, built by the colored people, and they had no higher happiness than to meet there and sing hymns together, and pour out their hearts in spontaneous prayer”(Jacobs 67). Here, the church and religion was a sanctuary for slaves.Southern women knew of slave women’s treatment from their husbands, which caused a great amount of jealousy toward their husbands. One particular mistress stood over a slave mother giving birth, and the mother’s suffering pleased her, telling the mother that she deserved it all and more. When the mother says that she is glad that the baby is in heaven, she retorts, “Heaven! There is no such place for the like of her and her bastard” (Jacobs 14). These women slaves were often raped by the master, who would go unpunished; however, if a white woman were raped, the perpetrator would be penalized. The husbands’ actions go unpunished; instead, they view the acts as favorable, for the children followed the mother, and so by impregnating women, he increases his wealth. The wife of one such man remarked, “[H]e not only thinks it no disgrace to be the father of those little niggers, but he is not ashamed to call himself their master. I declare, such things ought not be tolerated in any decent society!” (36) Again, these men may quote from the bible, as Leviticus 19:20-22 discusses the impregnation of slave women, stating that as long as the woman was not married, it was not a sinful act. Through her slave narrative, Jacobs reveals to her audience that the purpose of Christianity was not to enlighten slaves, but rather to maintain the social system of slavery. Masters used religion in order to quell the ideas of insurrection as well as to promote loyalty. After Nat Turner’s rebellion, the “slaveholders came to the conclusion that it would be well to give the slaves enough of religions instruction to keep them from murdering their masters” (68). Sl...
