Slave Economy and Petit Marronage in Virginia and North Carolina, 1730 to 1860
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“lurking about the neighbourhood”: Slave Economy and Petit Marronage in Virginia and North Carolina, 1730 to 1860 Dissertation Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Marcus P. Nevius, Ph.D. Graduate Program in History The Ohio State University 2016 Dissertation Committee: Leslie M. Alexander, Advisor Kenneth W. Goings Margaret Ellen Newell Copyright by Marcus Peyton Nevius 2016 Abstract Titled “lurking about the neighbourhood”: Slave Economy and Petit Marronage in Virginia and North Carolina, 1730-1860,” this dissertation examines petit marronage, reflected in the actions of small groups of enslaved people who hid out for long periods of time in the region’s swamps and forests. Founded upon a case study of the Great Dismal Swamp, this project argues that maroons who “lurked about” remained an integral source of much needed labor, a fact that at once tied maroons to the two states’ broader slave societies while the swamp functioned as, one historian has noted, a “rival geography” that enslaved people used to resist bondage. Enslaved people were the core labor source for whites who sought to build classic plantations, such as Henry King Burgwyn of Northampton County, North Carolina. But for others, such as Dismal Swamp Land Company agent Samuel Proctor, the contradictions inherent to the fallacy of race were less of a concern. To these men, utilizing enslaved labor to develop its swamplands was of foremost importance. To negotiate the conditions of their labor, as slaves or as quasi-free men, was of utmost consequence to Virginia and North Carolina’s maroons. Because slave labor was so central to the aims of plantation owners, land company agents, and commission merchants, enslaved peoples’ resistance against outright exploitation exerted significant pressures upon slave societies. The most persistent form of this pressure was petit marronage. Local white commission merchants dispatched and hired enslaved and free blacks to perform the arduous tasks required in ii the production of swamp products. Some of these bondspersons fled such camps into the deepest regions of the swamp, but retained access to the broader world outside the swamp through contact with slave laborers. As a result, petit marronage provided the quintessential complication to the formations of race, slavery, and early capitalism in the lower Chesapeake and in the Albemarle. To make the case for this argument, this work is founded in a primary source base including runaway advertisements; planters’ and merchants’ records, inventories, letterbooks and correspondence; colonial, provincial and state records; abolitionist pamphlets and broadsides; slave narratives; and the records and inventories of private companies. iii Dedication To my mother Wini, thank you for encouraging my dreams of being a scholar. To my father Gary, my brothers Garrett and Derrick, thank you for being the bedrock upon which my personality rests. To my wife, Jihan, without your love and support, this project would not have been possible. iv Acknowledgments This project has been encouraged and supported by many good friends, peers, colleagues, and professors. Among the first were the folks at North Carolina Central University. Comrades in this “academic struggle” include D’Weston Haywood, A.J. Donaldson, Brandon Winford, James Blackwell, and TaKeia Anthony. My thesis advisor, Freddie L. Parker, and committee members, Jim C. Harper, and Joshua Nadel, offered sage advise during an early stage of this project. At each yearly meeting of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, Jerry Gershenhorn, Lydia Lindsey, Tony Frazier, and Carlton Wilson have been sure to ask about this project’s progress. At Ohio State University, colleagues in the Writing Center entertained my interest in marronage. These folks include Dickie Selfe, Aleta Burns, Katie DeLuca, Kate Shipley, Carmen Meza, Michelle Cohen, Sara Franssen Wilder, Blake Wilder, Lori Critcher, and Krupal Amin. In the department of history, William Sturkey, Tyran Steward, Curtis Austin, Hasan Kwame Jeffries, and Stephanie Shaw set the standard for me to achieve. Cam Shriver, Jamie Goodall, Jessica Wallace, Tim Leech, Dani Anthony, Jessica Blissit, John Brown, Danielle Grevious, and Sarajaneé Davis encouraged me to remain steadfast in my pursuit of the Great Dismal’s maroons. Mark Boonshoft and Kevin Vrevich graciously sifted through chapter drafts and offered insightful advice. In advance of my dissertation defense, ‘Doc’ Samuel Hodges seized the opportunity to serve as an external reader. My dissertation committee members, Kenneth Goings and v Margaret Newell, maintained genuine interest in