Tom Copper and the Maroons of the Great Dismal Swamp

The Great Dismal Swamp spreads across some 113,000 acres of northern North Carolina and southern Virginia — a hot, mosquito-ridden mire full of predators. That hostility was exactly its value to people escaping slavery. Its harsh conditions and fearsome reputation kept pursuers out, and from the 1600s through the 1800s an estimated 50,000 people made lives there: Indigenous people, free people of color, and people fleeing slavery and indentured servitude.

Lake Drummond at Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge, Virginia, August 2, 2006. Credit: Rebecca Wynn, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Before and after colonization

Long before Europeans came, the Croatan, Hatteras, Chowan, Weapomeiok, Coranine, Machapunga, Bay River, Pamplico, Roanoke, Woccon, Nansemond and Cape Fear peoples hunted and farmed in and around the swamp. European conquest in the late 1600s drove them from their lands, and settlers turned the surrounding country into tobacco fields — but the swamp itself resisted taming.

Colonists kept trying. In the Revolutionary era, George Washington was among the investors in the Dismal Swamp Company, which aimed to drain the swamp for its rich soil. Enslaved people did the work; Washington sent people he enslaved at Mount Vernon to fell trees and dig ditches. One of them, Harry Washington, became known for his own pursuit of freedom. The company failed, though speculators and surveyors kept trying through the 18th and 19th centuries.

"An Opening, Dismal Swamp," published by Alfred S. Campbell, 1897. Credit: Library of Congress.

Maroons

By the early 1700s the swamp held a mixed population of fugitives, indentured servants, Indigenous people and maroon communities — people who had freed themselves from slavery, or been born to parents who had, and lived in open defiance of the laws that would re-enslave them. Some stayed only a while, a kind of truancy from slavery; others built semi-permanent settlements where discovery was almost impossible. Life was hard: they foraged, hunted, traded and made their own tools while enduring heat, insects and wild animals.

The swamp was also a staging ground for resistance. News of revolts and revolutions — American, French and Haitian — traveled around the Atlantic world, a current the historian Julius Scott called "the common wind." Across the 1700s, several insurrections had roots in the swamp, and maroon bands struck out at nearby towns and plantations. Planters' alarm fed ever-harsher laws on free and enslaved Black people in the region.

The Easter Conspiracy of 1802

Inspired by Gabriel's rebellion in 1800, maroons of the Dismal Swamp organized further attempts to overthrow slavery. Tom Copper, who called himself the general of the swamp's maroons, became notorious for his reach and for eluding capture.

In 1802, fear of a coordinated uprising of enslaved people, maroons and free people of color swept northeastern North Carolina and Virginia's Hampton Roads — the Easter Conspiracy. Officials arrested and executed many people they believed were involved.

Some historians suggest Mingo deliberately led the officials astray — or question whether the camp existed at all. Others argue the conspiracy was possible because of the wide networks of maroons in and around the swamp.

Freedom close to home

Tom Copper's story shows that freedom seeking took many forms. Some people fled north. Others, in the Great Dismal, carved out freedom nearby — staying close to enslaved family and community while living beyond their enslavers' reach. The swamp's security made it a refuge, a home and, at times, a headquarters for resistance.

Sources

Based on "Tom Copper's Rebellion and Great Dismal Marronage," by Dr. Joshua Strayhorn, Mellon Humanities Postdoctoral Fellow, published by the National Park Service; rewritten in hubnx's own words. The article draws on J. Brent Morris, Dismal Freedom: A History of the Maroons of the Great Dismal Swamp (2022), and the records of the 1802 conspiracy trials.