Solomon Northup

In the winter of the year that he married, Northup worked as a laborer repairing the Champlain Canal. He then bought two horses and contracted to tow lumber on rafts to Troy from Lake Champlain beginning the following spring. He employed two workers.[14][42] He worked on other waterways in upstate New York[5] and he traveled to northern New York and Montreal, Canada. When the canal was closed down, he cut lumber during the winter of 1831–1832.[43] He worked as a farm laborer in the Sandy Hill area.[5]

He arranged to farm corn and oats on part of the Alden farm where his father lived in Kingsbury.[44] He built a fine reputation as a fiddler and was in high demand to play for dances in surrounding villages.[13][45] The couple had become prosperous due to the income Anne received as a cook and that Northup made farming and playing the violin.[45]

The couple moved to Saratoga Springs in March 1834, where he drove a horse-drawn taxi for a businessman, and during the tourist season he worked for the United States Hotel,[14][45][46] where he was employed by Judge James M. Marvin, a part-owner of the hotel.[14][47] He played his violin at several well-known hotels in Saratoga Springs.[48][49] He also worked on the construction of the Troy and Saratoga Railroad.[14][50] He had become a regular customer and friend of William Perry and Cephus Parker, who owned several shops in town. Over the seven years that the Northups lived in Saratoga Springs, they had been able to make ends meet and dress their children in fine clothes, but they had been unable to prosper as hoped.[51]

In March 1841, Anne went 20 miles to Sandy Hill where she ran the kitchen at Sherrill's Coffee House during the session of the court. She may have taken their oldest daughter Elizabeth with her. Their two youngest children went to stay with their aunt. Northup stayed in Saratoga Springs to look for employment until the tourist season.[52]

In 1841, at age 32, Northup met two men, who introduced themselves as Merrill Brown and Abram Hamilton. Saying they were entertainers, members of a circus company, they offered him a job as a fiddler for several performances in New York City.[5][13] Expecting the trip to be brief, Northup did not notify Anne, who was working in Sandy Hill.[53] When they reached New York City, the men persuaded Northup to continue with them for a gig with their circus in Washington, D.C., offering him a generous wage and the cost of his return trip home. They stopped so that he could get a copy of his "free papers", which documented his status as a free man.[13]

The city had one of the nation's largest slave markets, and slave catchers were not above kidnapping free black people.[54] At this time, 20 years before the Civil War, the expansion of cotton cultivation in the Deep South had led to a continuing high demand for healthy slaves. Kidnappers used a variety of means, from forced abduction to deceit, and frequently abducted children, who were easier to control.[55]

It is possible that "Brown" and "Hamilton" incapacitated Northup – his symptoms suggest that he was drugged with belladonna or laudanum, or with a mixture of both[20] – and sold him to Washington slave trader James H. Birch[lower-alpha 9] for $650, claiming that he was a fugitive slave.[13][27] However, Northup stated in his account of the ordeal in Twelve Years a Slave in Chapter II, "[w]hether they were accessory to my misfortunes – subtle and inhuman monsters in the shape of men – designedly luring me away from home and family, and liberty, for the sake of gold – those who read these pages will have the same means of determining as myself." Birch and Ebenezer Radburn, his jailer, severely beat Northup to stop him from saying he was a free man. Birch then wrongfully presented Northup as a slave from Georgia.[56] Northup was held in the slave pen of trader William Williams, close to the United States Capitol.[27] Birch shipped Northup and other slaves by sea to New Orleans, in what was called the coastwise slave trade, where Birch's partner Theophilus Freeman would sell them.[5][13] During the voyage, Northup and the other slaves caught smallpox.[27]

Northup persuaded John Manning, an English sailor, to send to Henry B. Northup, upon reaching New Orleans, a letter that told of his kidnapping and illegal enslavement.[57][lower-alpha 10] Henry was a lawyer, was related to Henry Northrop who had held and freed Solomon's father,[11] and a childhood friend of Solomon's.[59][60][61] The letter was delivered to Governor Seward by Henry, but it was not actionable because Northup's location was unknown.[62]

The New York State Legislature had passed a law in 1840 that made it illegal to entice or kidnap an African-American out of New York and sell them into slavery.[14] It provided legal and financial assistance to aid the recovery of any who were kidnapped and taken out of state and illegally enslaved.[55]

Record of sale from Theophilus Freeman to William Prince Ford of enslaved Harry, Platt (Solomon Northup) and Dradey (Eliza), June 23, 1841.[63]

