Harriet Jacobs was a famed abolitionist and author, best known for her firsthand experiences of enslavement in the American South. Still, for 169 years, a blistering memoir about America’s fraudulence—written by her brother—had been buried in a pile of newspapers…until now.
In 1855, a man walked into a newspaper office in Sydney, Australia, with a strange request: he wanted a copy of the United States Constitution. The office clerks gave him the reprint, along with a recent book about US history. Two weeks later, he returned with his own written work, an almost 20,000-word memoir. The title was pretty straightforward: The United States Governed by Six Hundred Thousand Despots.
The first half of the story chronicled his experiences, born a sixth-generation slave in North Carolina in 1815, to how he managed to escape his master and spend some time working on a whaling ship. Eventually, he decided to leave the United States and headed to Australia to work in the gold fields.
The second portion of the author’s account is a gripping, extensive critique of the nation he left behind with a specific focus on its so-called “esteemed” founding document. He doesn’t hold back, expressing his deep disappointment and condemnation towards the certificate and his home country.
“That devil in sheepskin called the Constitution of the United States is the great chain that binds the north and south together, a union to rob and plunder the sons of Africa, a union cemented with human blood, and blackened with the guilt of 68 years.”
The newspaper printed the story unaltered, but did not reveal the author’s identity. They only credited it as the work of “A Fugitive Slave.” Any evidence of the public’s reactions are unknown and the man’s work was eventually forgotten.
In 2016, an American literary historian (Jonathan Schroeder) stumbles upon the memoir while browsing through an online newspaper database late one night. After nearly 170 years, it was published in May of this year with the original, fearless title intact. This time, however, it proudly displays the author’s name: John Swanson Jacobs.
The discovery of a forgotten slave narrative is highly noteworthy on its own, but this one, according to academics who have examined it, is particularly remarkable. While it stands out for its global perspective and candor, it comes from a formerly enslaved man who deliberately distanced himself from the institution that controlled what formerly enslaved individuals could write about. But the most striking part is that the author of this narrative is the brother of Harriet Jacobs, whose own autobiography, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (it includes harrowing accounts of physical and sexual abuse at the hands of James Norcom while she was a servant in his home), is the first published narrative written by a formerly enslaved African American woman, hailed as the best-known Black female author of the 19th century.
John Jacobs has often been overshadowed by his sister’s story, but thankfully, that has now changed. Harriet made her escape to freedom in 1842 and became actively involved in the abolition movement before the launch of the Civil War. During the war, she used her celebrity to raise money for Black refugees, and after the war, she worked to improve the conditions of recently freed slaves. The United States Governed by Six Hundred Thousand Despots captures the essence of John’s life and is a powerful display of his personal freedom as an ex-slave and ex-American. A sailor, miner and radical abolitionist himself, he gives a raw and unfiltered perspective, one that is both international and American but, miraculously, is untampered and unedited by white deskmen.
Although born into a long familial line of enslavement, Jacobs escaped from the shackles of the South and the United States to become a citizen of the world and its waters in 1855. It was also the same year he bravely disregarded America’s power and its threats, having shared a life story that didn’t mince words in that newspaper. His stance was bold and clear as he spoke out against the American government and its upholding of the savagery of enslavement. He called out politicians and slave owners by name and criticized America’s founding documents as well as those citizens who endorsed and supported the racist status quo.
“Do you ever expect to see the day when the stranger and sojourner with you will not be dragged from your doors? Do you believe that God holds you guiltless of the blood of the three million slaves? The blood of your coloured countrymen cries out against you-the laws of God condemn you.”
While the written work of the enslaved has been referred to as the United States’ only homegrown literary genre, slavery is often associated with silenced voices and suppressed stories. However, Despots is a thunderous and candid truth-telling story about American history. Jacobs’ viewpoint is sharp and unflinching, laying bare the personal accounts and compounded forces of racism embedded in the American project—a hard confrontation of the truth that in 1776, America started a democratic experiment alongside one that was ruthless and tyrannical.
The United States Governed by Six Hundred Thousand Despots by John Swanson Jacobs is available at all major retailers where books are sold, including the following Black-owned bookstores:
