|
Harriet Jacobs
[Born around 1813, Harriet Jacobs lived most of her enslaved life in Edenton, North Carolina. Her first owner, a woman, taught her to read and write, but when the woman died, Harriet was willed to the three-year-old child of her owner's brother. The child's father tried to force her to become his mistress but she refused. She had two children as a result of a relationship with another white man, a lawyer. Ultimately her owner sent her to work on his family's plantation as punishment for refusing his attentions, and, in 1835, Harriet ran away. Over the course of several years she found her way to the North, where she met Frederick Douglass and became active in the abolitionist movement. Her autobiography was published in 1861.]
On one of these sale days, I saw a mother lead seven children to the auction-block. She knew that some of them would be taken from her; but they took all. The children were sold to a slave-trader, and their mother was bought by a man in her own town. Before night her children were all far away. She begged the trader to tell her where he intended to take them; this he refused to do. How could he, when he knew he would sell them, one by one, wherever he could command the highest price?
She wrung her hands in anguish, and exclaimed, "Gone! All gone! Why doesn't God kill me?"
|
