Abolishing Slavery In Harriet Ann Jacobs's Life

Slaves were deprived of their lives and always degraded to some value less than that of any other human. Harriet Ann Jacobs, one of the many African Americans that stood up against slavery, wrote this autobiography to inform us, the readers, how slavery ruined her life. How it stripped her of her innocence and the hardships she had along the way to obtain her freedom. This narrative was published back in 1861 and at this point in time president Abraham Lincoln was working on abolishing slavery. This was only 2 years before the Emancipation Proclamation goes into effect. However, Harriet Jacobs was born back in 1813, this is 48 years of slavery she fought through. Speaking as “Linda” in this narrative, she describes to us how life as a slave was at that certain time. She begins by describing her …show more content…
In the south it was known that there were two types of people, either you were a slave owner or you were “white trash”. This was showing that slavery was starting to become a dominant factor in the way things were done. Without slaves, land owners could not have the same outcome production therefore they had less money coming in. Slaves were also being traded around like goods. This was then to become the primary source of income, slave trafficking. This theory was known as the slave power conspiracy. The fight against slavery spreading was led by Abraham Lincoln who also helped stop international slave trade back in 1808. He didn’t want slavery to continue to grow west and take over states to come because they would have to vote if the new state was to be a free or slave state and with so many states becoming slave states, the voting would obviously be towards the slave states. The south didn’t agree and so began the civil