Journal for Jacobs

"Jacobs criticized 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, "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." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harriet_Ann_Jacobs


"The 'bill of sale!' Those words struck me like a blow. So I was sold at last! A human being sold in the free city of New York! The bill of sale is on record, and future generations will learn from it that women were articles of traffic in New York, late in the nineteenth century of the Christian religion. It may hereafter prove a useful document to antiquaries, who are seeking to measure the progress of civilization in the United States." (Jacobs, p. 1828)


Harriet Jacobs's searing account of her life in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl is suffused with a quiet fury that is bitter, ironic and mostly under the surface. When describing the relentless sexual aggressiveness of the master it is heartbreaking to see the shame felt by the young victim, a shame she carries with her into freedom. Her endurance and resolve when hiding seven years in her grandmother's attic crawl place is unimaginable. We feel the anger seething beneath the entire narrative, but when it comes to the "Bill of Sale" section quoted above, the rage breaks through the sorrow and blazes on the surface.

There are numerous instances of broken contracts in this story. Her grandmother is left free by her dying master as a child, but they are captured on their passage north (during the Revolutionary War) and sold back into slavery. Her grandmother works at night baking crackers and saves her money to buy back her children, but the mistress borrows her life savings and never pays her back. Harriet is denied the covenant of marriage by her jealous and abusive master. But the Bill of Sale that finally ends her bondage symbolizes all the cruelty and oppression and hypocrisy of the institution of slavery in a society that professes to be Christian and democratic.