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5 Restricted Manumission, Migrations, and Antimiscegenation Florida lawmakers sought to complete their victory against black fighting men by launching a vigorous attack on manumission in 1842. The sad outcome of the slave Jimmy Gibbs’s free­ dom bid (which began in 1839 when his owner agreed to sell the black man to a master who would emancipate him so that he could remain united to his St. Augustine family) vividly distinguishes the Ameri­ can regime’s attitude from that of the Spaniards. That George Gibbs, the owner, was willing to part with Jimmy Gibbs likely was due to his family connections with Zephaniah Kingsley, who was especially notable among whites in antebellum East Florida for his concern for free blacks’ well-being. George Gibbs was Kingsley’s brother-in-law and spent a great deal of time at the Kingsley plantation on Fort George Island, near modern Jacksonville. “The door of liberty,” Kingsley believed, should always be “open to every slave who can find the means of purchasing himself.” A planter who followed this precept would be better able to control his labor force, he theorized, for “hope creates a spirit of economy, industry and emulation to obtain merit by good behavior, which has a general and beneficial effect.”1 Jimmy Gibbs faced the task of finding a buyer he could trust. He eventually located such a man in Andrew Pow, who once had been the Minorcan Pablo Sabate’s slave and had purchased his free­ dom a decade earlier for $400. Pow had at least two children by Juana (also called Jenny), a slave of Francisco Gué, and a daughter by Francisca, a bondswoman of Doña ­ Marianna Gué. All of Pow’s children were baptized in the Roman Catholic faith, and all officially bore the surname Gué. A year after Pow purchased himself, ­Francisco Gué emancipated Pow’s wife, Jenny, then about thirty-five years of age, for 78 / Chapter 5 $350. Three years later, in 1833, Pow paid $173.50 for a lot on St. George Street in St. Augustine next to the Presbyterian church.2 Jimmy Gibbs and Andrew Pow were friends who worshiped together in a Baptist congregation. After a long discussion in the presence of other black church members, Pow agreed to buy and then manumit his friend on condition that the latter repay his $700 purchase price. When Gibbs asked Pow to draw up a contract, however, he refused. “You know brother Jimmy,” Pow responded, “you and I are [Christian] brethren and . . . not of this world . . . our [oral] agreement is more binding than any in writing.” In a weak bargaining position, Gibbs reluctantly assented. As a free man of color, Pow had to secure the approval of his white guardian, Joshua Joyner, for this arrangement . With the explicit understanding that Gibbs would be freed upon paying Pow $700, Joyner consented. Only George Gibbs is known to have voiced any objection, complaining that on the open market, his bondsman would have brought $900.3 In Andrew Pow, Jimmy Gibbs had a master whose talents, ambitions, and energy matched his own. Once a slave himself, Pow had purchased his own liberty and probably that of his wife Jenny, in addition to accumulating property , in­ clud­ ing a town lot. Furthermore, Pow had rejected his slave surname, as well as his former owner’s religion. Thus, Pow was an attractive role model for the Protestant Gibbs. Inspired by the prospect of free­ dom, Gibbs worked hard, in time earning his market value of $900, more than the agreed on free­ dom price, which he duly handed over to Pow. The latter, to Gibbs’s dismay, refused to execute the legal paperwork necessary to certify Gibbs’s free­ dom.4 Meanwhile, Andrew Pow was taking measures to solidify his own precarious liberty. In April 1841, he married Jenny Gué in the Presbyterian Church, and some time thereafter purchased his son Francisco, then about twenty years old, from Francisco Gué for $700, mortgaging his town lot to do so. Meanwhile, his relationship with Jimmy Gibbs deteriorated. Seeing Pow’s expenditure on his son, the slave pressed Pow for his free­ dom papers, only to have his black master threaten him with the whip and have him jailed on 9 No­vem­ber 1842.5 It is evident that for Pow, blood proved thicker than the waters of baptism. A day after Jimmy Gibbs’s arrest, the Ameri­can legal sys­tem initially worked in his favor. The slave...

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