Harriet Ann Jacobs
Harriet Ann Jacobs
Harriet Ann Jacobswas an African-American writer who escaped from slavery and was later freed. She became an abolitionist speaker and reformer. Jacobs wrote an autobiographical novel, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, first serialized in a newspaper and published as a book in 1861 under the pseudonym Linda Brent. It was a reworking of the genres of slave narrative and sentimental novel, and was one of the first books to address the struggle for freedom by female slaves,...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionWriter
CountryUnited States of America
DURING the first years of my service in Dr. Flint's family, I was accustomed to share some indulgences with the children of my mistress
Always it gave me a pang that my children had no lawful claim to a name.
I was ordered to go for flowers, that my mistress's house might be decorated for an evening party. I spent the day gathering flowers and weaving them into festoons, while the dead body of my father was lying within a mile of me. What cared my owners for that? he was merely a piece of property. Moreover, they thought he had spoiled his children, by teaching them to feel that they were human beings. This was blasphemous doctrine for a slave to teach; presumptuous in him, and dangerous to the masters.
The slave child had no thought for the morrow; but there came that blight, which too surely waits on every human being born to be a chattel.
Could you have seen that mother clinging to her child, when they fastened the irons upon his wrists; could you have heard her heart-rending groans, and seen her bloodshot eyes wander wildly from face to face, vainly pleading for mercy; could you have witnessed that scene as I saw it, you would exclaim, Slavery is damnable!
Notwithstanding my grandmother's long and faithful service to her owners, not one of her children escaped the auction block. These God-breathing machines are no more, in the sight of their masters, than the cotton they plant, or the horses they tend.
My mistress was so kind to me that I was always glad to do her bidding, and proud to labor for her as much as my young years would permit.
I WAS born a slave; but I never knew it till six years of happy childhood had passed away
Every where the years bring to all enough of sin and sorrow; but in slavery the very dawn of life is darkened by these shadows
But I now entered on my fifteenth year - a sad epoch in the life of a slave girl. My master began to whisper foul words in my ear. Young as I was, I could not remain ignorant of their import
Dr. Flint had sworn that he would make me suffer, to my last day, for this new crime against him, as he called it; and as long as he had me in his power he kept his word
For years, my master had done his utmost to pollute my mind with foul images, and to destroy the pure principles inculcated by my grandmother, and the good mistress of my childhood
The secrets of slavery are concealed like those of the Inquisition.
Death is better than slavery.