Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (6 page)

Yellin began publishing her findings on Jacobs in 1981, demonstrating conclusively that Jacobs was the actual author of
Incidents.
Sterling included Jacobs’s letters in
We Are Your Sis
ters, published in 1984. Yellin’s research on the Jacobs family continues, and she is currently preparing the papers of both Harriet and John S. Jacobs for publication.
²
Historians such as John W. Blassingame doubted both the book’s truth value and its authenticity as the work of a former slave. In 1972 and 1979 Blassingame exaggerated the role of Lydia Maria Child and called Jacobs’s story “not credible” and “too melodramatic.”
³
Even in the 1980s, critics and historians continued their disparagement of Jacobs’s claim.

The 1987 publication of Yellin’s carefully researched and annotated edition by Harvard University Press converted literary critics, and they have continued to give the book far more attention than historians, perhaps in part because Yellin herself works out of an English department and publishes in literary journals. The historian Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, writing in 1988, followed Blassingame’s lead in disparaging
Incidents’s
usefulness as autobiography. For Fox-Genovese,
Incidents
should be read skeptically, as an improbably “crafted representation” resting upon “a great factual lie,” for Jacobs could not in fact have evaded Norcom’s sexual grasp.
⁴
Doubting historians are now the minority of Jacobs’s readers; since the late 1980s,
Incidents
has gained wide acceptance as an important black feminist autobiography. In 1987 Henry Louis Gates, Jr., included it in the one-volume
Classic Slave Narratives
(New York: New American Library) and, in 1988, in the multivolume
Schomburg Library of Nineteenth-Century Black Women Writers
(New York: Oxford University Press). The late 1990s witnessed the incorporation of
Incidents
into the college curriculum and the publication of editions for classroom use.

Notes

1
Harriet Jacobs,
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl,
ed. Walter Teller (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973).

2
Bibliographical information from the Jacobs family papers is not yet available.

3
John W. Blassingame,
The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South
(revised and enlarged edition) (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), 373.

4
Elizabeth Fox-Genovese,
Within the Plantation Household
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988), 392-394.

INCIDENTS
¹

IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL.

WRITTEN BY HERSELF.

“Northerners know nothing at all about Slavery. They think it is perpetual bondage only. They have no conception of the depth of
degradation
involved in that word, SLAVERY; if they had, they would never cease their efforts until so horrible a system was overthrown.”

A WOMAN OF NORTH Carolina.
²

“Rise up, ye women that are at ease! Hear my voice, ye careless daughters! Give ear unto my speech.”

ISAIAH XXXII.9.
³

EDITED BY L. MARIA CHILD.

BOSTON:
PUBLISHED FOR THE AUTHOR.
1861.

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1860, by

L. MARIA CHILD.

In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the

District of Massachusetts.

Preface by the Author

READER, BE ASSURED THIS narrative is no fiction. I am aware that some of my adventures may seem incredible; but they are, nevertheless, strictly true. I have not exaggerated the wrongs inflicted by Slavery; on the contrary, my descriptions fall far short of the facts. I have concealed the names of places, and given persons fictitious names. I had no motive for secrecy on my own account, but I deemed it kind and considerate towards others to pursue this course.

I wish I were more competent to the task I have undertaken. But I trust my readers will excuse deficiencies in consideration of circumstances. I was born and reared in Slavery; and I remained in a Slave State twenty-seven years. Since I have been at the North, it has been necessary for me to work diligently for my own support, and the education of my children. This has not left me much leisure to make up for the loss of early opportunities to improve myself; and it has compelled me to write these pages at irregular intervals, whenever I could snatch an hour from household duties.

When I first arrived in Philadelphia, Bishop Paine
⁴
advised me to publish a sketch of my life, but I told him I was altogether incompetent to such an undertaking. Though I have improved my mind somewhat since that time, I still remain of the same opinion; but I trust my motives will excuse what might otherwise seem presumptuous. I have not written my experiences in order to attract attention to myself; on the contrary, it would have been more pleasant to me to have been silent about my own history. Neither do I care to excite sympathy for my own sufferings. But I do earnestly desire to arouse the women of the North to a realizing sense of the condition of two millions of women at the South, still in bondage, suffering what I suffered, and most of them far worse. I want to add my testimony to that of abler pens to convince the people of the Free States what Slavery really is. Only by experience can any one realize how deep, and dark, and foul is that pit of abominations. May the blessing of God rest on this imperfect effort in behalf of my persecuted people!

LINDA BRENT

Introduction by the Editor

THE AUTHOR OF THE following autobiography is personally known to me, and her conversation and manners inspire me with confidence. During the last seventeen years, she has lived the greater part of the time with a distinguished family in New York,
⁵
and has so deported herself as to be highly esteemed by them. This fact is sufficient, without further credentials of her character. I believe those who know her will not be disposed to doubt her veracity, though some incidents in her story are more romantic than fiction.

