Harriet Ann Jacobs

Excerts from: “Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl” © 1861

“Another neighbor was a Mrs. Wade. At no hour of the day was there cessation of the lash on her premises. Her labors began with the dawn, and did not cease till long after nightfall. The barn was her particular place of torture. There she lashed the slaves with the might of a man. An old slave of hers once said to me, “It is hell in missis’s house. ‘Pears I can never get out. Day and night I prays to die.” The mistress died before the old woman, and, when dying, entreated her husband not to permit any one of her slaves to look on her after death. A slave who had nursed her children, and had still a child in her care, watched her chance, and stole with it in her arms to the room where lay her dead mistress. She gazed a while on her, then raised her hand and dealt two blows on her face, saying, as she did so, “The devil is got you now!” She forgot that the child was looking on. She had just begun to talk; and she said to her father, “I did see ma, and mammy did strike ma, so,” striking her own face with her little hand. The master was startled. He could not imagine how the nurse could obtain access to the room where the corpse lay; for he kept the door locked. He questioned her. She confessed that what the child had said was true, and told how she had procured the key. She was sold to Georgia.”

Many of us are familiar with the story of Anne Frank. For those who are not, Ann Frank was from Amsterdam, Netherlands. In 1942 as the persecution of Jews from the Nazi’s racist views on racial purity plunge Europe into the catastrophe that was WWII, the young girl and her family was force to hide in an attic for two years to escape what historian’s call the “Final Solution.” Unfortunately the family was discovered by the Gestapo and arrested. Following their arrest, the Franks were transported to concentration camps. In October 1944, Anne and her sister, Margot, were transferred from Auschwitz to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where they died a few months later. In 1947 the last member of the Frank family discovered that Ann had left a diary of her life in that small world imposed upon her by the racist regime. It was translated from its original Dutch version and first published in English in 1952 as The Diary of a Young Girl, and has since been translated into over 60 languages and has sold more that 30 million copies.

“I think we must get rid of slavery, or we must get rid of freedom.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson,

Linda Brent is the pseudonym under which Harriet Jacobs wrote this true and first hand account of what it was like for black women under the boot of slavery and sexual persecution. You might ask me why would I bring up the story of Anne Frank and correlate it with the story of Harriet Jacobs? Although the two stories hold a great deal of similarities, the main one I found to be central was that both children were forced to hide from the forces and consequences of racial hatred and bigotry. The one significant difference was that Harriet’s case happened over 110 years before Anne’s. World War II happened in the span of about 6 years. It took over 30 years before the story of Harriet Jacob was told. Even after it was told in 1861, with the country being engaged in a civil war, the nation’s attention was squarely focused on the death and destruction of the nation’s young men, black and white being killed by the hundreds of thousands in the battle of good versus evil, right versus wrong and liberty over subjugation by a brutal and tyrannical southern slavemaster…

“Hiring-day at the south takes place on the 1st of January. On the 2d, the slaves are expected to go to their new masters. On a farm, they work until the corn and cotton are laid. They then have two holidays. Some masters give them a good dinner under the trees. This over, they work until Christmas eve. If no heavy charges are meantime brought against them, they are given four or five holidays, whichever the master or overseer may think proper. Then comes New Year’s eve; and they gather together their little alls, or more properly speaking, their little nothings, and wait anxiously for the dawning of day. At the appointed hour the grounds are thronged with men, women, and children, waiting, like criminals, to hear their doom pronounced. The slave is sure to know who is the most humane, or cruel master, within forty miles of him. It is easy to find out, on that day, who clothes and feeds his slaves well; for he is surrounded by a crowd, begging, “Please, massa, hire me this year. I will work very hard, massa.” If a slave is unwilling to go with his new master, he is whipped, or locked up in jail, until he consents to go, and promises not to run away during the year. Should he chance to change his mind, thinking it justifiable to violate an extorted promise, woe unto him if he is caught! The whip is used till the blood flows at his feet; and his stiffened limbs are put in chains, to be dragged in the field for days and days. If he lives until the next year, perhaps the same man will hire him again, without even giving him an opportunity of going to the hiring-ground.”

Harriet is a young child of four when her mother dies. Her mother’s mistress was very fond of her mother. The title mistress derives from the fact that when they were young they were playmates. As they grew older the colored child became the white child’s servant and the title mistress was bestowed on the white child. Most of the time mistresses and slaves that grew up together would remain friends throughout the slave’s life. But at a certain age decorum was established. “I am the master and you are the slave.” On the occasion that the slave was viewed as more desirable than the mistress, than things could get uglier than the mistress, if you know what I mean. Anyway, they had been very close. Jacobs grandmother had breast fed them both from the time they were babies. So when Jacob’s mother, died her mistress vowed to her mother that no harm would come to them and when she passed she would grant them freedom...

