Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

“I was born a slave; but I never knew it till six years of happy childhood had passed away.” 

This is the opening sentence in Jacobs’s narrative. Like other enslaved memoirists, Jacobs does not tell the reader when she was born because she does not know. Slave owners did not keep birth records for those whom they regarded as property. Like Frederick Douglass, she recalls her early childhood as happy because she was not yet aware of being a slave.

“These God-breathing machines are no more, in the sight of their masters, than the cotton they plant, or the horses they tend.” 

Using comparison and analogy, Jacobs explains the status of slaves. They were property and so, similar to other valuable objects. Her comparison of slaves to horses echoes that of Frederick Douglass, who related an anecdote about an elderly enslaved man who was valued even less than a slave holder’s horse.

“When grandmother applied to him for payment, he said the estate was insolvent, and the law prohibited payment. It did not, however, prohibit him from retaining the silver candelabra, which had been purchased with that money. I presume they will be handed down in the family, from generation to generation.” 

Dr. Flint refused Martha the repayment that she had been promised after her late mistress borrowed $300 from her. This underscore the fact that slave owners had no sense of honor toward those whom they owned. Modern readers can see how wealth did not pass down through Black generations, resulting in the contemporary wealth gap between Black and White Americans.