The aftermath of the Civil War was exhilarating, hopeful and violent. Four million newly freed African Americans faced the future of previously-unknown freedom from the old plantation system, with few rights or protections, and surrounded by a war-weary and intensely resistant white population.
The parties signed the Adams-Onis Treaty in 1819, and the transfer officially took place on July 17, 1821, over 300 years after Spain had first claimed the Florida peninsula.
