“Persecuted People”: A Comparison of Nineteenth-Century Autobiographical and Fictional Slave Narratives

"I want to add my testimony to that of abler pens to convince the people of the Free States what Slavery really is . . . May the blessing of God rest on this imperfect effort in behalf of my persecuted people!" These words reflect former slave Harriet Jacobs’s desire to share her experiences through the printed word. Jacobs joined dozens of other ex-slaves who recorded their stories during the nineteenth century. Their testimonies served as historical records and educational tools that presented distinctive portraits of slavery. However, former bondsmen were not alone in producing narratives depicting slave life.  In fact, white, non-slave authors created imagined depictions of slavery in fictionalized slave narratives published throughout the nineteenth century.  What can scholars learn about the boundaries between history and fiction through the juxtaposition of these two types of literature? A comparison of six representative narratives reveals that antebellum fictional and autobiographical texts contained shared themes and authorial goals, but post-bellum slave narratives sharply diverged in content and message. Both kinds of antebellum slave narratives emphasized the horrors of slavery and the humanity of the former slaves in order to educate readers and inspire in them abolitionist sentiments.  After emancipation, former slaves continued to describe the trials of slavery in their autobiographical narratives and also sought to combat racial inequality by emphasizing freedmen’s capabilities.  By contrast, post-war white authors of fictionalized slave narratives depicted freedmen as nostalgic for an antebellum South in which race relations were harmonious and blacks were contented as slaves. Like the cadre of post-bellum Southern creators of fictional slave narratives may have similarly employed depictions of satisfied black slaves to distract readers from simmering tensions between whites and blacks or even instill support in readers for Jim Crow laws that attempted to restore whites’ power over former slaves.