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Harriet Ann Jacobs Wikipedia

Image:Harrietjacobs.gif|thumb|right|160px|Harriet Jacobs

Harriet Ann Jacobs (1813 - March 7, 1897) was an United States|American abolitionist and novelist. In 1861, she published Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl under the pseudonym Linda Brent.

She was born in Edenton, North Carolina to Daniel Jacobs and Delilah. Her father was a whites|white slave owned by Dr. Andrew Knox. Her mother was a blacks|black slave owned by John Horniblow, a tavern owner. Harriet inherited the status of both her parents as a slave by birth. She was raised by Delilah until the latter died c. 1819. She was then raised by her maternal grandmother.

In 1825, Harriet was sold to Dr. James Norcom. Her new master reportedly subjected her to sexual harassment for nearly a decade. Norcom refused to allow her to marry any other man, regardless of status. The later in reference to her consensual lover Samuel Sawyer, a free white man and a lawyer. Harriet and Sawyer were parents to two children, also owned by Norcom. Harriet reported Norcom threatening to sell her children away if she refused his sexual advances.

By 1834, her domestic situation had become unbearable and Harriet mannaged to escape by boat to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She started living as a free woman and later moved to New York City in 1842. She found employement as a nursemaid. Her most notable employer being abolitionist Nathaniel Parker Willis. Harriet was one of many escaped slaves who wrote autobiographical narratives in an effort to shape opinion in the Northern United States concerning the "peculiar institution" of slavery.

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Her autobiographical accounts started being published in serial form at the pages of the New York Tribune, owned and edited by Horace Greeley. However her reports of sexual abuse were considered too shocking to the average newspaper reader of the day and publication ceased before the completion of the narrative. Harriet later found difficulties in selling her completed manuscript as most publishers hesitated to publish the account.

She eventually managed to sign an agreement with the Thayer and Eldridge publishing house. The publishers hired Lydia Child to edit the novel and brought her in contact with Harriet. The two women would remain in contact for much of their remaining lives. However Thayer and Eldridge declared bankruptcy before the novel could be published. The novel in its final form was published by a Boston, Massachusetts publisher in 1861.

The author appealed mainly to Middle class whites|white Christian women in the North, through her descriptions of slavery destroying the virtue of women through harassment and rape.

Image:Harrietjacobsreward.jpg|thumb|left|160px|Reward noticed issued for the return of Harriet Jacobs
She criticised the religion of the Southern United States as being un-Christian and as emphasizing the value of money ("If I am going to hell, bury my money with me", says a particularly brutal and uneducated slaveholder). She described another slaveholder with the sentence, "He boasted the name and standing of a Christian, though Satan never had a truer follower." Jacobs argued that these men were not exceptions to the general rule. The cruelty of slavery destroyed the virtue of an entire society, and "is a curse to the whites as well as to the blacks".

Much of "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl" is devoted to the protagonist's struggle to free her two children (born out of wedlock through a consensual relationship with a white man who was not her master), after she runs away herself. She spends seven years trapped in a tiny space built into her grandmother's barn to occasionally see and hear the voices of her children.
The villainous slave owner "Flint" was quite clearly based on her former master Dr. James Norcom.

Jacobs found employement as a nurse during the American Civil War. Her correspondence with Child reveals her enthusiasm over the Emancipation Proclamation of 1862. She felt that her suffering people were finally free. The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution of 1865 would indeed put an end to slavery. Jacobs lived the latter years of her life in Washington, D.C..

Last Modified:   2005-12-19