Chapter XII: Fear of Insurrection
Jacobs describes the developments on her plantation and in the surrounding area following Nat Turner's Insurrection -- here's a link to Turner's confessions and to the Wikipedia article on the insurrection. The whites have a "muster" where they shoulder their muskets and father together to police the community. Jacobs is educated and generally aware of conditions and so she knows about the "true state of affairs" - that there has been a slave rebellion in Virginia. Other slaves do not. Many whites from a twenty mile radius of Edenton, NC come into town and search blacks' homes and torture slaves and free blacks alike. This is another situation where living in town is beneficial, as Jacobs and her family have white protectors. Slaves in rural environments fare much worse: "Colored people and slaves who lived in remote parts of town suffered in an especial manner" (203).
Jacobs describes the whites' efforts to frame blacks by planting "powder and shot" in their belongings and their suspicion of her written documents. She also mentions that the whites involved in the muster harass and persecute a number of innocent blacks who happened to have items that could be construed as incriminatory in their homes as well as those who tried to escape punishment by claiming to have knowledge about the conspiracy. She describes one man who claimed to have information and did not. He succeeded only in "augment[ing] his own sufferings and those of the colored people" (207).
She describes the closure of the black church and the discriminatory policies of the white churches.
XIII: "The Church and Slavery"
Jacobs continues to discuss religion, and particularly the meetings arranged by the whites with the white Episcopalian minister the Reverend Mr. Pike. His sermons focus on submission and he is gradually less and less interested in ministering to the slaves. She describes the hypocrisy and outright cruelty of a Methodist class leader on 210 and 211. On 212 and 213 she describes a qualified and unprejudiced Episcopalian minister that actually tailors his sermons to the slaves and how blessed of an influence he was upon them. She describes her own labors to teach a slave, uncle Fred, how to read.
Jacobs argues that missionaries are needed among the slaves as badly (if not even more) than among foreign heathens, yet white southern Christians "send the Bible to heathen abroad, and neglect the heathen at home" (214). She observes that if any ministers were to attempt to labor among the slaves, they would be "hated by the south, and would be driven from its soil, or dragged to prison to die."
She describes the misinformation of Northern visitors to the South and the damage dealt by their positive accounts of slavery and concludes by mentioning Dr. Flint's false-hearted conversion and continued hypocrisy.
XVI: "Scenes at the Plantation"
Jacobs has decided that she would rather live and work on the plantation of Dr. Flint's son than move to the private cabin he keeps trying to build for her. She sets about preparing the house for the arrival of Mr. Flint's new wife. Her daughter Ellen suffers greatly on the plantation because she is not used to being separated from her mother. Harriet Jacobs has not been allowed near Mrs. Flint (the wife of Dr. Flint) on account of the latter's hatred for and suspicion of her.
When she is tipped off by a friend that her children are to be sent to the plantation to be broken in, she begins to plan their escape.
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