The chapter titled “What Slaves are Taught to Think of the North” shows how slaveholders used misinformation as a powerful tactic to force their preferred version of reality onto those that they have enslaved. Linda explains that in her own experience, she had an interaction with her Mistress in which her Mistress created a false narrative that a freed woman was living in “starvation” in her new life and hoped for the opportunity to become enslaved again. Linda quickly confirmed that the story had been entirely false, but she reflects that she knows that most of the enslaved people believe these stories.
This chapter reminded me of the moment in Frederick Douglass’ narrative where he explains the altered version of the experience of slavery that had been told to those in the North. The mutual passages of misinformation allow white people to alter black people’s version of reality and therefore perpetuate their ideal version that both assuages their guilt while still maintaining the systems of enslavement.
Eliza, I really like that you point out how the North was weaponized and used against enslaved people. I also think it’s important to mention the complicity of the North. In the last few chapters, Jacobs talks about the effects of the Fugitive Slave Act on her life in New York, and the feeling that she actually was not free or safe in the North. We did not see this explicitly mentioned as much in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, likely because Stowe did not actually want freed slaves to settle in the North.