Davoli on Florida Man

Joanmarie Davoli, Barry University School of Law, has published Florida Man. Here is the abstract.

Zephaniah Kingsley was the original Florida Man. Married to a woman from West Africa whom he had purchased as a slave, he prospered economically as a plantation owner and slave trader in Spanish Florida. When Florida was ceded to the United States, Kingsley served on the Legislative Council charged with developing the laws of the Territory of Florida for its transformation into a State. His proposals for laws to protect the rights of free blacks were dismissed as personal quirks. Kingsley's marriage, his lifestyle, and his views of slavery and freedom alienated him from both abolitionists and pro-slavery contingencies alike, and his writings have been historically portrayed as very Florida Man: eccentric, irrational, and shocking. Yet analyzing his papers from a scholarly perspective reveals that Kingsley was promoting a slave system more akin to Ancient Rome-a system that was not based upon race-than to 19th Century America. Indeed, he defends many of his ideas as stemming from the systems of slavery developed under the Spanish Code. Although unaware of the ancient legal roots of his own proposals, Kingsley's suggestions that slaves have legal protections as well as options for entrepreneurship and freedom through self-purchase were soundly rejected by his contemporaries. Had anyone taken Florida Man Zephaniah Kingsley seriously, Roman Law could have offered a model for both the peaceful elimination of slavery as well as recognizing equal rights for all races.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.