“When I was nearly twelve years old, my kind mistress sickened and died. As I saw the cheek grow paler, and the eye more glassy, how earnestly I prayed in my heart that she might live! I loved her; for she had been almost like a mother to me. My prayers were not answered. She died, and they buried her in the little churchyard, where, day after day, my tears fell upon her grave. I was sent to spend a week with my grandmother. I was now old enough to begin to think of the future; and again and again I asked myself what they would do with me. I felt sure I should never find another mistress so kind as the one who was gone. She had promised my dying mother that her children should never suffer for any thing; and when I remembered that, and recalled her many proofs of attachment to me, I could not help having some hopes that she had left me free. My friends were almost certain it would be so. They thought she would be sure to do it, on account of my mother’s love and faithful service. But, alas! we all know that the memory of a faithful slave does not avail much to save her children from the auction block.”

When Harriet’s mistress died, she did not free her. Instead all of the children were sold to other slave owners. Harriet was bequeath to her sister’s daughter. The child was not of age to legally hold slaves so her stewardship was left to the child parents. The child’s father was the main character of the story. Indeed it was because of him that Harriet felt she had to tell the real story of the debauchery and sexual abuse hidden from the world by the so called civility and chivalry of the southern way of life. He was a monster. Already the father of eleven children by slave women, he set his sights on Harriet. In the beginning I told you Harriet wrote under a pseudonym. Because of the Fugitive Slave act she did not use her real name on penalty of being returned to her former master. All the names in the book are fictitious but represent real people. After a few years of constant torment and the necessity of taken on a lover, who she would eventually bear two child with and who she thought would quell the insatiable sexual thirst of her abusive master, Harriet decided to try and escape to freedom. But there were other things which tore at the young girl’s heart. She dreaded telling her grandmother about the circumstances under which she bore child. Her grandmother had raised them in chastity. To tell her was going to be unbearable.

“The months passed on. I had many unhappy hours. I secretly mourned over the sorrow I was bringing on my grandmother, who had so tried to shield me from harm. I knew that I was the greatest comfort of her old age, and that it was a source of pride to her that I had not degraded myself, like most of the slaves. I wanted to confess to her that I was no longer worthy of her love; but I could not utter the dreaded words. As for Dr. Flint, I had a feeling of satisfaction and triumph in the thought of telling him. From time to time he told me of his intended arrangements, and I was silent. At last, he came and told me the cottage was completed, and ordered me to go to it. I told him I would never enter it. He said, “I have heard enough of such talk as that. You shall go, if you are carried by force; and you shall remain there.” I replied, “I will never go there. In a few months I shall be a mother.” He stood and looked at me in dumb amazement, and left the house without a word. I thought I should be happy in my triumph over him. But now that the truth was out, and my relatives would hear of it, I felt wretched. Humble as were their circumstances, they had pride in my good character. Now, how could I look at them in the face? My self-respect was gone! I had resolved that I would be virtuous, though I was a slave. I had said, “Let the storm beat! I will brave it till I die.” 

After several stopovers, Harriet finally settled at her grandmother house. Her grandmother was a free woman, but still subject to the brutish racial realities of the time. For seven years Harriet stayed in the attic crawl way above the house and down below she could hear her children who had been purchased by her white lover and given to their grandmother for care. Harriet’s former slave master had vowed never to let her marry and never to free her. She would die and be buried in a rough box on the land she hated with every fiber of her being. For seven years she looked out a small hole she had carved out in the roof, looked at her children laughing and playing in the yard below. They were unaware that their mother was but a few feet away.

