Dismal Freedom: A History of the Maroons of the Great Dismal Swamp

by J. Brent Morris

The massive and foreboding Great Dismal Swamp sprawls over 2,000 square miles and spills over parts of Virginia and North Carolina. From the early seventeenth century, the nearly impassable Dismal frustrated settlement. However, what may have been an impediment to the expansion of slave society became an essential sanctuary for many of those who sought to escape it. In the depths of the Dismal, thousands of maroons—people who had emancipated themselves from enslavement and settled beyond the reach of enslavers—established new lives of freedom in a landscape deemed worthless and inaccessible by whites. Dismal Freedom unearths the stories of these maroons, their lives, and their struggles for liberation. Drawing from newly discovered primary sources and archeological evidence that suggests far more extensive maroon settlement than historians have previously imagined, award-winning author J. Brent Morris uncovers one of the most exciting yet neglected stories of American history. This is the story of resilient, proud, and determined people who made the Great Dismal Swamp their free home and sanctuary and who played an outsized role in undermining slavery through the Civil War.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, American History

256 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 17, 2022

About the author

J. Brent Morris is professor of history at Clemson University.

Reviews

[David Nichols · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Great Dismal Swamp was the largest maroon settler zone in North America, a continent not famous for its enclaves of runaway slaves. In the nineteenth century several thousand ex-bondsmen resided in and around this expanse of reeds, sloughs, peat bogs, and hidden islands. The author, a historian for the Great Dismal Swamp Landscape Study, divides this large population into three groups: Fringe, Liminal, and Deep Swamp maroons. The Fringe population consisted of transients, often headed North or hovering near their still-imprisoned families. Many lived by raiding nearby plantations, particularly during the Revolutionary War and the 1820s. Liminal maroons lived in the Swamp but worked for whites as canal diggers or shingle suppliers.

Deep Swamp maroons were permanent settlers. Archaeologists have recently determined that they had substantial log houses with raised floors, grew fields of corn and sweet potatoes (using wood ash to deacidify the soil), and kept pigs, chickens, and bees. Many scavenged, repaired and reused Native American potsherds and arrowheads. They were generally self-sufficient, though different small communities probably traded with one another. Many individuals married and had free children.

Colonization of the Dismal Swamp began in the 1600s. Runaway servants from Virginia settled in the marshlands near the Tuscarora nation; Tuscarora insurgents took refuge there after their 1711-13 insurgency; the early proprietors of North Carolina let debtors and Quakers settle near the GDS. By the 1720s the main colonists were enslaved African-Americans, either small groups of runaways or refugees from rebellions like the 1730 Chesapeake uprising. Many were Fringe maroons, but a substantial Deep Swamp population developed by the 1820s.

White elites saw the Dismal Swamp and its maroons as symbols of their own fears and powerlessness. The Great Dismal Swamp Company (1763-75) tried but failed to drain the marshlands; neither did it turn a profit. Virginia and North Carolina did build a canal in the 1790s, but it became a communications link and source of wage income for maroons. In 1831 the Virginia militia raided the edges of the GDS, and thereafter whites increased their patrols in the region, but the Swamp remained unconquered. John Brown and James Redpath thought the maroons had “revolutionary potential” (160). They were right: enslaved workers from the Dismal Swamp were among the first “contrabands” in the Civil War.

The question “why did such a large maroon community survive in the heart of the slave South?” actually answers itself. The different categories of maroons in the Great Dismal Swamp protected and reinforced one another. The Fringe maroons, who because of their motives and attachments would not have lived outside of the slave South, kept planters on the defensive through their raids. Liminal maroons served as go-betweens, giving white businessman who worked in the region an economic incentive to tolerate the presence of ex-slaves. Both depended on the Deep Swamp maroons for refuge and supplies, and the benefits were almost certainly mutual. Historians like Nathaniel Millett and Sylviane Diouf have pointed out that other maroon communities in North America usually lasted less than a generation before armed whites destroyed them. Before the publication of Morris’s book, one might have suspected that the Dismal Swamp’s geography explained its relative invulnerability; now we may conclude that the maroons were protected by their complex social geography.

One of the ironies of American history, if it is an irony, is that the individualist concept of human freedom protected only white men who were economically supported by dependents – family members, employees, and slaves. Freedom for everyone else required community ties and collective action. “Liberty AND union,” in other words.

[Stan Prager · Rating 5 out of 5]

Imagine a vast, deep, dense, forbidding swamp of tea-colored water and mud and patches of dry ground, blisteringly hot, thick with populations of alligators and panthers and poisonous snakes and legions of biting insects and all manner of various other perils. Now imagine you are an enslaved person, compelled to long hours of punishing labor, routinely beaten, likely scarred, maybe branded, perhaps raped, subject to helplessly watch your loved ones sold away from you forever, with no hope for any future except more of the same. Then imagine that swamp as your salvation. You don’t have to imagine any of it because at one time it was all very real.
It was the Great Dismal Swamp, a geography shared by Virginia and North Carolina that was in the antebellum about two thousand square miles—roughly the size of Delaware!—which indeed proved the salvation for thousands upon thousands of the enslaved, across many generations, because it represented freedom, a certain haven out of reach of the white slavecatchers armed with rifles and vicious bloodhounds who were in terror of entering the swamp and ever again emerging alive. Rather than an underground railroad to distant places where slavery did not exist, this was instead a kind of tunnel into a fantastical alien territory where slavery could not exist. The enslaved men, women, and children who chose this course or were driven to it were called maroons, and if they survived they would be forever free.
All but forgotten, echoes of their seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth century stories, long lost to history, are gradually being recovered with twenty-first century methods, through archaeological excavations, scientific analysis, and historical scholarship. Much remains unknown, yet unexplored, but a fascinating chronicle of what we have learned or can at least surmise can be found between the covers of Dismal Freedom: A History of the Maroons of the Great Dismal Swamp [2022], by J. Brent Morris, an extremely well-written study of a place and its peoples most Americans probably never knew existed.
I had a peripheral awareness of marronage—the self-emancipation of the enslaved who fled to live in the wilds—elsewhere in the hemisphere, but no idea that the process was so prevalent in the American south, nor that the numbers were so large. Exact figures are impossible to ascertain, but it seems that many thousands of fugitives and their descendants lived in the Great Dismal Swamp. Some estimates run as high as fifty thousand! That kind of scale demands far more attention than traditional studies have granted, which is what makes this fine work by Morris so valuable to students of the antebellum.
But I might never have come to it at all had I not first attended a presentation by David Silkenat entitled “Slavery and the Environment in the American South” at the Civil War Institute (CWI) 2023 Summer Conference at Gettysburg College—a lecture I nearly skipped because I thought it might be dull. I could not have been more wrong: Silkenat’s skills at the podium are equal to his talents as a historian, and I sat captivated by his exploration of how much better adapted the enslaved were to their respective environments than their brutal white masters could have conceived. This empowered them to supplement their often meager rations by hunting and foraging after hours—as well as flee to marronage if there were wild lands nearby. But the true epiphany for me was when he put focus on the intricate mechanisms of the societies that developed and endured in the wildest and most massive space to host maroon colonies in the south: the Great Dismal Swamp. When his talk concluded, I picked up a copy of his book—Scars on the Land: An Environmental History of Slavery in the American South—and started in on it right away.
Marronage only represents a small slice of Scars on the Land, but there’s a story in it that affected me deeply. Silkenat cites the memoir of the formerly enslaved Charles Ball, which relates the tragic tale of his encounter with a naked and filthy runaway named Paul who had fled a beating to a nearby swamp. Paul’s escape was handicapped by a heavy iron collar around his neck that was fastened with bells to help discourage escape, which Ball attempted to remove, without success. When Ball returned a week later to try to assist him further, he found only the decaying corpse of Paul, who had hanged himself from a tree limb, crows pecking at his eyes. For Paul, clearly, not only was swamp life preferable to enslavement, but so too was suicide. This episode serves as another stark reminder that slavery in the south, long misremembered as a benign or even benevolent institution, was for many thus subjected marked instead by a horrific lifeway of oppressive labor routinely punctuated by cruelty so severe that a dark and dangerous swamp was a welcome refuge. And for some, like Paul, if that course failed, death yet remained a better alternative than living in chains.
In Dismal Freedom, Morris, assistant professor of history at the University of South Carolina Beaufort, succeeds brilliantly in recreating for the reader both the environment of the Great Dismal Swamp in the antebellum and the desperation that drove the enslaved to inhabit it, at any and all costs, as well as offering educated imaginings of the complex, vibrant communities that once thrived at its edges and in its depths. To this effort, he brings to a series of tight, well-crafted chapters a multidisciplinary toolkit that relies on the historical record, oral tradition, archaeological evidence, ecological studies, and much more to collectively summarize what is known of marronage in the Dismal over several centuries before it went extinct in the years that followed the Civil War and emancipation. Still, it’s not all data: Morris has a keen eye for interpretative analysis that resurrects for a modern audience the nuances of long-dead populations. But as a careful historian, he never fails to distinguish fact from speculation. And along the way, material that might otherwise be tedious is enlivened by the author’s talented pen and his obvious passion for the subject.
