The Biography of Harriet Jacobs Who Was Born as a Slave

Harriet Jacobs was born a slave in Edenton, Chowan County, North Carolina, in 1813, twenty-four years after the adoption of the Constitution had firmly established slavery in the newly formed United States. It would be seven years before slaverys spread into new states would be limited by Missouri Compromise, and a half a century before Emancipation. At birth, there was no reason to think that baby Hatty would live out her life as anything but a slave yet she not only freed herself and her children, she became an activist and an author, a runaway whose narrative of her lifer was championed by the abolitionists and feminists and was a weapon in the struggle for emancipation. During the civil War she went back south, working as a relief worker and advocate on behalf of the black refugees behind the union lines in Alexandria and later in Savannah, telling their story in the northern press. When racist violence engulfed the south she retreated to Massachusetts and then to Washington, D.C., where she died in 1897. Harriet Jacobs was a heroic woman who lived in a heroic time. Committing herself to freedom, she made her life representative of the struggle for liberations.

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When Harriet was twelve, Horniblow died. Instead of being freed as she had expected, Harriet was willed to Horniblows three-year-old niece and sent into the little girls home, where she was sexually harassed by the childs middle-aged father, Dr. James Norcom. At sixteen, in a desperate effort to prevent Norcom from forcing her into concubine, she became pregnant by a neighbor, the young white attorney Samuel T. Sawyer. Norcoms wife, who apparently thought Norcom had fathered Harriets baby, threw her out of the house. Worse, Harriets recently-freed grandmother Molly Horniblow, the emotional and moral center of the teenagers life, also condemned her. Although grandmother and granddaughter were soon reconciled and Harriet moved into Mollys house, the older woman offered her pity, but not forgiveness. Over the next few years, Harriet Jacobs bore a son and a daughter by Sawyer. In her early twenties, she was again threatened with concubinage by Norcom, and she again rejected him. To punish her, he sent her from town to nearby plantation. In June 1835, learning that he planned to move her children from Grandmothers house to the country and to break them in as plantation slaves, Jacobs devised a plan. She would run away, Norcom would want to rid himself of her troublesome children, and their father would buy and free them. Some parts of her scheme worked. She did run away, Norcom did sell the children and Sawyer did buy them.

To emphasize on Harriet Jacobs theme, a former slave interviewed in 1910 remembered that certain inquiries were invariably put to hired slaves on the block: Will you work for this man, obey his orders, and not run away? If you didnt want to go to the man that bid for you, he called, theyd tell you to talk and say so. Such questions opened the way slaves for slaves to influence hiring transactions even before the ink was dry on the contracts that bore their names. The slave is sure to know who is the most humane, or cruel master, within forty miles of him, Harriet Jacobs observed. On hiring day, she added, it was easy to determine who clothes and feeds his slaves well, for he would be surrounded by a crowd, begging, please, Massa, hire me this year. I will work very hard, massa. Ingratiation, though, was just one tool slaves could use to shape the transactions. Effrontery had much to recommend it as well, especially when slaves were trying to dissuade rather than persuade prospective hirers. In the late 1850s, a young girl named Nancy Williams, no more than thirteen or fourteen years old, went with her owner to hiring day in Virginia. Once there, she was put on a raised platform to be cried off before a crowd of white men, men s hater described as poor white tobacco-chewing devils. Williams made no effort to mask the disdain she felt for the gazing men, yelling as loud as she could, I dont want no poor white poor man get me! Aint want to work for no poor white man. This bold protest no doubt startled the potential hirers, but failed to discourage at least one poor white man in the crowd. As the devil would have it, she lamented later, One got me. As Williams experience attests, slaves could let their views e known, but it did not always do any good. In fact, slaves who refused to leave the hiring grounds with their new masters, Harriet Jacobs pointed out, were whipped and then jailed until they promised not to run away during the year. Those slaves who had run away the previous year were often, as one Alabama owner wrote in 1855, correct upon hiring day as a warning to the others.

Within this context the publication of Harriet Jacobs Incident takes new meaning. Consider Jacobs remark to her confidante, antislavery activist army post I had determined to let others think of me as they pleased but my lips should be sealed and no one had the right to question me for this reason when I first came North I avoided Antislavery people as much as possible because I felt that I could not be honest and tell the whole truth. No doubt Jacobs was reticent to approach the Antislavery people because she felt ashamed about the indecorous details of her experience as a slave: she had fled North Carolina to protect herself from the sexual wrath of her master and to secure the freedom of her children, born out of wedlock and fathered by a white Congressman. Jacobs worry about the reception of her story demonstrates an awareness of the demands placed upon blacks who would speak publicly against slavery. She wants to tell her story honestly and truthfully but is determined not to be second-guessed as to the integrity of her experience, even if it is beyond the pale of chaste civility. However, committing herself to silence that is, choosing not to present her case as a speech could have lost Jacobs the ability to contribute to the cause of freedom. Writing about her life as a slave presented another venue, a different option. Through print, she could exercise the modicum of discretion and authority she feared would be denied to her should she offer her narrative as abolitionist protocol would have, accept, and prefer it in the form of oral testimony.

Jacobs apparent resistance to his routine is not surprising, given her close proximity to abolitionist political culture. By the date of her letter post (1852), Jacobs was working in Cornelia Willis, New York, as a nurse housemaid to the family of Nathaniel and Cornelia Willis. This was three years after her stay in Rochester, New York, where she had worked in the Anti-Slavery Office and Reading Room established by her brother. For much of 1849, Jacobs managed the facility while John Jacobs traveled throughout western New York State on lecture tours for the American Anti-Slavery Society. In this position, Jacobs undoubtedly had access to the newspapers and other publications disseminated by the abolitionist movement; just downstairs from the Jacobses library were the headquarters of Frederick Douglasss North Star. Jacobs was also aware of her brothers growing reputation as a gifted activist; the National Anti-Slavery Standard rated his oratorical skills as second only to the brilliant Douglass and, as Jacobs told Amy Post, they [abolitionists] do not know me; they have heard of me as John Jacobs sister. It seems plausible to suggest that, given the concerns she expressed to Amy Post and her active presence in the antislavery politics and communications networks, Harriet Jacobs knew how slave narratives were formulated and presented to the public. In conclusion all the details discussed in this article are clear and concrete evidence on how Harriet Jacobs wanted to be free and others as well. The instances explains her tireless effort fighting for the slaves even after her freedom.