In the late 1820s, Harriet Jacobs fell in love with a free Black man who worked as a carpenter in her home town. The couple wished to
marry, but as a slave, Jacobs could not marry without her owner’s permission,
least of all to a free man. Her incipient fiancé offered to buy Jacobs from
Norcom (alias Dr. Flint) but Norcom refused.
Of what
happened next, Jacobs writes:
And now, reader, I come to a
period in my unhappy life, which I would gladly forget if I could. The remembrance
fills me with sorrow and shame…The influences of slavery had had the same
effect on me that they had on other young girls; they made me prematurely
knowing, concerning the evil ways of the world. I knew what I did, and I did it
with deliberate calculation. But, O, ye happy women, whose purity has been
sheltered from childhood, who have been free to choose the objects of your
affection, whose homes are protected by law, do not judge the poor desolate
slave girl too severely! If slavery had been abolished, I, also could have
married the man of my choice; I could have had a home shielded by laws; and I
should have been spared the painful task of confessing what I am not about to
relate; but all my prospects have been blighted by slavery.
This
passage serves as a reminder that Jacobs’ purpose in writing her narrative was
to convince White Northern women of the evils of slavery. Despite the fact that
American women would not have a federally guaranteed right to vote until 1920,
there was already a strong tradition of female activism by the time Jacobs wrote
her narrative in the 1850s (it came out in 1861). In the North in the early 19th
century, the women’s movements focused on abolitionism as well as women’s
suffrage.
The way
that Jacob’s directs her narrative to a White, female audience shows a few
interesting things. One, it reveals a belief that despite lacking a franchise,
women could still exert a degree of influence over American political life. It
also shows a burgeoning “cult of domesticity” in the United States. In a
nutshell, this middle class ideal of gender roles emphasized religious piety
and sexual purity in women. It also raised “the home” onto a pedestal as a
place of refuge from the rough and tumble life of industrialization in the outside
world. Jacobs recognized that her sexual history placed her far outside this
ideal, something that could discredit her whole story because she was a “fallen
woman.” Jacobs therefore wanted to emphasize how the institution of slavery
legally barricaded her and other Black women from achieving this ideal, ergo
proving the evils of slavery.
So, what
was this shameful, sorrowful thing that Jacobs had done “with deliberate calculation?”
She took a
White lover, in large part to frustrate her nemesis, Dr. Norcom. As a teenager,
still being pursued by Dr. Norcom, Jacobs had come to the acquaintance of a
White man whom she called Mr. Sands. Most historians believe that he was Samuel
Tredwell Sawyer, a lawyer and future representative of North Carolina in
Congress. Like Norcom, Sawyer demonstrated and interest in Jacobs but in a
kinder, more flirtatious, less creepy way. Additionally, Sawyer was at the time
unmarried (so, no jealous wife) and more importantly, Jacobs was not his
property, making the relationship less coercive. Jacobs calls his attentions
flattering but frames the affair as primarily a way to snub Dr. Norcom.
Jacobs and
Sawyer had two children together, Joseph in 1829, and Matilda Louise in 1833. Because
Jacobs was a slave, so too were the children, however, Sawyer ultimately bought
his children from Norcom and sent them to live with Jacobs’ freed grandmother,
before sending them to the North to live more truly free lives.
Both Norcom
and Jacobs’ grandmother were furious with her for engaging in this affair.
While Jacobs’ grandmother eventually forgave her, Norcom punished her by
sending her to work on his son’s plantation.
In between
the birth of her son and daughter, Jacobs’ life was upset by one of the
watershed moments of American history: Nat Turner’s rebellion in 1831.
Southern
slave-holders had tried to assuage Northern discomfort with slavery by claiming
that slaves were happy in their condition and that being enslaved was in fact “good
for them.” Post-Civil War historical narratives, up until the Civil Rights
movement tried to again perpetuate the myth that slavery “wasn’t so bad” and
tried to erase all incidents of slave rebellion. While full blown slave
rebellions were not as common as small acts of defiance – such as Jacobs’ affair
with Sawyer – they did happen and White slaveholders were terrified of them,
especially after the Haitian Revolution in 1789-1804 resulted in a successful
slave uprising and the first free Black republic in the Caribbean (which the
U.S. government under Jefferson significantly weakened through isolation and
boycott).
The early
19th century was a time of religious revival in the United States
known as the “Second Great Awakening.” For Harriet Jacobs, religious revival
provided a lens through which she viewed the hypocrisy of slave owners. For Nat
Turner, it helped to provide the motivation to rebel. In case the degradation
of slavery was not enough, Nat Turner was one of many Americans at this time
who believed he was receiving revelations from God and his revelations told him
to rebel and lead his people to freedom. In August of 1831, Turner and his
conspirators attacked the auspiciously named town of Jerusalem, Virginia,
killing his master, his master’s wife and children, along with some fifty other
Whites. Most of the conspirators were caught right away, but Turner escaped,
and a manhunt for him continued for several months before he was caught,
executed, and his remains distributed as souvenirs/ rendered for wagon wheel
grease.
