John S. Jacobs

John Swanson Jacobs
Born	1815 Edenton, North Carolina, U.S.
Died	December 19, 1873(1873-12-19) (aged 57–58) Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.
Other names	William
Occupation(s)	Author and abolitionist
Relatives	Harriet Jacobs (sister)

Forced labour and slavery
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John Swanson Jacobs (1815 or 1817 – December 19, 1873) was a Black author and abolitionist. After escaping from slavery in North Carolina, for a time he worked in whaling and other employment that took him around the world. In 1861, an edited autobiography entitled A True Tale of Slavery was published in four consecutive editions of the London weekly The Leisure Hour. He had left the manuscript for the autobiography with acquaintances. However, the unabridged and uncensored version, The United States Governed by Six Hundred Thousand Despots, had already been published by him in a Sydney, Australia newspaper in 1855. The Australian version was rediscovered and subsequently republished in 2024. The full autobiography is described among slave narratives as "unique for its global perspective and its uncensored fury". He castigated both the slave holders (the 600,000) and the rest of American society for their complicity. John Jacobs also features prominently, under the pseudonym "William", in the classic Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861), authored by his sister Harriet Jacobs.