There’s a lot of history here, plenty of it unfamiliar. How many know of George Washington’s founding role in the Dismal Swamp Company (DSC), a fantasy turned to failure that dreamed of draining the swamp for agricultural purposes? Or that this attempt ultimately enlarged the maroon population, as some of the enslaved put to grueling labor in this effort fled to the dark recesses of the swamp? And who knew that Nat Turner’s father Abraham was rumored to be a maroon denizen of the Dismal, a footnote to that famous rebellion that was to weigh heavily long afterwards upon terrified whites who saw portents of insurrection in every corridor?
Morris also puts marronage in context as a phenomenon by no means limited to this geography—wherever slavery existed adjacent to wild places, those bold enough to dare would attempt to seek haven there. And not only enslaved blacks became maroons: Native Americans and even whites who lived outside the law would also call the Dismal Swamp home. For all, swamp life was both challenging and dangerous, but it offered not only freedom in the literal sense—especially for the enslaved—but a genuine independence from authority of all kinds, as well. For many thousands, the payoff was well worth the risk.
Morris identifies three different types of maroons who peopled the Dismal. The first were the “deep swamp maroons” who secretly dwelled far into the interior, fully secluded from the outside world. Some constructed cabins on stilts amongst the reeds. But many more put down stakes in the hundreds of the Dismal’s habitable islands, large and small, of drier ground—called mesic islands—that hosted individuals, families, and larger settlements. It is believed that trade networks were established between villages, and, ever wary of outsiders, that generations of maroons thrived there in isolation. And it turns out that the at-first forbidding tea-colored water of the Dismal is actually pure and safe to drink; stained an amber color by tannic acids from decomposing bark, the tannins inhibit the growth of bacteria and act as a preservative, so maroons could always count on a reliable source of potable water in what was an otherwise hostile milieu.
Then there were the “fringe maroons” who existed at the edges of the swamp. Because of their proximity to plantations, their liberty was more precarious, but that was offset by their ability to clandestinely trade goods and resources with those who remained enslaved, especially family members. Some even produced products, like shingles, which were valuable beyond the boundaries of the swamp. There were also runaways who sought temporary refuge at the swamp’s margins as fringe maroons, who then—unlike the hapless Paul—might after a “time out” return to surrender to slavery and take their punishment. Some resorted to this practice more than once.
Later, notably after the completion of another of Washington’s early visions, the Dismal Swamp Canal—which ran twenty-two miles to connect the landlocked sounds of Virginia and North Carolina—corporate ventures brought lumber and shingle industries to the region, and a third type of maroon emerged. Known as “liminal maroons,” these wily sorts would habitually step in and out of marronage, maintaining their freedom but making a living off the white man’s world. Like their fringe maroon brethren, once familiar with the Dismal’s ecosystem and how to survive there, formerly enslaved blacks could easily slip in and out at will, while their white captors could only proceed so far in pursuit, retreating in terror at dangers real and imagined that might lurk within the dark interior.
This is not to say such attempts were ever abandoned, only that these went largely unsuccessful—which further incensed slaveowners, for a variety of reasons. First and foremost, of course, was that maroons represented thousands of dollars in human “property” drained from their pockets, lost and unrecoverable. Second, viable maroon communities served as an open invitation to other potential escapees. But there was something else that infuriated them far more than any financial injury incurred: that numbers of the formerly enslaved could endure free and out of their clutches was an abomination they could not abide, yet they frequently found themselves powerless to redress. Their rage was fueled further by the paranoia of slave insurrection that dominated the southern plantation mentality; the slender thread that may have connected Nat Turner to the Dismal via his runaway father was imagined by many as a kind of sturdy chain linking their ostensibly docile chattel slaves with a restive savage mass hiding in the swamp, ever ready to rise up in concert and murder their white masters in their sleep. It never happened, of course, but it did not stop them from believing that the threat was real.
In between the books by Silkenat and Morris, I read The Battle of Negro Fort: The Rise and Fall of a Fugitive Slave Community, by Matthew J. Clavin, a stirring account of a maroon colony that existed in a setting that was almost exactly the opposite of the hidden sanctuaries of the deep swamp maroons of the Dismal. This was what became known as the “Negro Fort,” a refuge for fugitive slaves recruited into service by the British in what was then the Spanish colony of East Florida during the War of 1812, who opted to remain behind after hostilities concluded in a military fortification heavily stocked with cannon and munitions that even had the audacity to continue to fly the Union Jack after the Brits decamped. This outraged General Andrew Jackson, who plotted to ultimately annihilate the fort, an act quietly countenanced by the American government. At the end of the day, the very existence of maroon communities represented a kind of thumbing their noses at white supremacy, something that simply could not be tolerated.
Fortunately, great numbers of maroons met happier outcomes in the Great Dismal Swamp, and while turning the pages of Dismal Freedom, the reader cannot help but cheer for all those who remained out of reach of those who would return them to cruel captivity. It’s also worth cheering for Morris, who has in one slender volume turned out a magnificent addition to the historiography that is also that rare work both suitable to a scholarly audience and accessible to the non-academic. As Morris well underscores here, recent studies have only barely scraped the surface of all that remains unknown about maroon communities, in the Dismal as well as elsewhere. But if you are as intrigued by this nearly forgotten history as I am, you’ll be in for a real treat when you dive into Dismal Freedom.



