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“But I do earnestly desire to arouse the women of the North to a realizing sense of the condition of two millions of women at the South, still in bondage, suffering what I have suffered, and most of them far worse.”<ref>Harriet Jacobs,''Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: Written by Herself'' (1861, repr., New York: Penguin, 200), 3-4.</ref>These are the words of Harriet Jacobs, who lived in a state of chattel slavery for twenty-seven years. After her courageous escape to the North, through various undertakings, she was able to write her personal history. In the preface to her story——and throughout the text——she appeals to women of the North as mothers to act on behalf of the enslaved mothers of the South. Through personal experience, she understood the level of degradation suffered by a slave and that the right Americans had to trade in human beings was a bad law.

[[File:John_Stuart_Mill_by_London_Stereoscopic_Company,_c1870.jpg|thumbnail|250px|Philosopher, John Stuart Mill, circa 1870.]]

Harm has been deemed too subjective to be succinctly defined. There are some cases of harm that can be considered fairly objective and agreed upon: A woman who is raped is harmed; A child who is taken from his mother never to see her again is harmed, and so is the mother; A man who is stripped to the waist and whipped with a leather strap on his bare skin is harmed; and one who physically labors in the elements from sunrise until sunset without compensation is harmed. These irrefutable harms are also irrefutable facts of slavery. The slave was abused and had no legal right to defend himself. The slave had no right to anything. The denial of the innate right of the freedom to choose is perhaps the greatest harm of all, as from this one harm all of the others grew. Whereas “over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign,” anyone taking action to impede individual sovereignty is causing harm. It is in the prevention of such action that “power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will” (On Liberty, 8). Individuals acting in such a manner to prevent harm are not extraordinary beings but rather they are courageous enough to fulfill the duties of humanity and utilitarian justice.

== How Slavery Harmed All ==

[[File:underground_railroad_map.jpg|thumbnail|300px|Map of routes taken by the Underground Railroad.]]

The utilitarian knows that in order for society to thrive, the individuals who compose that society must do the same. Thrive, in this case, is not defined by monetary gain but rather by group cohesion, individual happiness, and collective justice. Sadly, this was not the case in Antebellum America as “so much less do the generality of mankind value liberty than power.”<ref>Mill, ''On Liberty,'' 89.</ref>Abolitionists were different in that they wanted liberty for all of mankind as opposed to the power that slave owners wanted for themselves. The men and women of the Underground Railroad sacrificed their safety and security because they knew it was their duty, thus, if they did not assist a fugitive, they were equally as guilty of harm as the master himself. Wherein the slave owner caused harm by his actions, the free man who did nothing caused an equal amount of harm by his inactions. It is, therefore, the obligation of all people to prevent harm when possible. By doing so, immediate justice will be served and future utility secured.

== Harriet Tubman ==

Harriet Tubman worked tirelessly to emancipate as many chattel slaves as possible. Born as a slave in Maryland circa 1820, she escaped bondage via her own physical strength and her wits. After securing her own freedom in New York State, she made 19 further trips to the upper South to liberate her family and as many other slaves as possible. She lived as a slave, as a fugitive, and as a free woman. She was the ablest of judges. It was she who had the ability to decide which was more pleasurable as a way of life; slavery or liberty. Tubman best rendered a verdict by stating that “‘there was one of two things I had a right to, liberty, or death…no man should take me alive.’”<ref>Sarah Bradford, ''Harriet Tubman: The Moses of Her People'' (1886 repr., New York: Corinth, 1961),29.</ref> Harriet Jacobs, another woman who had the courage to flee bondage in order for her children to live in freedom, hid in an attic crawl space for seven years rather than return to her master. The experience of Tubman and Jacobs speaks for the thousands of others who made their way to freedom.

== Conclusion ==

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