At the New Orleans slave market, Birch's partner Theophilus Freeman sold Northup (who had been renamed Platt) along with Harry and Eliza (renamed Dradey)[64] to William Prince Ford, a preacher who engaged in small farming on Bayou Boeuf of the Red River in northern Louisiana.[5][13] Ford was then a Baptist preacher. (In 1843, he led his congregation in converting to the closely related Churches of Christ, after they were influenced by the writings of Alexander Campbell.) In his memoir, Northup characterized Ford as a good man, considerate of his slaves. In spite of his situation, Northup wrote:

In my opinion, there never was a more kind, noble, candid, Christian man than William Ford. The influences and associations that had always surrounded him, blinded him to the inherent wrong at the bottom of the system of Slavery.[13]

At Ford's place in Pine Woods, Northup assessed the problem of getting timber off Ford's farm to market. He proposed and then made a log raft to move lumber down the narrow Indian Creek, in order to transport the logs more easily.[65] Northup built weaving looms, so that fabric could be woven for clothing.[66]

Ford came into financial difficulties and had to sell 18 slaves to settle his debts.[67] In the winter of 1842, Ford sold Northup to John M. Tibaut,[13][lower-alpha 11] a carpenter who had been working for Ford on the mills. He also had helped construct a weaving-house and corn mill on Ford's Bayou Boeuf plantation. Ford owed Tibaut money for the work. Since the amount Ford owed Tibaut was less than the purchase price agreed upon for Solomon, Ford held a chattel mortgage on Northup for $400, the difference between the two amounts.[67]

"Chapin rescues Solomon from hanging", illustration from Twelve Years A Slave (1853)

Under Tibaut, Northup suffered cruel and capricious treatment. Tibaut used him to help complete construction at Ford's plantation. At one point, Tibaut whipped Northup because he did not like the nails Northup was using. But Northup fought back, beating Tibaut severely. Enraged, Tibaut recruited two friends to lynch and hang the slave, which a master was legally entitled to do. Ford's overseer Chapin interrupted and prevented the men from killing Northup, reminding Tibaut of his debt to Ford, and chasing them off at gunpoint. Northup was left bound and noosed for hours until Ford returned home to cut him down.[68] Northup believed that Tibaut's debt to Ford saved his life. Historian Walter Johnson suggests that Northup may well have been the first slave Tibaut ever bought, marking his transition from itinerant employee to property-owning master.[69]

Tibaut hired Northup out to a planter named Eldret, who lived about 38 miles south on the Red River. At what he called "The Big Cane Brake", Eldret had Northup and other slaves clear cane, trees, and undergrowth in the bottomlands in order to develop cotton fields for cultivation.[27][70] With the work unfinished, after about five weeks, Tibaut sold Northup to Edwin Epps.

Restored Edwin Epps House, a plantation house. Now located on the Louisiana State University of Alexandria campus

Epps held Northup for almost 10 years, until 1853, in Avoyelles Parish. He was a cruel master who frequently and indiscriminately punished slaves and drove them hard. His policy was to whip slaves if they did not meet daily work quotas he set for pounds of cotton to be picked, among other goals.[71]

In 1852, itinerant Canadian carpenter Samuel Bass came to do some work for Epps. Hearing Bass express his abolitionist views, Northup eventually decided to confide his secret to him. Bass was the first person he told of his true name and origins as a free man since he was first enslaved.[72] Along with mailing a letter written by Northup, Bass wrote several letters at his request to Northup's friends, providing general details of his location at Bayou Boeuf, in hopes of gaining his rescue.[73]

Bass did this at great personal risk as the local people would not take kindly to a person helping a slave and depriving a man of his property. In addition, Bass's help came after passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which increased federal penalties against people assisting slaves to escape.[74]

Bass wrote several letters to people Northup knew in Saratoga Springs: one went to his former employer Judge James M. Marvin[14] and another reached Cephas Parker and William Perry, storekeepers in Saratoga. Parker and Perry forwarded the letter to Northup's wife, Anne, who contacted attorney Henry B. Northup, the son of Solomon's father's former master. Henry B. Northup contacted New York Governor Washington Hunt, who took up the case, appointing the attorney general as his legal agent. In 1840, the New York State Legislature had passed a law committing the state to help any African-American residents kidnapped into slavery, as well as guaranteeing a jury trial to alleged fugitive slaves. Once Northup's family was notified, his rescuers still had to do detective work to find the enslaved man, as he had partially tried to hide his location for protection in case the letters fell into the wrong hands, and Bass had not used his real name. They had to find documentation of his free status as a citizen and New York resident; Henry B. Northup also collected sworn affidavits from people who knew Solomon Northup. During this time, Northup did not know if Bass had reached anyone with the letters. There was no means of communicating, because of the secrecy they needed to maintain, and the necessity of preventing Northup's owner from knowing their plans.[13][49] Bass did not reveal his own name in the letter.[75][lower-alpha 12]