this project through to its completion. My dissertation advisor, Leslie Alexander, is truly a champion of this work, and of this early stage of my career. To each of my readers, I have benefited as much from your interest as I have from your kind criticisms. All errors herein remain my own. This project has also benefited from generous research support. I thank the Department of History and the College of Arts and Humanities for several grants and awards. I thank Frances S. Pollard and John McClure, of the Virginia Historical Society, for providing a Mellon Fellowship. Alan Gallay and Noeleen McIlvenna encouraged me to visit the Dismal, and as a result, I benefited from five weeks of study and fellowship during an archaeological field school led by Dan Sayers of American University. During the field school, I became a more well rounded scholar in conversations with Julia Klima, Mark Hamilton, Kathryn Benjamin Golden, and Daniel Lynch. In Spring 2016, Ruth Dunnell, chair of the Department of History at Kenyon College, offered me a home in Glenn McNair’s office. There, I finished revisions to this dissertation while teaching a seminar on Free Black Communities in the Early United States. The seminar’s students included Quashae Hendryx, Emily Hills, Kelley Russell, Anna Cohen, and James Wojtal. Each challenged me to think more carefully about the subject, and about my dissertation. In January 2013, two great scholars of Black history ascended to the celestial resting place. Each brought her and his own special cynicism to bear in entertaining my incessant optimism about the academy. Sylvia Jacobs and Bob Engs, may you rest eternally in Heaven. vi Vita 2005................................................................B.A. History, North Carolina Central University 2010................................................................M.A. History, North Carolina Central University 2011 to present ..............................................Graduate Teaching Associate, Department of History, The Ohio State University Fields of Study Major Field: History vii Table of Contents Abstract .............................................................................................................................. ii Dedication ......................................................................................................................... iv Acknowledgments ............................................................................................................. v Vita .................................................................................................................................. vii List of Figures ................................................................................................................... ix Introduction ……………………….................................................................................... 1 Chapter 1: “a Very Mutinous People”: Slavery, the Egalitarian Spirit, the Formation of Race, and the Black Freedom Struggle in the Lower Chesapeake and the Albemarle, 1660-1730 ………..……………………………………………………………...……... 28 Chapter 2: “this Province Suffers by the Inhabitants and Slaves running away there where they are Succour’d”: The Establishment of a Slave Society in the Lowcountry and the Lower Cape Fear, 1722-1775 .......................................................................................... 60 Chapter 3: “The General of the Swamps”: Petit Marronage and Insurrection Conspiracies during the Long Revolutionary Era in the Valley of Humility, 1767-1802 ……………102 Chapter 4: “liv’d by himself in the Desert about 13 years”: The Great Dismal Swamp’s Hired Free Blacks, Enslaved Laborers, and Petit Marronage in the Early Nineteenth Century …………………………………………………………………………………150 Chapter 5: “a city of refuge in the midst of slavery”: Slave Labor Camps, Rising Abolitionism, and Petit Marronage in the Great Dismal during the Antebellum Era .... 192 Epilogue: “From Log Cabin to the Pulpit”: William H. Robinson and Petit Marronage at the Turn of the Century ………............………………………………………………. 227 References....................................................................................................................... 237 viii List of Illustrations Figure 1. Henry Mouzon, “An Accurate Map of North and South Carolina.”................. 94 Figure 2. James Cook and Henry Mouzon, “A map of North & South Carolina.”.......... 96 Figure 3. Henry Schenck Tanner, “A New Map of Nth Carolina.”.................................. 97 Figure 4. Photo, Washington Ditch Historical Marker .................................................. 116 Figure 5. Photo, Dismal Town Historical Marker ......................................................... 117 Figure 6. Print, “The Discovery of Nat Turner.” ……………………………………..