahamas during the American Civil War]] prospered as a base for Confederate blockade-running, bringing in cotton to be shipped to the mills of England and running out arms and munitions. None of these provided any lasting prosperity to the islands, nor did attempts to grow different kinds of crops for export.{{citation needed|date=December 2023}}