The Landscape of Resistance

By the antebellum period, slaves in the South Carolina Low Country were tied to a plantation space designed to control and limit their activities.

Lawmakers and slaveholders had lain out in their statues and in their plantation journals, a theory of mastery designed to restrict slave movement.

Tickets, curfews and roll calls limited the ability of slaves to move freely. In addition, slaves were forbidden from leaving the plantation space without a pass.

Slave patrols stopped blacks on the road and demanded their passes. They entered slave cabins to see that all were present and no fugitives from other plantations were being harbored.

Patrols were most active on Saturdays, Sundays and holidays hoping to catch slaves abroad without a pass.

In spite of the best efforts of their masters and the slave patrols, slaves were able to mark and claim their own landscapes which were on the periphery of the plantation.

The landscapes which included the waterways of the Low Country went unnoticed by their masters but provided the slaves with meeting places and rendezvous points. The slaves' acclimation to the natural environment enabled them to carve out their own domains quite separate from their masters.

Deep in the woods, away from slaveholder's eyes they held secret parties where they danced, performed music, drank alcohol, and courted.

The plantation system had enslaved Africans but it also allowed them the opportunity to piece back together their lives and culture.

Slaves battled the injustice of their captivity by creating their own world within the plantation, which utilized their quarters, fields, gardens, barns and outbuildings as part of a unique landscape apart from their masters.