Slavery for Us All

Slavery for All

In Harriet Jacobs's "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl" she asserts, "slavery was a curse to the whites as well as blacks" (Page 81). Although the black slaves felt the brute force and hardships of slavery first hand, whites were also negatively affected by the presence of a slave state both for apparent reasons and underlying factors in society. She backs her argument with evidence throughout the book by exhibiting how both the slaveholders' children, as well as the younger slaves are corrupted through slavery. Further proof shows that slavery ruins the sanctified institution of marriage for both slaves and the slaveholders' wives. The third core idea Jacobs uses to help her claim is that even virtuous men are turned wicked due to the influences of neighboring slaveholders, the wealth involved with slavery, and the hunger for power over the slaves.

In Jacobs' writings, she shows the reader how both slave children and the slaveholders' children were corrupted by slavery. For example, slavery was a curse to the slaveholders' children because it corrupted them. On page 81, Jacobs writes, "[Slavery makes] the sons violent and licentious [and] contaminates the daughters." Children will less likely grow up to be decent and moral people because they are raised in the presence of slavery. They were raised to think that they were superior to the slaves and that slaves were less than human, causing the slaveholders' children to shadow the unethical ways of their ancestors. This is also proven in David Walker's Appeal when he states that whites "enrich them and their children…believing firmly that [blacks] being a little darker than they, were made by our Creator to be an inheritance to them and their children for ever- the same as a parcel of brutes." In addition, slavery was also used to compare families' prosperity against each other, so slaveholders' children bear shame if their families do not measure up. Additionally, slavery was a curse to the slave children because it made them know the evils of the world from a very young age. Jacobs states, "The influences of slavery had had the same effect on me that they had on other young girls; they had made me prematurely knowing, concerning the evil ways of the world" (Page 83). Young slave girls were unable to grow up in a moral fashion, because they lost their innocence very early due to obscene and vile thoughts constantly emptied into their ears. Slave children had no experience to know what it means to be appreciated as a human being. In the eyes of the slaveholders, the slave girl's purpose is to be a sexual object to exercise power over. Slavery was a curse to both slave children and the slaveholders' children as both suffered from the widespread corruption.

Slavery corrupted the very core of marriage for both the slaves