Antebellum Slavery

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In this heartbreaking narrative the author Harriet Jacobs presents the dark side of slavery in the Antebellum South. Jacobs describes the true hardships and dangers that she puts herself through to make sure that her children, do not end up under the heavy hand of slavery. She proves her thesis by giving the full story of all of the events in her young life that forced her to take great measures, only taken by the bravest of slaves. In writing this narrative Jacobs opens up to the world about the true struggle of slave life, and how she survived to tell her story. To understand the author’s life, we have to understand what it meant to be a woman in the south during her time in history. Slaves were thought of as property, and female slaves were constantly violated by their masters and had no right to fight back. Jacobs writes about the way in which her master, treated her, stating "When he told me that I was made for his use, made to obey his command in everything; that I was nothing but a slave, whose will must and should surrender to his, never before had my puny arm felt half so s...

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