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“The United States Governed by Six Hundred Thousand Despots,” a denunciation of slavery by a formerly enslaved man named John S. Jacobs, was published in an Australian newspaper in 1855, and then forgotten. Above, an 1848 oil portrait that may depict Jacobs.

“The United States Governed by Six Hundred Thousand Despots,” a denunciation of slavery by a formerly enslaved man named John S. Jacobs, was published in an Australian newspaper in 1855, and then forgotten. Above, an 1848 oil portrait that may depict Jacobs.(Amani Willett for The New York Times)