NOTE: I reviewed Scars on the Land: An Environmental History of Slavery in the American South, by David Silkenat, here: https://regarp.com/2023/08/30/review-...

NOTE: I reviewed The Battle of Negro Fort: The Rise and Fall of a Fugitive Slave Community, by Matthew J. Clavin, here: https://regarp.com/2023/08/06/review-...



Latest Book Review & Podcast ... Review of: Dismal Freedom: A History of the Maroons of the Great Dismal Swamp, by J. Brent Morris https://regarp.com/2025/09/05/review-...

[JRT · Rating 5 out of 5]

“…Maroons were the actual embodiment of Black insurrection, and there lurked a potential maroon within every enslaved person.” This assertion from author J. Brent Miller perfectly exemplifies the tenor of the book, “Dismal Freedom.” Miller traces the revolutionary history of the massive swampland spanning the eastern sections of Virginia and North Carolina, from colonial times all the way through the Civil War era. In doing so, Miller tells a fascinating and grossly obscured tale of Black insurrection, autonomy, and liberation.

The book starts by tracing the early development of the Dismal, detailing ancient Native American inhabitance as well as the initial multiracial nature of swamp settlement during the early colonial period. From the very beginning of the colonial slave / indentured servitude era, the Dismal served as a refuge from and barrier to imperialism, oppression, and slavery. As Miller notes, white people—particularly the slaving class—were terrified of the swamp. A young George Washington himself even tried to dredge and tame it via slave labor, to no avail.

A general theme of the book was the Dismal Swamp’s role as a base for maroonage insurrectionist activity. Miller detailed how the Maroons of the Dismal operated from different parts of the swamp, and how they were connected to some of the most famous insurrections in 18th and 19th Century Virginia (including Nat Turner’s revolt and John Brown’s initial plans). I was also fascinated by the role that Dismal Maroons played in both the American Revolution and the Civil War. We knew that more Africans fought on the side of the British than the Americans during the Revolutionary War, but did you know that Maroons in the Dismal Swamp were fixtures in the African presence in the British Army? Further, some of George Washington’s own runaway slaves were Dismal Maroons who fought for the British and earned their freedom from chattel enslavement, despite British defeat. Additionally, Dismal Maroons played a decisive role in the Union’s many victories over the Confederacy in the eastern-most counties of Virginia and North Carolina.

Aside from the fascinating accounts of revolutionary activity connected to the Dismal Maroons, Miller also describes the structure of Maroon communities, noting their numerosity, continual inhabitance, social norms, and ingenious manner of security and defense. In short, “Dismal Freedom” highlights the myriad of ways that African Maroons in the Great Dismal Swamp came to ensure a modicum of freedom in a violent, terroristic society predicated on their enslavement. The Great Dismal Swamp is a criminally unexplored aspect of Black American history. This books demonstrates the centrality of the Dismal to notions of Black self-determination and freedom.

