Slave Stories What Was it

Slave Stories

What was it like to be a slave? Before the Civil War erupted, both proponents and opponents of slavery sought stories from slaves to back their cause. Abolitionists collected and published tales from escaped slaves to demonstrate support of the evils of slavery. Those who were in favor of slavery wanted to report stories that showed how well they treated their slaves. A large number of slave stories were also collected many years later, when these individuals were well in their late 80s in order to save them for prosterity. What these narratives show is that although life was rarely good for any of these individuals, regardless of where or how they lived, there were differences in their experiences. The slaves' past, as seen by Harriett Jacobs, x and x, is not one similar chronicle, but numerous varied stories interwoven into an historic blanket of time.

Harriet Jacob's life was quite different from most of the other black women who lived during this time. We lived "together in a comfortable home and, though we were all slaves, I was so fondly shielded that I never dreamed that I was a piece of merchandise," she recalls. After her mother died, she moved into the main home. The mistress of the house taught Harriet how to sew and even how to read. Unfortunately, when Harriett was12 years old, her mistress died and she now had to take direction from Dr. James Norcom. As she grew older, Norcom became obsessed with Harriett sexually and did all he could to make his/her mistress. He even said he would build a cottage for her down the road, so his wife would not know about a relationship between them. She stated: he talked of his intention to give me a home of my own, and to make a lady of me.

I vowed before my Maker that I would never enter it. I had rather toil on the plantation from dawn till dark; I had rather live and die in jail, than drag on, from day-to-day, through such a living death.

Rather than give in to Norcom's sexual harassment, Harriett did the best thing she could to survive: She married another white man and had two children with him.

Despite Harriett's marriage and children, Norcom still wanted her. Thus, she pretended to run away, and then, similar to Anne Frank hiding in the attic from the Germans, hid in a small crawlspace for seven years. She was only able to see her children through a peep hole and get fresh air in the evening. In 1842, still twenty years before the Civil War, Harriet did escape for good to New York City. She then lived with her daughter and brother, also fugitives. One not to let others work on her behalf, she became involved with the abolitionist movement, which was associated with the newspaper North Star of Frederick Douglass. Norcom continued to look for her and she once again had to flee from him, this time to Massachusetts. Finally, her freedom was paid for by friends.

Harriett's perseverance was her most notable trait. She stayed away from Norcom for years until she finally had her freedom. Then, when her friends convinced her to write her biography, she went from one biographer who went bankrupt to another biographer who also went bankrupt to writer her publish her story. Even Harriett Beecher Stowe, who promised to help her, just wanted to add the book to her own. Finally, Harriett's book, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, was published, and greatly helped the anti-slavery cause. After the war, she continued her work to help the freed slaves, and particularly the women with her National Association of Colored Women. She was 84 when she died in 1897.

As noted, most male and particularly female slaves did not have such a noteworthy life as Harriett. However, that does not make these other women any the less brave. The book Voices of Slavery, for example, includes the narrative of Lucretia Alexander from Little Rock Arkansas, who was much younger than Harriett. She was only 12 years old when the Civil War started. One of the topics that was often mentioned -- for good for bad -- by those were slaves during this period was religion. Many of the slaves, including Harriett and Lucretia, talked about the hypocrisy of the "Christian" white slaveowners. She said the preachers would pray with the white folk in the morning and the colored in the afternoon. One master would keep the slaves so long in the afternoon, that "they had to go to church dirty from their work. They would be sweaty and smelly. So the preacher would rebuke them" (13). The slaves were not allowed to come into the church. Rather, the preacher would come into their quarters. His sermons would be about how they should "not steal" anything of their master's and should listen to anything he had to say. When the slaves really wanted religion, they quietly held their own services and sang their own songs and prayers.

Similarly, Harriett had said in her autobiography: After the alarm caused by Nat Turner's insurrection had subsided, the slaveholders came to the conclusion that it would be well to give the slaves enough of religious instruction to keep them from murdering their masters. The Episcopal clergyman offered to hold a separate service on Sundays for their benefit" and of the clergy's blindness to the situation "What does he know of the half-starved wretches toiling from dawn till dusk on the plantations? Of mothers shrieking for their children, torn from their arms by slave traders? Of young girls dragged down into moral filth?... The slaveholder showed him none of these things, and the slaves dared not tell of them if he had asked them."

Where Harriett spoke of the sexual harassment, Lucretia told about the physical cruelty of the master's. Although she was usually able to keep away from this brutality -- whipped once, by Mr. Phipps who was trying to kill her. In fact, she got away from him several times when he tried to beat her. Each time, she would run to her mistress, who finally wrote him a note saying to never get near Lucretia again." Others, she says, were not so lucky. She saw this plenty of times against her family members. For example, Elijah "a poor white man" would beat others until they were bloody with a whip called the "blacksnake."

Because Lucretia was a young girl during the war, she remembers when the Yankees came on horseback. She helped her mistress hide the silver coins and other goods, afraid that they would be taken. Lucretia also recalls the day that it was announced that she was free. She stayed with her mistress even after the war, until deciding that she could get more money working in the fields.

Mary Anderson, who was born in 1851 as the daughter of slaves in North Carolina, belonged to the Brodies. Although her master and mistress did not believe in whipping any slave, they did believe in keeping the slaves subservient. Each Sunday, all the 162 slaves would come to the Great House for Sunday dinner. They would be dressed in their finest clothes. When coming into the house, they had to take off their "hats and bonnets, bow and say 'Good afternoon Marster Sam and Missus Evanline.'" (16). One of the purposes of this Sunday dinner was to make sure that that the slaves were all healthy and did not need any medical care. Unlike Harriett, the care for Mary and the other girls only went so far. They were never taught to read and write, but "was taught how to talk low and how to act in company." In other words, she says, she was taught how to talk "like white folks" (18).