For most antebellum observers, the Great Dismal Swamp of Virginia
figured as a geography ripe for colonialisation, either economically as
farmland or space for development, or creatively as a haunted and
mysterious wilderness. But the swamp was more than just a geography to
be exploited for profit by powerful white planters; it was also a space of
interaction between slave society and a community of self-freed people of
colour. As scholars have increasingly noted, the swamp provided a sort of