Dismal Freedom
A History of the Maroons of the Great Dismal Swamp
by J. Brent Morris
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Pub Date Jul 12 2022 | Archive Date Jun 28 2022
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Description
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 is the first book to fully examine the lives of these maroons 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 of color who made the Great Dismal Swamp their free home and sanctuary and who played an outsized role in undermining slavery through the Civil War.
J. Brent Morris is professor of history at the University of South Carolina Beaufort.
Advance Praise
“Clear, straightforward, and lively—Dismal Freedom is an impressive, thorough, and meticulously researched historical narrative."— Douglas R. Egerton, author of Thunder at the Gates: The Black Civil War Regiments that Redeemed America
“Very revealing! This outstanding and genuinely novel contribution to the history of slavery and the South makes excellent use of recent archaeological discoveries yet puts them into a historical perspective for the average reader. This will be the go-to book on U.S. marronage.”—Timothy Lockley, author of Maroon Communities in South Carolina: A Documentary Record
Available Editions
| EDITION | Hardcover |
| ISBN | 9781469668253 |
| PRICE | $29.95 (USD) |
Available on NetGalley
Featured Reviews
Mariah K, Reviewer
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.
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