Tag

slavery

The Dismal Swamp Canal: George Washington’s Dream and the Enslaved Laborers Who Dug It

Dug by hand through a Virginia–North Carolina swamp, the Dismal Swamp Canal opened in 1805. Enslaved workers built it, and fugitives hid in the swamp around it.

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North Carolina

Seven Years in a Crawlspace: Harriet Jacobs’s Escape from Edenton

To stay near her children and flee the man who claimed to own her, Harriet Jacobs hid in a space too low to stand in. She stayed nearly seven years.

Civil War

Harriet Jacobs of Edenton: Seven Years in an Attic and the Making of a Freedom Narrative

Harriet Jacobs hid for nearly seven years in a space above a shed in Edenton, N.C., then wrote one of the most important slave narratives by a woman.