Carolina QuotesReader, my story ends with freedom; not in the usual way, with marriage. I and my children are now free! We are as free from the power of slaveholders as are the white people of the north; and though that, according to my ideas, is not saying a great deal, it is a vast improvement in my condition.
Harriet Jacobs
Carolinian
Source
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Written by Herself (Boston, 1861); Documenting the American South, UNC
- form
- book
- work
- Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
- year
- 1861
Cite this record
“Reader, my story ends with freedom; not in the usual way, wi…” Harriet Jacobs. Carolina Quotes, record CQ-7C54433316. https://carolinaquotes.com/quote/7c54433316
More from Harriet Jacobs
There are no bonds so strong as those which are formed by suffering together.
I would ten thousand times rather that my children should be the half-starved paupers of Ireland than to be the most pampered among the slaves of America. I would rather drudge out my life on a cotton plantation, till the grave opened to give me rest, than to live with an unprincipled master and a jealous mistress. The felon's home in a penitentiary is preferable. He may repent, and turn from the error of his ways, and so find peace; but it is not so with a favorite slave. She is not allowed to have any pride of character. It is deemed a crime in her to wish to be virtuous.
We are passing through times that will secure for us a higher and nobler celebration. American gold will never secure freedom equal rights and justice to our race. No! before these can come American slavery must be crushed, and its foul stain wiped from the Nation[‘]s escutcheon.