[Mariah · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book about a topic that was not familiar to me, not I daresay it would be familiar to the general population not close to the places in the book. Throughout learning about slavery and how the enslaved escaped to freedom, I never learned about the existence of this swamp and how so many enslaved people managed to escape and live in this huge swamp.

One thing that I found particularly interesting was the explanation and discussion of the different layers and types of maroonage that existed within the swamp. The way that the different layers of maroonage co-existed and worked with each other to survive was incredible to read about.

Perhaps the most documented types of marooners in the book were the ones that marooned and stayed along the edges and outskirts of the swamp either to use it as a passageway to freedom in the North or because their families were still enslaved and they wanted to stay nearer to them.

But some marooners that there is still not much known about even now are the deep marooners that made it to some of the deepest parts of the Dismal Swamp and then never left. These people created isolated communities that thrived deep in the swamp and archeologists are still studying today.

There is no part of history that is too small to learn about and this is a part of history that should really be talked about and taught more.

This book will be released in July of 2022

I received this book free from NetGalley and University of North Carolina Press to review and this is my honest review.

[Robert Sullivan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dismal Freedom is a heroic effort to write a history of a people who left almost no written records - the inhabitants living in the Great Dismal Swamp in eastern Virginia & North Carolina from the 17th century to the Civil War. These people were mostly Blacks who escaped from enslavement, although there also some Indigenous Americans and even a few whites.

Morris relies on archeological work in the Swamp alongside what few historical accounts are available to tell a story of communities scattered throughout the area, some with extremely little contact with the world outside, and others somewhat integrated with the surrounding settlements. Sometimes this "integration" involved raids and theft from surrounding farms and plantations; other times it meant trade, religious gatherings, even employment.

Equally interesting is Morris' account of the impact of the Dismal Swamp on the popular imagination in both the North and the South. The very existence of a Black settlement was a psychological threat to the South, who feared crime and revolt out of proportion to the actual size of the Swamp population. Similarly, abolitionists in the North romanticized the Swamp's dwellers and also looked to them to lead the Enslaved into revolt.

All in all, a worthwhile book for anyone interested in American History.

[Amanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

I made the mistake of reading this one when putting together a 4 week course on Medieval Africa for my high schoolers, prepping 3 other new courses on American History for them, and running an online course on American History for a tech school. This book took forever. Something like four weeks or more. Much of this is me. See above and 5:00 mornings, leaving me constantly tired. I have no idea how much of it is the book.

Like many academic tomes, the super exciting stories included could have been better highlighted. But it's worth it for those stories and the resulting reconception of enslavement and resistence. Pick this up and read it. Put it in front of students.

[Alise · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an excellent book. Such a wide range of history focusing on Maroons (self-emancipated enslaved Africans and African-Americans), along with history of indigenous peoples and abolitionists.

I learned so much reading this book and tracked other topics and texts I want to further research after finishing this one.

[Jason S · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful and well researched book arguing that the great dismal swamp was a central focus of institution of slavery from colonial founding through the civil war. Detailed examples of how this space played a role in resistance and was a focus of both the masters’ fears and abolitionists’ hopes.

[Patricia · Rating 5 out of 5]

A really interesting piece of U.S. (and North Carolina) history I knew nothing about. A well-written blend of primary sources and archeological evidence. I learned a lot and I'm excited to visit the Great Dismal Swamp!

[Jean · Rating 3 out of 5]

After visiting the Dismal Swamp I was interested in the history of the place. It is astonishing that this wildly unfriendly environment was home to so many. I wish there was more recorded history to pull from but the author did an excellent job with what he had to work with after much research.

[Greg · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have been wanting to read about maroonage for awhile and this is a well-researched book and the author seems to take great care in how he went about writing and researching. I still would like to read other literature on the topic but from a Black author.

[Hebbie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good analysis collating multiple sources, from testimony, to news, to archaeology, to popular culture. I just wish it had a bit more of a critical tone when it came to the discussion of how maroons engaged in and with the Civil War.

[Veronica · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great historical information right in my Hampton Roads area of Virginia that I never knew about.