The Yellow Demon of Fever: Fighting Disease in the Nineteenth-Century Transatlantic Slave Trade

Abstract

under his command,” such as buying their freedom from Floridian slaveowners and issuing them with certificates of freedom (p. 64). One of the most engrossing sections of the book is Clavin’s analysis of one of these certificates, which reveals the very real ways these fugitives gained freedom through the Colonial Marines. The Battle of Negro Fort is a necessary contribution to scholarly understanding of colonial Florida’s relationship with the United States. By establishing the intense anxiety that the Fort caused white settlers, Clavin’s book charts the end of “Florida serving as a sanctuary for fugitive slaves” (p. 121). Hopefully, this study can reignite scholarly interest in colonial Florida as a borderland that saw unique interactions between fugitives, settlers, and Native Americans.