Raynor HCA 2013-01
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 1/10/2013
A complete and authentic issue of the New York Tribune, June 21, 1853, 8pp., untrimmed, near fine. From an interior page and running nearly 3/4 column, “LETTER FROM A FUGITIVE SLAVE.” In small part, “I was born a slave, reared in the Southern hot-bed until I was the mother of two children, sold at the early age of two and four years old. I have been hunted through all of the Northern States, but no, I will not tell you of my own suffering ...my younger sister was in her fourteenth year ... The monster who owned her had no humanity in his soul ... My mother was dragged to jail, there remained twenty-five days, with Negro traders to come in as they liked to examine her, as she was offered for sale ... That child gave herself up to her master's bidding, to save one that was dearer to her than life itself. ... At fifteen, my sister held to her bosom an innocent offspring of her guilt and misery. ... At seventeen, she gave birth to another helpless infant, heir to all the evils of slavery.... Yet, reader, it is true, those two helpless children were the sons of one of your sainted Members in Congress ... But in Uncle Tom's Cabin she has not told the half. Would that I had one spark from her store house of genius and talent I would tell you of my own sufferings ....” Although signed “A Fugitive Slave,” this letter was the first publication of Harriet Ann Jacobs, an African-American writer who escaped from slavery and became an abolitionist speaker and reformer. Jacobs' single work, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, published in 1861 under the pseudonym Linda Brent, was one of the first autobiographical narratives about the struggle for freedom by female slaves and an account of the sexual harassment and abuse they endured.
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