WHITE PEOPLE II

In both Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and Up from Slavery, each author detail their early lives, and while different in nature, they both talk about the seeming good-naturedness of some of their masters. Both of their accounts are framed in different ways, and both serve the ultimate message of their texts.

In Incidents, Jacobs talks about her relatively carefree childhood in slavery, perhaps appealing to some White assumptions about if chattel slavery was truly cruel, "No toilsome or disagreeable duties were imposed on me. My mistress was so kind to me that I was always glad to do her bidding, and proud to labor for her as much as my young years would permit," but is quick to foreshadow her fate as a slave, "but there came that blight, which too surely waits on every human being born to be a chattel." When Jacobs' childhood mistress dies, she is hopeful that such a kind woman would ultimately grant her freedom, but, of course, "the will of my mistress was read, and we learned that she had bequeathed me to her sister’s daughter, a child of five years old. So vanished our hopes." In this paragraph, Jacobs establishes in the reader's mind that even the most behaviorally antithetical slave owner's best interest is to keep their slaves in bondage. This idea sets up the conclusion of Jacobs' story, in which a white person far removed from the system of slavery inadvertently subverts her freedom and humanity, supporting Incidents' message about the irredeemably evil nature of chattel slavery.

In Up from Slavery, compared to Jacobs, Washington's childhood is much more aligned with that of a "normal" slave child. While he suffers under the trials of slave labor, he always justifies this suffering by reinforcing the innocence of his slave masters and the debilitating effect on both races slavery had. When Washington details his plantation's emancipation, he writes of the slaves that "deep down in their hearts there was a strange and peculiar attachment to 'old Marster' and 'old Missus,'" reflecting Jacobs' view of her past mistress, despite the fact that Washington suffered much more under his masters. By doing this, Washington purges the condition of fair treatment from slaves' assessment of a "good master." At one point, Washington writes, "One may get the idea, from what I have said, that there was bitter feeling toward the white people on the part of my race ...  In the case of the slaves on our place this was not true," and extends this same clemency on the part of all slaves to anywhere "the Negro was treated with anything like decency." With these two quotes, Washington reinforces the view that former slaves were in fact thankful, or at least ambivalent instead of hateful, to their old masters, which supports Up from Slavery's message that black people should "cast down their buckets" without fear of repercussions from the white South.

Overall, Jacobs writes about a more balanced cast of white characters, ranging from the most despicable of humanity to the altruistic, yet flawed. Washington extends his lenient view on his former masters to the millions of slaves who were most likely treated much worse than him, as evidenced by Incidents. Washington's message comes into conflict with reality, and despite his efforts to acknowledge the evil of slavery, he ends up appealing to white Southerners intent on keeping former slaves at a subservient social status.