Existing comment:
Thomas Moran's painting: The Slave Hunt [Dismal Swamp], 1864
Virginia's famed Dismal Swamp became associated with fugitive slaves because some actually took refuge there. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote a poem in 1855 entitled "The Slave in the Dismal Swamp," and in 1856 Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote the novel, Dred: A Tale of the Dismal Swamp. Both tell of runaways who, even out of bondage, are deprived of their freedom because the landscaped itself entraps them. |