John Swanson Jacobs (1815 or 1817 – December 19, 1873) was a Black author and abolitionist. After escaping from slavery in North Carolina, he became prominent in abolitionist circles of the northeastern United States. He was closely connected with the authors of the two slave narratives read most widely today, his sister Harriet Jacobs and his friend and ally Frederick Douglass. Following the passage of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law, he left the United States and published his autobiography, The United States Governed by Six Hundred Thousand Despots, in a Sydney, Australia newspaper in 1855. After being republished in 2024, it was described as unique among slave narratives "for its global perspective and its uncensored fury". Also available at National African-American Reparations Commission
Life Ancestry
The enslaved ancestors of John S. Jacobs can be traced back to his great-great-great-grandparents Tenea and Primus who fell victims to the Atlantic slave trade and were transported to North Carolina in the 1720s or early 1730s.Schroeder, No Longer Yours 86–87 In 1792, Maria Knox, the daughter of Tenea's and Primus's daughter Lucy, "pulled off one of the largest and most daring escapes on record"Schroeder, No Longer Yours 81 together with Jack Cotton, the father of her children. Their eldest child, Athena, was fifteen years old by then.According to the runaway slave ad by their enslaver, Ambrose Knox, in Virginia Gazette, and General Advertiser of 2nd May 1792, Schroeder, No Longer Yours 82–83 From New Bedford, Cotton went on a whaling journey. His fate is unknown. Maria and three of her children including Athena were returned to slavery after nearly six years.Schroeder, No Longer Yours 80–87 At the turn of the century, Athena and her young son Elijah lived on a plantation in Pasquotank County, North Carolina. Tom Copper who would organize "the largest slave rebellion in North Carolina history" in 1802, lived on the same plantation.Schroeder, No Longer Yours 79 Jacobs's editor and biographer Jonathan Schroeder draws a connection between the experience of the rebellion and Elijahs hatred for slavery which he would bequeath to his son John S. Jacobs."My father taught me to hate slavery," John Jacobs recalled, "but forgot to teach me how to conceal my hatred." Schroeder, No Longer Yours 80
According to Jacobs's sister Harriet, Elijah's father was a White "gentleman" called Jacobs. Being a slave, Elijah was not allowed to use his father's surname, but was known by his enslaver's surname as Elijah Knox. Harriet and John would use the name that their father had been denied.H.Jacobs, Incidents 121Yellin, Harriet Jacobs 40, 224. Slaves were normally called by the family name of their first owner, Yellin, Harriet Jacobs 25, 40. Apart from his surname, nothing else is known about Elijah's father.
The maternal grandmother, Molly, had been freed by her enslaver who also was her father while still a child. But during the American Revolutionary War, she was kidnapped and sold to John Horniblow, a tavern keeper in Edenton. Later, the tavern keeper's widow gave Molly's daughter Delilah to her own infirm daughter.Schroeder, No Longer Yours 91–94
Enslaved youth John Jacobs was born in Edenton, North Carolina, in 1815 or 1817 to Delilah Horniblow and Elijah Knox. His father, although enslaved, was in some ways privileged because he was an expert carpenter.Yellin, Harriet Jacobs 7 According to the legal principle partus sequitur ventrem ("birth follows womb"), the status of the mother as free or enslaved determined the status of the child. Therefore John and his sister Harriet, who was two years his senior, were considered slaves of the tavern keeper's daughter.
John's mother died when he was four years old. His father entered a new relationship with Theresa, a free Black woman. Their only child, Elijah Knox Jr., would "start one of the most distinguished and educated Black families of the twentieth century; his descendants are the closest relations of John and Harriet alive today."Schroeder, No Longer Yours 96–97 Soon afterwards, a new owner revoked the privileges of John's father and ordered him to his plantation, so that he was rarely able to see his family. He died in 1826 at the age of about 28. For John, his early death was caused by the "galling chain" of slavery.J.Jacobs, Tale 86Yellin, Harriet Jacobs 17–18 Following the death of the tavern keeper's daughter, John was inherited by her old mother, while his sister was willed to the 3-year-old daughter of Dr. James Norcom, the deceased tavern keeper's son-in-law. At nine years old, John was hired out to Dr. Norcom, in whose house the siblings would be living together for the rest of their youth.Schroeder, No Longer Yours 97–98
After the death of Horniblow's widow, her slaves were sold at New Year's Day auction 1828, among them John, his grandmother Molly and Molly's son Mark. Being sold at public auction was a traumatic experience for 12-year-old John.J.Jacobs, Tale 86 (Corresponding to J.Jacobs, Despots 13)Schroeder, No Longer Yours 98 He was bought by Dr. Norcom and continued living in his house.Yellin, Harriet Jacobs 363 (note to p. 254) Following the auction, grandmother Molly was able to buy her own freedom as well as uncle Mark's, using money that she had earned through years of extra work and entrusted to friends.Yellin, Harriet Jacobs 21–22
While enslaved by Norcom, John Jacobs succeeded in teaching himself to read (only very few slaves were literate),H.Jacobs, Incidents 94 but even when he escaped from slavery as a young adult he was not able to write.J. Jacobs, Tale 126 (Corresponding to J.Jacobs, Despots 49)
Norcom used morphine, demanded absolute obedience from his children as well as from his slaves,Yellin, Harriet Jacobs 23 (obedience), 51 (morphine). Yellin bases her claims on the letters and notes left behind by Norcom and his family. and had many children with enslaved women. Soon Norcom started to harass John's sister Harriet sexually. Hoping to escape his constant harassment, she started a relationship with Samuel Sawyer, a White lawyer, who would later be elected to the House of Representatives.Yellin, Harriet Jacobs 26–27 They had two children together.
