Forest Joe and the Complicated Legacy of Freedom Seeking

Congaree National Park

Congaree National Park Photo Gallery

By Dr. Joshua Strayhorn, Mellon Humanities Postdoctoral Fellow

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On Sunday, May 27^th, 1821, Joe, a maroon, and two of his companions raided the plantation of George Ford on South Island near Charleston, South Carolina for cattle. While there, Ford and several of his slaves discovered Joe and his band. During the ensuing conflict, Jack, a maroon accompanying Joe, shot and killed Ford. While both Jacks were captured, Joe managed to escape and spent the next two years evading capture by moving up through the river and swamp systems of the South Carolina lowcountry.¹ Joe was described as well statured, over six feet tall, and fair skinned but not mulatto. He escaped from his enslaver, Mr. Carroll, in Richland County, SC and formed a maroon community in the swamps of lowcountry South Carolina.² For two years following George Ford’s killing, Joe remained at large and earned the name “Forest Joe” because of his mythical persona and elusive nature.³ Forest Joe’s freedom seeking story does not fit the neat narratives we often tell ourselves about the purity of enslaved people’s actions. However, his story and the stories of other maroon so-called bandits demonstrate the diversity of freedom seeking narratives.⁴ Their stories demand that we allow for the full spectrum of humanity in the interpretation and narration of freedom seeking.

Playing card depiction of three-fingered Jack who was a notorious maroon leader in Jamaica. South Carolina officials and local people stated that Forest Joe reminded them of Jack.

Image courtesy of The New-York Historical Society Museum and Library

The threat of enslaved fugitivity and revolt remained top of mind for enslavers in the South Carolina lowcountry, and enslaved people used the river systems, swamps, and the port city of Charleston as a means of escape and resistance. The enslaved became masters of the river systems, and it gave them an uncommon level of freedom.⁵ Slave runaway ads mentioned enslaved people who frequented the Wateree, Congaree, Santee, Ashley, Edisto, Savannah, and Cooper rivers as a means of trade, communication, and freedom seeking. The river systems, some going as far inland as Columbia, were a highway for maroon communities in the state.⁶

Congaree National Park

Congaree National Park Photo Gallery

In addition, South Carolina’s river systems fed several swamps in the lowcountry. Tidal swamps irrigated the rice fields, but the back swamps, that were unsuitable to cultivation, were largely left alone. It was here, among the cypress and tupelo trees, where maroons found a degree of autonomy.⁷ It was reported that Joe had established a maroon camp in these swamps, at the confluence of the Congaree and Wateree rivers. The Congaree native peoples, like the Santee and Wateree and others, lived in the Congaree floodplain for hundreds of years before European colonization. However, shortly after European contact, many of the Congaree were killed by disease or violently removed in conflicts like the Yemassee war in the early 18^th century.⁸ South Carolina settlers colonized the Congaree floodplain and established plantations along the river. However, like many swamp landscapes, the floodplain was untamable. Enslaved people found freedom in the thick brush and canebrakes.

Forest Joe's reported incidents took place across four districts from Georgetown to Richland.

An illustrated atlas, geographical, statistical, and historical, of the United States and the adjacent countries / T.G. Bradford. Located in the South Caroliniana Library. Call Number: Map 1838 No. 1 Size 3

The exact size of Forest Joe’s maroon community is unknown. However, according to maroon historian Sylviane Diouf, the group could not have been much larger than twenty people which included women and children.⁹ He was aided by enslaved people on plantations near and around his camp with supplies and information. For protection, Forest Joe and his companions were heavily armed and use weapons for defense and for their raids. Forest Joe was even reported to have used a makeshift bullet proof vest that, “no ball can penetrate.”¹⁰ Throughout his time of fugitivity, Forest Joe and his band raided several plantations in the region, threatening enslaved people and stealing crops and supplies along the way. In June of 1821, the Charleston Courier reported that Joe and an elderly enslaved man robbed a house in the Williamsburgh district for ammunition and threatened an enslaved girl if she told anyone.¹¹ On August 29, 1823, Forest Joe killed an enslaved driver in broad daylight on the plantation of James Richardson in the Sumter district. According to reports, Joe killed the man because he returned a woman who was supposed to be Forest Joe’s wife to slavery.¹²

Rough location of Forest Joe's camp, at the confluence of the Congaree and Wateree rivers.

"Map of South Carolina " A Finley Map 1826 No. 1 Size 3

After Forest Joe killed the enslaved driver, the local community had had enough of Forest Joe’s exploits. On October 2, 1823, the Pineville Police Association in the Charleston District was organized to apprehend Forest Joe and his band of maroons. In their minutes they stated that “a gang of desperate Runaways, who are encamped in the vicinity of this canal…have committed many Depredations in this Neighbourhood and elsewhere.”¹³ This organization, in collaboration with many of the enslaved people in the area, had little trouble finding Forest Joe. Several days later, he and members of his maroon community were killed in a gunfight with an armed party led by Col. Manning.¹⁴

It is difficult to assess the motive, actions, and plots of maroons like Forest Joe because contemporary sources often label them as bandits, fugitives, criminals and people who are undeserving of empathy.¹⁵ However, we must be critical of these sources and the pictures they paint of enslaved people. Forest Joe, and other maroons who stole, murdered, ran away, and organized insurrections represent the diversity of freedom seeking methods and objectives. While their stories may not map onto the neat narratives we tell about the Underground Railroad or enslaved resistance, they are just as, if not more, important to understanding the complexity of enslaved people’s politics and their actions to claim freedom in the revolutionary era.

Mellon Humanities Postdoctoral Fellowship

This article was made possible through the National Park Service by a grant from the National Park Foundation through generous support from the Mellon Foundation. The Mellon Humanities Postdoctoral Fellowship program is administered through a partnership between NPS, NPF, and American Conservation Experience. 

Sources

¹ Sylviane Diouf, Slavery’s Exiles: The Story of the American Maroons (New York: New York University Press, 2014), 244.
² Diouf, Slavery’s Exiles, 243-244
³ Diouf, Slavery’s Exiles, 246-247.
⁴ For more on maroon “bandits,” see Chapter 9 in Sylviane Diouf, Slavery’s Exiles.^[1]
5 For more on enslaved patroons see, Lynn B. Harris, Patroons and Periguas: Enslaved Watermen and Watercraft of the Lowcountry (Columbia: The University of South Carolina Press, 2014)
⁶ Timothy James Lockley, Maroon Communities in South Carolina: A Documentary Record (Columbia: The University of South Carolina Press, 90
⁷ Tim Lockley and David Doddington,” Maroon and Slave Communities in South Carolina Before 1865” The South Carolina Historical Magazine, vol. 113, no. 2 (April 2012), 129-130.
⁸ For more, see Alan Gallay, The Indian Slave Trade: The Rise of the English Empire in the American South, 1670-1717 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002)
9 Diouf, Slavery’s Exiles, 248.
10 Charleston City Gazette, June 25^th, 1821.
¹¹ Charleston Courier, July 2, 1821, in Lockley, Maroon Communities in South Carolina, 105.
¹² Diouf, Slavery’s Exiles, 251.
¹³ Pineville Police Association, 1823-1840, vol 1; Secretary Book, South Carolina Historical Society in Lockley, Maroon Communities in South Carolina, 111.
¹⁴ Southern Chronicle, October 8, 1823, in Lockley, Maroon Communities in South Carolina, 113.
¹⁵ For more of a conversation on banditry and its influence on the perception of maroons, see Chapter 9 in Diouf, Slavery’s Exiles.