As the autobiography of Harriet Jacobs, who experienced slavery firsthand, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl has numerous quotes that show the inhumanity of slavery.

One way slaves were dehumanized was being treated as property to be disposed of at the will of their masters. In the following quote, Jacobs recounts how her grandmother, although promised freedom in her mistress’s will, was instead told that she would be sold. Jacobs says: “On the appointed day, the customary advertisement was posted up, proclaiming that there would be a "public sale of negroes, horses, &c.” By the posting of a sale of “negroes, horses, etc.” slaves were shown to have the same status as animals rather than as human beings.

Jacobs further illustrates this point by this revealing quote, referring to her master: “When he told me that I was made for his use, made to obey his command in every thing; that I was nothing but a slave, whose will must and should surrender to his, never before had my puny arm felt half so strong.” The master’s belief that Jacobs had no right to have a will of her own was dehumanizing, portraying her as an object rather than a person with her own ideas, wishes, dreams, and plans. Jacobs tries to resist this inhumanity by reflecting on her own strength.

Jacobs also cites the brutal physical treatment of slaves. She says,

If a slave is unwilling to go with his new master, he is whipped, or locked up in jail, until he consents to go, and promises not to run away during the year. Should he chance to change his mind, thinking it justifiable to violate an extorted promise, woe unto him if he is caught! The whip is used till the blood flows at his feet; and his stiffened limbs are put in chains, to be dragged in the field for days and days!

This brutal physical treatment, imposed when a slave tried to exercise the basic human right of freedom of choice, illustrates how slaves were dehumanized by overriding their free will with the demands of the chattel slave system.

In addition to physical cruelty and the degrading status of being property, slaves were also dehumanized by being deprived of fundamental human rights that the white masters enjoyed. Jacobs says,

There was in the neighborhood a young colored carpenter; a free born man. We had been well acquainted in childhood, and frequently met together afterwards. We became mutually attached, and he proposed to marry me. I loved him with all the ardor of a young girl's first love. But when I reflected that I was a slave, and that the laws gave no sanction to the marriage of such, my heart sank within me.

By being denied the right to marry whom she chose, and to not have that marriage recognized by law, Jacobs again experienced the inhumanity of slavery.

The inhumanity of slavery is also apparent in the parent-child relationship among slaves. Jacobs relates that “The mother of slaves is very watchful. She knows there is no security for her children.” These mothers faced the sale of their children away from them or other separations or mistreatments over which they had no control. While the white families could be secure in their marriages and the custody of their children, slaves were dehumanized by being stripped of even the most fundamental human desire, to protect one’s children.

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, by portraying the firsthand experiences of a former slave, powerfully reveals the inhumanity of slavery as the author recounts incidents from her life.