The VILE TRUTH: "The secrets of slavery are concealed like those of the Inquisition."

[kpete]

It is fitting that the voices of those enslaved tell the truth about who these people really were, and the horror that they justified behind noble sounding rhetoric and vile lies.

In Honor of Former Enslaved People: Harriet Jacobs

.........She hid in an attic crawl space for seven years to escape the lechery of this man. She talked about it, wrote about it later, after she was free. She said:

If God has bestowed beauty upon her (a female slave), it will prove her greatest curse. That which commands admiration in the white woman only hastens the degradation of the female slave. I know that some are too much brutalized by slavery to feel the humiliation of their position, but many slaves feel it most acutely and shrink from the memory of it. I cannot tell how much I suffered in the presence of these wrongs nor how I am still pained by the retrospect. My master met me at every turn, reminding me that I belonged to him and swearing by heaven and earth that he would compel me to submit to him. If I went out for a breath of fresh air after a day of unwearied toil, his footsteps dogged me. If I knelt by my mother’s grave, his dark shadow fell on me even there. The light heart which nature had given me became heavy with sad forebodings. The other slaves in my master’s house noticed the change. Many of them pitied me, but none dared to ask the cause. They had no need to inquire. They knew too well the guilty practices under that roof, and they were aware that to speak of them was an offense that never went unpunished. . . .

The secrets of slavery are concealed like those of the Inquisition. My master was, to my knowledge, the father of eleven slaves. But did the mothers dare to tell who was the father of their children? Did the other slaves dare to allude to it, except in whispers among themselves? No, indeed! They knew too well the terrible consequences. . . .

You may believe what I say, for I write only that whereof I know. I was twenty-one years in that cage of obscene birds. I can testify from my own experience and observation that slavery is a curse to the whites as well as to the blacks. It makes the white fathers cruel and sensual, the sons violent and licentious; it contaminates the daughters and makes the wives wretched. And as for the colored race, it needs an abler pen than mine to describe the extremity of their sufferings, the depth of their degradation.

Yet few slaveholders seem to be aware of the widespread moral ruin occasioned by this wicked system. Their talk is of blighted cotton crops — not of the blight on their children’s souls.

_Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, 1861

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/4/12/855965/-In-Honor-of-Former-Enslaved-People:-Harriet-Jacobs
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p2923.html

[CTyankee]

1. Thanks. I've never read that before...

We need more of these testimonials posted everywhere, more in the mainstream press, more TV shows...

I hope some schools are beginning to have new discussions about the slavery issue in U.S. history and they're not afraid of the subject...it's too important for our kids.

[Tansy_Gold]

6. I'm sure the history of slavery in the U.S. is one of the items the new

Texas-inspired U.S. history books will devote a lot of time to. :sarcasm:



Tansy Gold

[Blue_Tires]

2. k+r

[OneGrassRoot]

3. Thank you. k&r n/t

[kwassa]

4. The secrets are concealed no more, but many of them are forgotten.

or minimized by the those attempting to memorialize the false version of Confederate history, the Lost Cause.

Thanks for posting this; I knew part of the story but not the whole thing.

[lunatica]

5. The best college course I ever took was US women's history

We were read passages like these in that class. Those passages included some writings from white women who's husbands had sex and children with slave women they owned. In those Antediluvian days men had all the power and all slaves and wives and daughters were considered property. Even when white women should rightfully inherit from their fathers, the husband were the one's who inherited. But it's very interesting to know that Quaker women were always treated as equals in their families. Going to college was the norm for them and education was highly prized.

[ensho]

8. indeed - women's history should be required in highschool

in co-ed classes

boys need to know

[cali]

7. It's an amazing read. Dover publishes it for a buck.

[TexasObserver]

9. That's the kind of relentless terror to which slaves and abolitionists were subjected.

This kind of terror was an essential part of the slave owner's control of slaves. It existed for centuries before the Civil War, and it became horrific during the Civil War, particularly after Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation.

Of course, after the Civil War (and after the deal to end Reconstruction in 1876), the terrorizing of blacks and pro Unioners became standard operating procedure for the defeated Confederates.

This chronic terrorism is something the naive have romanticized away, when they speak lovingly of "culture."

[Solly Mack]

10. k/r