Nationally, Nat Turner’s rebellions stoked the
fire of the slavery controversy that had been burning since the foundation of
the republic. Abolitionists saw the rebellion as further proof that slavery
should end, arguing that without emancipation, more violent rebellions loomed
in the future. The immediate result of the rebellion, however, was for
slaveholders to double down, further restricting the freedoms and movements of
slaves in order to prevent rebellion. (You know, because that always works.)
For Jacobs,
the rebellion brought violence to Edenton, but not in the form of a copycat
slave revolt. Perhaps the most clever, dangerous, and diabolical thing that the
Southern White planter class did was to mobilize poor Whites against slaves and
free Blacks. Socio-economically, the poor Whites had far more in common with free
Blacks and enslaved people than with planters. Bacon’s Rebellion of 1676 in
Virginia saw an alliance of Black slaves and White indentured servants that
terrified the big wigs, who used racial ideologies to drive a wedge between
these otherwise natural allies.
In the
autumn of 1831, Jacobs witnessed this mobilization firsthand. After the
rebellion, the town leadership called upon the militia, mostly composed of poor
Whites, to search Edenton for conspirators and possible rebellion. Jacobs knew
exactly what this meant:
I knew the houses were to be searched;
and I expected it would be done by country bullies and the poor whites. I knew
nothing annoyed them so much as to see colored people living in comfort and
respectability…It was a grand opportunity for low whites, who had no negroes of
their own to scourge. They exulted in such a chance to exercise a little brief authority,
and show their subserviency to the slaveholders; not reflecting that the power
which trampled on the colored people also kept themselves in poverty,
ignorance, and moral degradation.
What followed was a brief but intense reign of terror by
these deputized Whites upon the Black population (free and enslaved) of
Edenton. Jacobs considered herself and her family lucky: her grandmother’s
house was trashed and some of her property stolen, but they were spared the
violent attacks that many other Black inhabitants suffered.
Perhaps the
most unusual aspect of Harriet Jacobs’ life is her protracted escape from
slavery. Jacobs ran away both to escape Norcom, but also, in hopes that Sawyer
would buy and free their children (which he duly did). However, rather than
running straight for the North, Jacob’s only got as far as her grandmother’s
attic, where she hid for seven years
in a crawl space estimated to be nine feet long, seven feet wide, and no more
than three feet tall at its highest point. Unable to move or exercise, scarcely
protected from the elements, Jacobs’ remained concealed for seven years, her
only comfort being the small hole through which she could sometimes observe her
children. Meanwhile, Norcom and others assumed that Jacobs had escaped to the North
and had sent agents looking for her.
Even when
Jacobs was at last smuggled out of her grandmother’s house and to the free states
in North, it did not mean full freedom yet, due to the Fugitive Slave Laws. These
laws insisted that escaped slaves in the North were not free by virtue of their
escape, but were in fact still property and therefore, their owners had the
right to reclaim them. This is one of the reasons why many slaves on the
underground railroad sought refuge in Canada. As long as they remained in U.S.
jurisdiction, they were targets for the bounty hunters that prowled Northern cities,
looking for runaways. Most Northerners hated the law for a number of reasons.
First, it delegitimized their status as “free” states. Second, it legalized
kidnapping and free Blacks often got caught up in the net. In days before photo
ID, there were few ways to definitively prove that they were not runaway
slaves. The law compelled Northern jurisdictions to cooperate in the “recovery
of property” and for the most part, Northerners simply neglected to enforce the
law. (Not unlike the “sanctuary cities” of today, where local municipalities
leave immigration enforcement up to the federal government.)
 |
| The advertisement issued by Norcom offering a reward for Jacobs and a description of her. |
Finally
reunited with her children and brother in New York, Jacobs’ life was once more
darkened by Norcom who came to reclaim her. She was only at last free of him
when her employer, Cornelia Willis, bought Jacobs from Norcom and set her free.
Afterwards, Jacobs ran in abolitionist circles and was eventually persuaded to
write her memoirs. She was reluctant at first to write her story due to her
shame at her sexual history. She was especially concerned about how her
daughter – who didn’t know the story – would react.
Louisa Matilda responded positively
to the truth and believed her mother to be courageous not only for what she
endured, but for sharing her story. For the rest of Jacobs’ life, the mother
daughter duo continued to fight for the rights of African Americans by working
as nurses in the Civil War, by helping freedmen adjust to emancipation, and
working with the National Association of Colored Women in Washington, DC.
Sources:
For sources specifically on Harriet Jacobs, see
my first post in this series.
From the August 1861 issue of The Atlantic, an
account of the rebellion by Thomas Wentworth Higginson
Catherine J. Lavender, ʺNotes on The Cult of
Domesticity and True Womanhood,ʺ Prepared for Students in HST 386: Women
in the City, Department of History, The College of Staten Island/CUNY (1998), https://csivc.csi.cuny.edu/history/files/lavender/386/truewoman.pdf
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