Harriet Jacobs describes a man who, upon gaining control of his new wife’s possessions, wastes the money, impregnates one of her slaves twice, separates the black family members from each other and dies after a night of debauchery. With her comment in response to this situation, Jacobs seems to be making an appeal to white readers, much like Douglass did, about the ways in which they were degraded by slavery. She writes “Had it not been for slavery, he would have been a better man, and his wife a happier woman.”