"The massive and foreboding Great Dismal Swamp sprawls over 2,000 square miles and spills over parts of Virginia and North Carolina. From the early seventeenth century, the nearly impassable Dismal frustrated settlement. However, what may have been an impediment to the expansion of slave society became an essential sanctuary for many of those who sought to escape it. In the depths of the Dismal, thousands of maroons--people who had emancipated themselves from enslavement and settled beyond the reach of enslavers--established new lives of freedom in a landscape deemed worthless and inaccessible by whites. This is the first book to fully examine the lives of these maroons and their struggles for liberation" The origins of Dismal Swamp maroonage -- Dismal Swamp maroons in the colonial era -- North American maroon wars, 1775-1831 -- Maroon life in the Great Dismal Swamp -- Dismal Swamp marronage triumphant -- Epilogue: From dismal freedom to the free dismal.