Harriet Jacobs:  Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

Glossary

• Benjamin the fictional name Jacobs gives to her son, Joseph
• “the child follows the condition of its mother” a reference to the fact that under the law, the children of a slave mother were automatically born as slaves
• Dr. Flint the fictional name Jacobs gives to her master and tormentor, Dr. James Norcom
• Fugitive Slave Law the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850
• Jenny Lind a famous Swedish opera singer
• Linda Linda Brent, the persona Jacobs adopts in her narrative
• Mr. Bruce the fictional name Jacobs gives to Nathanial Parker Willis, the New Yorker who took her in
• “running to and fro” … “knowledge should be increased” quotations from the book of Daniel in the King James Bible
• “short and simple annals of the poor” a line originally from Thomas Gray's 1751 poem “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard,” later used by Abraham Lincoln to describe his childhood
• speculator a person who purchased the rights to runaway slaves so as to catch them and then sell them to the highest bidder
• Uncle Tom's Cabin the widely read antislavery novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe
• wife of a Senator probably a reference to Robert Rantoul, Jr., an outspoken opponent of the Fugitive Slave Act
• William the fictional name Jacobs gives her brother John