At her request, I have revised her manuscript; but such changes as I have made have been mainly for purposes of condensation and orderly arrangement. I have not added any thing to the incidents, or changed the import of her very pertinent remarks. With trifling exceptions, both the ideas and the language are her own. I pruned excrescences a little, but otherwise I had no reason for changing her lively and dramatic way of telling her own story. The names of both persons and places are known to me; but for good reasons I suppress them.

It will naturally excite surprise that a woman reared in Slavery should be able to write so well. But circumstances will explain this. In the first place, nature endowed her with quick perceptions. Secondly, the mistress, with whom she lived till she was twelve years old, was a kind, considerate friend, who taught her to read and spell.
⁶
Thirdly, she was placed in favorable circumstances after she came to the North; having frequent intercourse with intelligent persons, who felt a friendly interest in her welfare, and were disposed to give her opportunities for self-improvement.

I am well aware that many will accuse me of indecorum for presenting these pages to the public; for the experiences of this intelligent and much-injured woman belong to a class which some call delicate subjects, and others indelicate. This peculiar phase of Slavery has generally been kept veiled; but the public ought to be made acquainted with its monstrous features, and I willingly take the responsibility of presenting them with the veil withdrawn. I do this for the sake of my sisters in bondage, who are suffering wrongs so foul, that our ears are too delicate to listen to them. I do it with the hope of arousing conscientious and reflecting women at the North to a sense of their duty in the exertion of moral influence on the question of Slavery, on all possible occasions. I do it with the hope that every man who reads this narrative will swear solemnly before God that, so far as he has power to prevent it, no fugitive from Slavery shall ever be sent back to suffer in that loathsome den of corruption and cruelty.

L. MARIA CHILD

INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL, SEVEN YEARS CONCEALED.

I

Childhood

I
WAS BORN A slave; but I never knew it till six years of happy childhood had passed away. My father
¹
was a carpenter, and considered so intelligent and skilful in his trade, that, when buildings out of the common line were to be erected, he was sent for from long distances, to be head workman. On condition of paying his mistress two hundred dollars a year, and supporting himself, he was allowed to work at his trade, and manage his own affairs. His strongest wish was to purchase his children; but, though he several times offered his hard earnings for that purpose, he never succeeded. In complexion my parents were a light shade of brownish yellow, and were termed mulattoes. They lived together in a comfortable home; and, though we were all slaves, I was so fondly shielded that I never dreamed I was a piece of merchandise, trusted to them for safe keeping, and liable to be demanded of them at any moment. I had one brother, William,
²
who was two years younger than myself—a bright, affectionate child. I had also a great treasure in my maternal grandmother,
³
who was a remarkable woman in many respects. She was the daughter of a planter in South Carolina, who, at his death, left her mother and his three children free, with money to go to St. Augustine, where they had relatives. It was during the Revolutionary War; and they were captured on their passage, carried back, and sold to different purchasers. Such was the story my grandmother used to tell me; but I do not remember all the particulars. She was a little girl when she was captured and sold to the keeper of a large hotel. I have often heard her tell how hard she fared during childhood. But as she grew older she evinced so much intelligence, and was so faithful, that her master and mistress could not helping seeing it was for their interest to take care of such a valuable piece of property. She became an indispensable personage in the household, officiating in all capacities, from cook and wet nurse to seamstress. She was much praised for her cooking; and her nice crackers became so famous in the neighborhood that many people were desirous of obtaining them. In consequence of numerous requests of this kind, she asked persmission of her mistress to bake crackers at night, after all the household work was done; and she obtained leave to do it, provided she would clothe herself and her children from the profits. Upon these terms, after working hard all day for her mistress, she began her midnight bakings, assisted by her two oldest children. The business proved profitable; and each year she laid by a little, which was saved for a fund to purchase her children. Her master died, and the property was divided among his heirs. The widow had her dower in the hotel, which she continued to keep open. My grandmother remained in her service as a slave; but her children were divided among her master’s children. As she had five, Benjamin,
⁴
the youngest one, was sold, in order that each heir might have an equal portion of dollars and cents. There was so little difference in our ages that he seemed more like my brother than my uncle. He was a bright, handsome lad, nearly white; for he inherited the complexion my grandmother had derived from Anglo-Saxon ancestors. Though only ten years old, seven hundred and twenty dollars were paid for him. His sale was a terrible blow to my grandmother; but she was naturally hopeful, and she went to work with renewed energy, trusting in time to be able to purchase some of her children. She had laid up three hundred dollars, which her mistress one day begged as a loan, promising to pay her soon. The reader probably knows that no promise or writing given to a slave is legally binding; for, according to Southern laws, a slave, being property, can
hold
no property. When my grandmother lent her hard earnings to her mistress, she trusted solely to her honor. The honor of a slaveholder to a slave!