“Peculiar Sufferings”: Harriet Jacobs, Emotion, and Advocacy in the Antebellum Press

In 1853 Harriet Jacobs, a woman formerly enslaved in North Carolina, published a letter in the New York Daily Tribune, refuting claims by former first lady Julia Tyler that women held captive under slavery enjoyed respectful, even favorable treatment. Letters to the editor provided a time-honored means through which women and other marginalized groups could inject their concerns into public debate. Highly emotional in tone, Jacobs’ testimony made explicit moral claims on the feelings and consciences of her readers; it also provides a powerful example of advocacy as an alternative to “objective” reports.

Jacobs’ “Letter from a Fugitive Slave” made three assertions: first, that sexual abuse was not incidental to slavery but rather a motivating feature; second, that she had witnessed the terrorizing of her “sister,” forced into sexual relations with her “owner” to protect her mother, only to be torn from the children born of that coercive union, and; third, that once less attractive, a younger sibling was groomed to fill her place in the master’s household. With this letter, as Jean Yellin notes, “an author was born.”

This paper explores Jacobs’ letter as corrective to 1850s debate concerning slavery’s impact on women and families, conducted in anti-slavery publications. Jacobs’ testimony made it difficult for “Christian” readers to remain on the fence about the ‘peculiar institution.’ As an eye-witness to the abuses of slavery, and (as she would later reveal in publishing her longer 1861 narrative, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl) a survivor who had managed to thwart her own sexual coercion, Jacobs was uniquely situated to deconstruct self-serving apologies for slavery. In her unabashed plea to the moral feelings of her readers, Jacobs’ advocacy influenced debate among activists and in their publications as they fostered coalitions to end slavery and uphold women’s rights.