No longer yours - find out how a powerful newspaper article written in 1855 by a fugitive slave was re-published into a book and added to our collection.
Newspapers of the 19th century were very different from today's, and not just because we can read them on our phones. Another surprising difference was how often they published long articles, and not always from people who were journalists. Newspapers would even release new novels in serial form, publishing whole chapters per week and getting readers hooked on knowing what would happen next.
Clever newspaper editors, knowing people were happy to read long articles, could take a chance on submissions they received from anyone. Providing, of course, that they thought the topic would grab the public's attention and hold it for their next edition...
Explore part one of the original article in Trove
Explore part two of the original article in Trove
The story behind this article begins in 1855, when a man visited the offices of major Sydney newspaper The Empire and enquired about borrowing Richard Hildreth’s History of the United States, and a ‘correct copy’ of the American Constitution. About a month later, a long and impassioned article was sent to the newspaper and the editor decided to print it under the provocative title: The United States Governed by Six Hundred Thousand Despots, A True Story of Slavery. The author? A fugitive slave.
It tells the story of John Swanson Jacobs, who was born in North Carolina as a 6th-generation slave who had 5 different owners in 18 years. However, his life was not one of passive suffering. By the 1850s, at a time when slaves throughout the United States ‘must bear all things and resist nothing’, Jacobs managed to educate himself, escape first to the South Pacific and then Australia, and write a powerful critique of slavery.
And yes, as you may have guessed, John Swanson Jacobs was the same man who walked into The Empire offices, looking for those 2 important documents to help tell his story.
Literary historian Jonathan D.S. Schroeder recently found this exciting text through the digitised newspapers of Trove, and had it republished as a book, along with a biography of this remarkable figure.
When he talked to the editors of The Empire, Jacobs likely knew that the newspaper, founded by Sir Henry Parkes, was the voice of freedom and democracy at the time. However, it would have been impossible to imagine that the editor’s bold decision to publish his nearly 20,000-word account in full, with names uncensored, would lead to the re-discovery of this story 169 years later.
The United States governed by six hundred thousand despots : a true story of slavery : a rediscovered narrative, with a full biography is in the Library’s collections and can be requested to be viewed in the Main Reading Room. You can also access digitised copies of the original articles published in The Empire through Trove: Part one (25 April 1855) and Part two (26 April 1855).
