Harriet Jacobs and the "Double Burden" of American Slavery.
By International Social Science Review
- Release Date: 2003-06-22
- Genre: Social Science
Description
Introduction The ethical, social, and economic issues associated with American slavery remain among the most discussed topics in the study of United States history. Much of what was initially known about the condition of slaves came from antebellum travel accounts, such as those of Frederick Law Olmstead, or from the writings of Southern apologists published in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, such as Ulrich B. Phillips. (1) In these early works, slavery, as seen through the eyes of the white community, was characterized as both respectable and necessary. Such accounts often depicted slavery as a benign institution and failed to capture the essence of life for the slave. No significant revisionist accounts appeared until the publication of Kenneth Stampp's The Peculiar Institution (1956), but even Stampp admitted, "It may be a little presumptuous of one who has never been a slave to pretend to know how slaves felt." (2)
