In the book titled Incidents of A Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs, she describes the system of slavery as horrible. In the book, Harriet talks about how some women had children from the horrible abuses of the masters, and others. The law that surprised me the most was when Jacobs' states "She had forgotten that it was a crime for a slave to tell who was the father of her child". (Jacobs 12) To me this is extremly wrong. Slaves were being used as property, physically and sexually. A freedom that people have nowadays is the freedom of speech. I find it very interesting that citizens of America actually believed that they were following the law when they regulated these laws.
Another thing that shocked me in the book was the passage about Benjamin (Linda's Brother). Benjamin fought his master, which was very bad for slaves to do. The punishment for doing that was being whipped, and or death. Benjamin did want to do exprieince that."No I will not stay. Let them bring me back. We don't die but once". (Jacobs 19) He seemed very scared and commited to life in the North. Overall these things are strange to me because they are rare in our time period.
Joshua Briggs
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