"The Hunted Slaves"

1862

Richard Ansdell depicted African Americans fleeing enslavement.

Painted by British artist Richard Ansdell in 1862, during the American Civil War, The Hunted Slaves was inspired by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem, The Slave in the Dismal Swamp.

Ansdell expertly and sympathetically depicts a young couple’s struggle for freedom in the Dismal Swamp, a refuge for Native Americans and African Americans fleeing enslavement, including members of Turner’s rebellion. The hatchet pictured here resembles the axes and scythe used in Myers’ The Grim Work of Death. Had Ansdell been an American artist, this depiction of courageous, armed African Americans fleeing enslavement would have been controversial.