Harriet Jacobs

Harriet Jacobs was born a slave in North Carolina in 1813. At age twenty-one, she escaped from slavery and fled to the North, where she became acquainted with Amy Post, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and other prominent abolitionists. In 1861, Jacobs, using the pseudonym Linda Brent, published Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, the first slave narrative written by a woman. During the Civil War, Jacobs contributed articles to The Liberator and other abolitionist newspapers. In 1862, she traveled to Washington, D.C., to examine the living conditions of runaway slaves—referred to during the war as contraband. The following letter written to William Lloyd Garrison, the editor of The Liberator, on September 5, 1862, alerts the abolitionist leadership that something had to be done for refugee slaves displaced by the war. In the letter Jacobs highlights problems...