Slavery for Us All
Slavery for All
In Harriet Jacobss “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl” she asserts, “slavery was a curse to the whites as well as blacks” (
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 Walkers 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” (
Slavery corrupted the very core of marriage for both the slaves