traveled south to eastern North Carolina, where conspiracies were reported in May. Newspapers attributed these to the influence of a spiritual leader named Tom Copper, a maroon who, according to the Raleigh Register, had “a camp in one of the swamps” near Elizabeth City. Newspapers grew reluctant to report on the conspiracies, and silence took the place of their usual paranoia in an effort to prevent the spread of rebellion. At this time, large numbers of slaves or fugitives were executed or punished in counties adjacent to the swamp territory where Copper was headquartered and thought to be organizing (Camden, Bertie, Currituck, Martin, Halifax, and Pasquotank counties). In retaliation for this repression, in early June 1802, six maroons on horseback fought a battle with Pasquotank militia in a failed effort to liberate comrades being held in the Elizabeth City jail.
Historian Herbert Aptheker writes of the significant multiracial element in this period of revolt:
A striking feature of the Virginia conspiracies of 1802 is that evidence of white participation is fairly good. Thus, a Mr. John B. Scott, while informing the Governor on April 23 of the trial and execution of slaves in Halifax, stated, “I have just received information that three white persons are concerned in the plot; and they have arms and ammunition concealed under their houses, and were to give aid when the negroes should begin.” One slave witness, Lewis, twice declared that whites, “that is, the common run of poor white people” were involved.47
The presence and participation of the Great Dismal Swamp maroons becomes most clear in this third insurrectionary period of 1800–1802, when unrest spread across the state’s border and involvement by whites as well as Blacks became explicit. Counties surrounding the swamp, three in Virginia and six in North Carolina, all saw increased guerilla raids in this time. War bands on the North Carolina side, led by Tom Copper, were multiracial and originated just east of the Scratch Hall maroon settlement.
Insurrectionary activity continued to occur over the next decade, with specific reports coming from counties that bordered the swamp in 1805, 1808, and 1810. Throughout the period, planters reported “distressing apprehensions of fire and other casualties.” In 1808, the planter citizens of Edenton in Chowan County, North Carolina, established a Black Code to protect “our wives and children [who are] surrounded by desperadoes, white and Black.” By no coincidence, Chowan County was the area most adjacent to Scratch Hall.48
The Influence of the Maroons on Slave Insurrection
The period between 1790 and 1810, and in particular the three insurrectionary eras discussed here, represent a tremendously inspiring yet difficult time in African American and labor history, with slaves facing as much repression and consolidation of white power as they did opportunities for rebellion. Compared with strategies of individual escape, these attempts at revolt often presented great risk and little immediate benefit for those participating. But on a systemic level, the increasing frequency, violence, and regional coordination of revolt at this time seriously destabilized the plantation economy. This social turbulence cost a tremendous amount of money in lost production and significant levels of anxiety and paranoia for white populations who, if we are to believe their newspapers, were in near-constant fear for their lives.
This fear spread like a virus. The increasing ungovernability of the plantation system in the Tidewater region did not go unobserved by the rest of the country. The specter of massive Black or even multiracial rebellion entered the consciousness of affluent white families, newspapers, and state assemblies up and down the East Coast, and can be directly tied to a number of important changes: First, by 1804 all states north of the Mason-Dixon line had either abolished slavery or passed laws planning for its gradual abolition. Second, in 1808, US and British law banned the international slave trade. Both of these things made the institution of slavery and the plantation system more vulnerable to attack.
The timing of both of these developments directly points to the increased unrest by slaves and their co-conspirators in the mid-Atlantic and the Caribbean regions. The slave trade and the plantation system it thrived upon were immensely profitable; these new legal constraints should not be understood as casual, insignificant, or inevitable. While certainly a variety of factors contributed to the political context in which these two developments occurred, we would argue that fear, rather than humanitarianism, was their driving force. Beyond catalyzing these policy shifts, we would point to the sense of pride and dignity that slaves across the United States could take in these rebellions. In lifting the sense of what was possible, this period forever changed the scope of insurrection from the local to the regional and national, from the individual relief of escape to a collective revolt directed at the destruction of the existing economic order.
Three factors help to explain the increasing size and ambition of the insurrectionary activity of this period. Already mentioned was the influential role of massive slave rebellions in the French Caribbean, specifically the revolution beginning in Saint Domingue in 1791.49 Geography as well as timing would have played a role here, as Norfolk and Portsmouth were two important ports from which news of the Haitian revolution would have spread. These cities both lie near the edge of the Great Dismal; news of the slave takeovers in the Caribbean, carried north by the servants and domestic slaves of Frenchmen fleeing the islands, could have easily traveled by maroon from the port cities to any number of counties on both the North Carolina and Virginia sides of the swamp.
Government officials were well aware of the potential disaster if revolt spread from Haiti to the mid-Atlantic coast. It was documented by officials that a Black steward of the trade ship Minerva introduced insurrectionary literature from the Caribbean in 1809 in Charleston, which was read aloud to fellow slaves by Denmark Vesey. Shortly before the 1820 uprising that carries Vesey’s name, South Carolina banned the import of such literature.50 Though Charleston is far south of the Great Dismal, one can infer that similar processes played out in port cities like Norfolk on the swamp’s border.
The second factor can be found in the demographics of the states in question. From 1790–1800, the Black population of North Carolina increased by 32 percent, while the white population increased by only 17 percent. In Virginia, a similar shift took place when one factors in the free Black population, and in particular when one focuses on the Tidewater region. Increasing ratios of Blacks to whites would have made autonomous travel, communication, education, and planning easier.51
Thirdly, and most significantly, lies the role of the maroon communities of the Great Dismal Swamp in encouraging and coordinating rebellion across the Tidewater region. Newspaper reports, letters between family members, and the counties in which revolt so consistently occurred, all point to the importance of the maroons in this period. The existence of a liberated frontier like the swamp would have been a tremendous encouragement for slaves considering escape or revolt in this period. In addition to providing refuge for would-be insurrectionaries, the maroons were mobile, offered rare military experience, and played a key role in coordinating revolt by way of spiritual leaders.
An important figure in this last element was General Peter II, a maroon leader who sought to more formally establish bonds with slave insurrectionists on the surrounding plantations.52 In referring to this coordination, one supporter of Peter II was overheard saying, “there would be an earthquake here [as well as in North Carolina] in the same night.”53
Though Black spiritual leaders traveled from plantation to plantation in the Tidewater area, their headquarters were in the swamp, and many of them reported to a central spiritual council. As Leaming writes on the subject,
These “slave preachers,” chosen by their fellows in bondage,
