Template:Wp-Leon County, Florida-History

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

Originally part of Escambia and later Gadsden County, Leon County was created in 1824. It was named after Juan Ponce de León, the Spanish explorer who was the first European to reach Florida.

The United States finally acquired this territory in the 19th century. In the 1830s, it attempted to conduct Indian Removal of the Seminole and Creek peoples, who had migrated south to escape European-American encroachment in Georgia and Alabama. After many Seminole were forcibly removed from the area or moved south to the Everglades during the Seminole Wars, planters developed cotton plantations based on enslaved labor.

By the 1850s and 1860s, Leon County had become part of the Deep South's "cotton kingdom". It ranked fifth of all Florida and Georgia counties in cotton production from the 20 major plantations. Uniquely among Confederate capitals east of the Mississippi River, in the American Civil War Tallahassee was never captured by Union forces. No Union soldiers set foot in Leon County until the Reconstruction Era.