MDDM Washington, Gershom, Great Dismal Swamp

[jbor]

On Mon, 1 Jul 2002 09:24:38 -0700 <millison@[omitted] wrote

> Gershom can sing and dance and tell
> jokes, but at any moment he's liable to be shipped off to dig that Great
> Dismal Swamp Canal.

(and so on)

Of course, it's highly improbable that GW would have sent Gersh off to dig
that canal "at any moment" in 1766, or even any time soon thereafter, seeing
as how that the project wasn't begun until 1793, as the "historical record"
has shown us:

http://www.albemarle-nc.com/camden/history/canal.htm

Poor Gersh, shovel in hand, would have been the only one there!

A more likely connection, and spur for Dixon's "Didn't they tell us,-- "
gaffe (279.34), in my opinion, is that the Great Dismal was a notorious
hide-out for runaway slaves.

    There was no shortage of speculation about how many runaways took to the
    Dismal. "The Great Swamp is supposed to afford concealment to upwards of
    a thousand runaway slaves," an anonymous traveler wrote in _Chambers'
    Edinburgh Journal_, December 1850, "who glean a miserable living within
    its gloomy recesses, though many are believed to be secretly supplied
    with food by friends more fortunate in their owners than were the
    fugitives."

Two quite famous poems of the 19th C., by Sir Thomas Moore and Henry
Longfellow, celebrate the tragedy of African-American slaves hiding in the
Great Dismal:

http://www.pinn.net/~swampy/lore.html

http://www.vmnh.org/swmpsusn.htm

And this ties in with the later episode, where, after Dixon punches the
cruel slave-driver in the face and takes his whip, the freed slaves say:

"Sheriff's men'll be here any moment,-- don't worry about us,-- some will
stay, some'll get away, but you'd better go, right now." (699.15)

The ones who "get away" might very well end up in the Great Dismal. Ironic,
certainly, but not necessarily to GW's detriment. Noteworthy here also is
that some of the slaves will choose to "stay".

What's very interesting, in piecing together the historical record on the
Great Dismal and George, is that in GW's six visits to inspect the Swamp
there is no mention made of him seeking or finding even one runaway slave.
Just speculating, of course, but I'd say he most certainly knew that the
swamp was a place where runaway slaves hid, and I wonder if he did actually
come across any, or whether he himself assisted them by providing food, or
by organising food to be supplied to them ... ?

http://www.norfolkhistorical.org/highlights/14.html

best