Harriet Jacobs Life Of A Slave Girl Summary

Life of a Slave Girl is a fascinating inside look at slavery in the ante-bellum south and the various ways with which slaves resisted their masters and the system which kept them in bondage. In many ways, the book serves to shatter commonly held misconceptions about the nature of slavery. For example, when one mentions slavery the first thing that comes to mind is slaves working in a plantation field picking cotton. Harriet Jacob’s family however, were skilled artisans and craftsmen which could afford a higher standard of living than many poor whites despite their status as slaves. Indeed, this often created jealousy on the part of the poor whites who believed themselves better than the slaves. Overall, Harriet Jacobs tells how slaves

resisted both passively and actively despite the internal slave trade, the fugitive slave law and the efforts of planters to control their everyday lives.
The constitutional convention which established the United States government nearly came apart due to the issue of slavery.

Northern delegates to the convention, such as Alexander Hamilton and Benjamin Franklin, staunchly opposed slavery and wished a gradual program of emancipation to be set forth in law. Southerners however, were resolutely opposed to any efforts to eradicate slavery. Harriet Jacobs herself speaks of how southerners demanded absolute obedience from northerners and deference to slavery, what they called their “peculiar institution.” Any northerner in the south was expected to keep his or her mouth shut about slavery or risk violence. (Jacobs, 43) Despite the stubbornness of slaveholders, the constitutional convention did succeed in outlawing the Transatlantic slave trade. This meant that no “new” slaves could be brought into America from Africa, and instead, slaveholders had to rely on the internal slave trade in order to run their plantations. As a result, slavery became a hereditary position that people were born into. Oftentimes, even free blacks were brought back into slavery in order to meet the demand of southerners for slaves. Harriet Jacob’s family

is an excellent example of this. Jacob’s grandmother was a mulatto or the child of a slave mother and a white planter from South Carolina. Undoubtedly, the white planter felt some degree of compassion to his daughter (despite never formally accepting responsibility for her) and freed Jacob’s grandmother during the Revolutionary War. However, Jacob’s grandmother was quickly re-enslaved and sent back into bondage along with the rest of her family since slaves had no legal representation and protection. The internal slave trade was brutal and allowed slaveholders to break up families and engage in brutality. Jacobs for example, writes of a planter family which moved to Alabama and abandoned an old and loyal black slave for “twenty dollars.” (Jacobs, 16) Slaves resisted this internal slave trade in the best way they could by keeping their families together and secretly teaching their children how to read.
Sometimes however, slaves were motivated to engage in active and violent resistance against their masters. After all, slaves did have the advantage of numbers in many areas. Consider the case of the cruel master, Mr. Litch, who “owned six hundred slaves.” (Jacobs, 41) If the slaves on Litch’s plantation rose up, there would be very little to stop them. Nat Turner tried to do exactly that - raise a slave rebellion - but it was crushed before it could do too much harm. The rebellion did succeed however, in terrifying the plantation owners who were very aware of the danger posed by slave rebellions. Harriet Jacobs writes of how Nat Turner’s rebellion motivated the local whites to engage in a series of violent actions against the blacks. The plantation owners essentially unleashed the poor whites to terrorize the slaves in order to find any evidence of the rebellion. Jacobs memoir shows that oftentimes the poor whites were as poor, or even more poor, than slaves. Speaking of the poor whites, Jacob’s writes “not reflecting that the power which trampled on the colored people also kept themselves in poverty, ignorance, and moral degradation.” When the poor whites searched Jacob’s slave cabin, they were shocked to discover how comfortable they were living. Indeed, it seemed that Jacob's family had a higher standard of living than most of the poor whites since Jacob’s father was a skilled carpenter. They were especially shocked to discover that Harriet could write, and that her grandmother even possessed silver. (Jacobs, 61-2)
Of course, the final way in which slaves resisted their masters and the condition of slavery was to run away to the free states of the north.

The slaveholders were aware of this, and tried to convince the slaves that life in the north was terrible and that they were better off as slaves under a “kind master.” (Jacobs, 39) While the north was not willing to interfere with slavery in the south, they were also unwilling to turn over runaway slaves back to their southern masters. Until of course, the fugitive slave act threatened anyone with fines and jail time who aided or abetted runaway slaves. In many ways, the fugitive slave act would lead to the Civil War as northerners realized they could not simply ignore the existence of slavery in the south. For Harriet Jacobs, the fugitive slave law was the greatest threat to her freedom after her escape to the north. Harriet was constantly on the move between New York and Massachusetts to elude her captors, until eventually, her old master gave up the search. Still, Jacobs would not be safe until the Civil War came and slavery was

extinguished.

References
Jacobs, Harriet Ann. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Schomburg Library of Nineteent, 1990.