In June 1835, Harriet's situation as Norcom's slave had become unbearable and she decided to escape. For seven years, she hid herself in a "coffin-shaped"Schroeder, No Longer Yours 109 garret under grandmother Molly's roof, where the lack of physical activity and the cold during the winters were slowly crippling her body. Furious, Norcom threw John Jacobs together with Harriet's two children into jail and then sold them to a slave trader, hoping he would transport them outside the state, thus separating them forever from their mother and sister. But the trader had been secretly in league with Sawyer to whom he sold all three of them.Yellin, Harriet Jacobs 46Schroeder, No Longer Yours 108
Jacobs had to follow his new enslaver to Washington, D.C. He was employed as Sawyer's personal servant and got insights into the life of the country's political elite. According to Jacobs, the congressmen preferred playing poker over going to the House and take part in the voting procedures. He gives short acid characterizations of president Martin van Buren ("bloodhound importer") and famous senator Henry Clay ("great polka [poker] player"). Only former president John Quincy Adams gets a positive remark ("attending to his business").J.Jacobs, Despots 46
In 1838, John accompanied Sawyer on his honeymoon trip through the North and got his freedom by simply leaving Sawyer in New York, where slavery had been abolished. He had a friend write a note for Sawyer:
Jacobs was "scrupulous about taking any money from his master on false pretences; so he sold his best clothes to pay for his passage",H.Jacobs, Incidents 206 (quoted by Schroeder, No Longer Yours 112) but he writes that he took two pistols from Sawyer for self-defence. After unsuccessfully trying to work for his living by day and to attend school at night, in August 1839 he went on a whaling voyage, starting from New Bedford like his great-grandfather Jack Cotton had done, taking with him all the books he wanted to study in order to make up for the education he had been denied in his youth.Schroeder, No Longer Yours 112–116Yellin, Harriet Jacobs 58
Anti-slavery activism
After returning after three and a half years, John S. Jacobs, as he called himself after his escape to freedom, settled in Boston, Massachusetts. Slavery had long been abolished in Massachusetts, and anti-slavery sentiment was strong in Boston, where William Lloyd Garrison published his Liberator. Still, Black refugees from the South could be transported back to slavery, and their helpers, like Charles Turner Torrey, sometimes faced long terms of imprisonment. Jacobs soon became an active member of the city's vibrant African-American community, which numbered about 2,000. He joined the African-American Adelphic Union Library Association which organized lectures on various subjects including oratory, promoting the idea of self-improvement. Soon, he would also take part in the activities of the New England Freedom Association, helping fugitives from the slave states.Schroeder, No Longer Yours 123–129 William Cooper Nell, the "glue that held Black Boston together",Schroeder, No Longer Yours 124 soon called Jacobs his "adopted Brother".Schroeder, No Longer Yours 127
By 1847, Jacobs had established his fame as an able and committed abolitionist. Garrison's American Anti-Slavery Society invited him to join captain Jonathan Walker on a four-and-a-half-month lecturing tour. Walker, a White man, showed his hand as proof of the slaveholders' barbaric brutality. The hand had been branded with the letters SS (meaning "slave stealer") after he had tried to assist a group of fugitives.Yellin, Harriet Jacobs 93–94Schroeder, No Longer Yours 133
After that, Jacobs undertook other lecture tours for the abolitionist cause on his own. Early in 1849, he went on a 16-day tour together with Frederick Douglass,Yellin, Harriet Jacobs 98Yellin (ed.), Incidents xviii, xix who had made his escape from slavery in 1838 only weeks before Jacobs had made his.Schroeder, No Longer Yours 112
From December 1847 through the autumn of 1849, Jacobs spent at least 450 days on the lecturing circuit, travelling mostly on foot in all kinds of weather. As can be seen from his reports printed in Douglass’s North Star and Garrison’s Liberator, he found an interested and kind audience in some places, but was harressed or even threatened in others. The reception was especially negative in places where president Zachary Taylor, an enslaver of 131 persons,Schroeder, No Longer Yours 147 had strong support.Schroeder, No Longer Yours 140–149
For a short period in 1849, Jacobs, with the help of his sister Harriet, took over the management of the "Anti-Slavery Office and Reading Room" in Rochester, New York, which was situated in the same building as Douglass's newspaper North Star.Yellin, Harriet Jacobs 102–103Schroeder (ed.), Despots xviii
Fugitive Slave Law and exile
In the autumn of 1849, Jacobs stopped lecturing. Schroeder sees a connection to the enormous physical and psychological stress involved.Schroeder, No Longer Yours 149 In 1850, Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Law which made it easier for slaveholders to force fugitives back into slavery. John S. Jacobs was one of the speakers on rallies protesting against that law.Yellin, Harriet Jacobs 107–108 At the end of that year, he went to California to try his luck as a gold miner. At the end of 1852, he went on to Australia together with Harriet's son Joseph, again searching for gold. According to Schroeder, going to California and then Australia was the only way to be true to the Garrisonian principle of "No Union with Slaveholders" which was incompatible with paying money to the former enslaver for getting the freedom papers.