kindred souls concealed in the swamps 

 and pocosins of the coastal 

 Carolinas. Slaveholders attempted 

 repeatedly, and usually with great 

 brutality, to eliminate those defiant 

 individuals; but "maroons" continued to 

 inhabit the North Carolina coast to a 

 degree that scholars may never fully 

 know. 



When William Robinson escaped 

 from an abusive master in 1858, he 

 immediately sought out the protection 

 of a group of fugitive slaves living in 

 the nearby swamps. His knowledge of 

 their hideout had begun during his early 

 childhood. "I had often heard ex-run- 

 away slaves, men and women, tell the 

 adventures of when they were in the 

 woods and about their hiding places or 

 rendezvous," Robinson wrote. "I had 

 heard it so often at my father's fireside 

 that I knew almost directly where they 

 were, for I had passed close by them 

 many times." 



Robinson fled to the "three-mile 

 farm" on the edge of a swamp near 

 Wilmington, where he asked an elderly 

 slave woman for the precise location of 

 the refugee camp. This woman — 

 Robinson reverently called her 

 "mother" — gave him food, a blessing 

 and directions to the fugitive 

 encampment. He found 18 people 

 hidden that night on a rock outcrop 

 shielded by a large cane break deep 

 within the swamp. Robinson and his 

 companions foraged for food and relied 

 on friendly slaves to help them. 



Black men and women on the run 

 found similar support in coastal areas 

 beyond Wilmington. In 1830, 30 to 40 

 fugitives had established a base in 

 Dover Swamp in western Craven 

 County. They had opened lines of 

 communication to several other run- 

 away camps as far away as the Newport 

 River, more than 35 miles to the east. 



Similarly, in the mid- 1850s, run- 

 away slaves enjoyed what petitioners to 

 the governor called a "very secure 

 retreat" in Brunswick County's Green 

 Swamp, then one of the largest swamps 

 in North America. They had built at 



least 1 1 cabins and carved out a garden 

 and grazing area in the midst of the 

 swamp, as well as enough embattle- 

 ments that white raiders failed to 

 overrun the camp in the summer of 

 1856. Afterward, local planters were 

 unable to recruit slave hunters willing 

 to make another foray into the swamp. 



The immense, boggy wilderness 

 that extended from Albemarle Sound 

 and the Chowan River into the Great 

 Dismal Swamp had a special renown 

 for refugee camps that shielded escap- 

 ing slaves. One sea captain who sailed 

 the Albemarle called it "a slave terri- 

 tory that defies all the laws." Records 

 document his observation. In 1802, for 



More than just black watermen composed the 

 Underground Railroad in coastal North Carolina. 

 Although wealthy planters and merchants held the reins 

 of power, drafting and enforcing the punitive laws, lowly 

 watermen, slave stevedores, piney woods squatters, 

 reclusive swampers and even slaveholders' wives 

 and children defied those laws and forged a realm apart. 

 This "underside of slavery" sustained tenuous pathways 

 by which fugitives might pass from land to sea. 

 Their conspiratorial acts represent a dramatic and 

 untold chapter in the history of North Carolina. 



example, a runaway named Tom 

 Copper had established a swamp 

 hideout near Elizabeth City from 

 where he led raids on local plantations. 

 Relying on slave boatmen who worked 

 the Albemarle waterways, Copper 

 reportedly conspired with runaways 

 and other slaves more than 100 

 miles away. 



Visiting the Great Dismal in 1853, 

 the famous landscape architect 

 Frederick Law Olmsted heard about 

 phantom colonies of fugitive slaves 

 whose children had been "born, lived 



Continued 



COASTWATCH 15 