“Early the next morning Mr. Flint was at my grandmother’s inquiring for me. She told him she had not seen me, and supposed I was at the plantation. He watched her face narrowly, and said, “Don’t you know any thing about her running off?” She assured him that she did not. He went on to say, “Last night she ran off without the least provocation. We had treated her very kindly. My wife liked her. She will soon be found and brought back. Are her children with you?” When told that they were, he said, “I am very glad to hear that. If they are here, she cannot be far off. If I find out that any of my niggers have had any thing to do with this damned business, I’ll give ’em five hundred lashes.” As he started to go to his father’s, he turned round and added, persuasively, “Let her be brought back, and she shall have her children to live with her.”The tidings made the old doctor rave and storm at a furious rate. It was a busy day for them. My grandmother’s house was searched from top to bottom. As my trunk was empty, they concluded I had taken my clothes with me. Before ten o’clock every vessel northward bound was thoroughly examined, and the law against harboring fugitives was read to all on board. At night a watch was set over the town. Knowing how distressed my grandmother would be, I wanted to send her a message; but it could not be done. Every one who went in or out of her house was closely watched. The doctor said he would take my children, unless she became responsible for them; which of course she willingly did. The next day was spent in searching. Before night, the following advertisement was posted at every corner, and in every public place for miles round: – $300 REWARD! Ran away from the subscriber, an intelligent, bright, mulatto girl, named Linda, 21 years of age. Five feet four inches high. Dark eyes, and black hair inclined to curl; but it can be made straight. Has a decayed spot on a front tooth. She can read and write, and in all probability will try to get to the Free States. All persons are forbidden, under penalty of law, to harbor or employ said slave. $150 will be given to whoever takes her in the state, and $300 if taken out of the state and delivered to me, or lodged in jail. – Dr. Flint.”

As I have said Harriet spent several years in the attic of her grandmother’s house before escaping North. One of the reason’s she spent so much time in the small cramped living space, was that she ran away during the Nat Turner Rebellion. The two-day rebellion of both slaves and free black people begin in Southampton County, Virginia on August 21, 1831. The rebellion caused the death of approximately 60 white men, women and children. Now you know them rock hard racist wasn’t going to have that. They immediately retaliated. During the hunt for Turner, the white militias and mobs attacked blacks in the area, killing an estimated 120, most of whom had nothing to do with the rebellion. Harriet speaks of her time during the rebellion in her book. After the rebellion was put under control, southern states put severe restrictions on slave and free blackman movements. They could not meet in groups, free black men had to have their papers on them if challenged, they could not bear arms. In the Carolinas a white clergymen would have to be present at all church services. Unaccompanied slave who were off their master’s property were subject to beatings and lynchings. So you see with the restrictions placed on blacks after the rebellion and the fact that Harriet had $300.00 bounty on her head, any attempt at escape in that climate would have been futile. On November 5, 1831, Turner was tried for “conspiring to rebel and making insurrection”, convicted, and sentenced to death.  Turner was hanged on November 11 in Jerusalem, Virginia. His body was flayed and beheaded as an example to frighten other would-be rebels. Turner received no formal burial; his headless remains were possibly buried in an unmarked grave. A skull said to have been Turner’s was contributed to the College of Wooster in Ohio upon its incorporation in 1866. When the school’s only academic building burned down in 1901, the skull was saved by Dr. H. N. Mateer. Visitors recalled seeing a certificate, signed by a physician in Southampton County in 1866, that attested to the authenticity of the skull. The skull was eventually misplaced. The skull surfaced again in 2002 when it was given to Richard G. Hatcher, the former mayor of Gary, Indiana, for the collection of a civil rights museum he planned to build there. In 2016, Hatcher returned the skull to two of Turner’s descendants. Yep, there are descendants of Nat Turner still here.

Eventually Harriet was able to escape. She was helped by some abolitionist in Philadelphia. Soon afterwards she made her way to New York, where she ran into her daughter Louisa. The two would remain together until her her death. (That’s Louisa Jacobs pictured on the right.) It was in New York that Lydia Childs, an ardent abolitionist and women’s rights activist convinced Harriet to write her story. Jacobs shaped her slave narrative to appeal to middle-class white Christian women in the North, focusing on the detrimental effect of slavery on women’s chastity and sexual virtues. She insisted on showing that black slaves were women and mothers, too, challenging the white middle-class cult of womanhood as too narrowly construed. Slave women had often been blamed when white men used them sexually, and Jacobs wanted to show how they were abused by the impossible power relationships. Christian women could perceive how slavery was a temptation to masculine lusts. The later part of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl was devoted to Jacobs’ struggle to free her two children after she escaped. Harriet Jacobs story spans from 1813 to 1898 and covers the epochs which would become cornerstones in the foundation of civil right and women’s rights for generation to come. In this article I have included some excerpts from her book so that you may enjoy a first hand account of what it was like to be a women slave in the antebellum south of the 1800’s. Her complete work can read on the Project Gutenberg EBooks.

Harriet Ann Jacobs died in 1897 in Washington, DC. and was buried at Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her daughter Louisa was later buried beside her. Harriet’s headstone reads: “Patient in tribulation, fervent in spirit serving the Lord”.