Henry gathered documentation and depositions and stopped off in Washington, D.C. to meet with Pierre Soule, a legislator from Louisiana, and the Secretary of War in preparation for his rescue effort in Louisiana.[14] Although he did not have Bass's name, Henry still managed to find him in Marksville (the postmark on the letters), and Bass revealed that Solomon Northup was held by Edwin Epps on his plantation. Henry had legal paperwork prepared based upon the documentation that proved that Northup was free.[75][14] The sheriff went with Henry to give the news to Epps and take Northup off the farm.[76]

Northup later wrote, "He [Epps] thought of nothing but his loss, and cursed me for having been born free."[13][77] Attorney Henry B. Northup convinced Epps that it would be futile to contest the free papers in a court of law, so the planter conceded the case. He signed papers giving up all claim to Northup. Finally on January 4, 1853, four months after meeting Bass, Northup regained his freedom.[27][78]

"Scene of the Slave Pen in Washington" after imploring that he was a free man, an illustration from Twelve Years A Slave (1853)

After he made it back to New York, Solomon Northup wrote and published his memoir, Twelve Years a Slave (1853). The book was written in three months with the help of David Wilson, a local lawyer and writer.[3]

Northup told the story of his kidnapping and enslavement with many verifiable details. Northup told the cruelty, treatment as chattel, and the appreciated acts of kindnesses that he received. "Its tone is much milder than we expected to see exhibited," according to the Rome Citizen of New York.[79] The detail that he provided helped illuminate the depth of his experiences, and allowed for verification of what life was like on a plantation. Sue Eakin and Joseph Logsdon researched the facts from Northup's book and were able to verify many of the events and people and published their annotated version of the book in 1968. Edwin Epps, his slaveholder, stated that a greater part of the book was the truth to soldiers from the 114th New York Infantry Regiment that Epps met during the Civil War. Northup was literate and provided the facts without hyperbole in "plain and candid language", while Wilson corrected style, grammar, and inconsistencies.[79]

It was published by Derby & Miller of Auburn, New York.[80][14] In the period when questions of slavery generated debate and the novel Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) by Harriet Beecher Stowe was a bestseller, Northup's book sold 30,000 copies within three years, also becoming a bestseller.[3] Northup traveled and went on a lecture tour in Northeastern states to tell his story and sell books. The book became the backbone of other books about him, such as Solomon Northup: The Complete Story of the Author of Twelve Years a Slave.[79]

"The Avoyelles Slave Case", The Times-Picayune, February 6, 1853

Northup was one of the few kidnapped free black people to regain freedom after being sold into slavery. Represented by attorneys Senator Salmon P. Chase of Ohio, General Orville Clark, and Henry B. Northup, Solomon Northup sued Birch and other men involved in selling him into slavery in Washington, DC.[1][3] The historian Carol Wilson documented 300 kidnapping cases in her 1994 book, and believes that it is likely that thousands more were kidnapped who were never documented.[81]

As Solomon Northup and Henry Northup made their way back to New York, they first stopped in Washington DC to file a legal complaint with the police magistrate against James H. Birch, the man who had first enslaved him. Birch was immediately arrested and tried on criminal charges. However, Northup was unable to testify at the trial due to laws in Washington DC against black men testifying in court. Birch and several others who were also in the slave trade testified that Northup had approached them, saying he was a slave from Georgia and was for sale. No note of his purchase was made in Birch's accounting ledger, however. The prosecution consisted of Henry B. Northup and another white man asserting that they had known Northup for many years, and he was born and lived a free man in New York until his abduction. With no one legally able to testify against Birch's tale, Birch was found not guilty. However, the sensational case immediately attracted national attention, and The New York Times published an article about the trial on January 20, 1853, just days after its conclusion and only two weeks after Northup's rescue.[1]

The New York trial opened on October 4, 1854. Both Northup and St. John testified against the two men. The case brought widespread illegal practices in the domestic slave trade to light. Through testimony during the court case, various details of Northup's account of his experience were confirmed.[13] The respective counsels argued over whether the crime had been committed in New York (where Northup could testify), or in Washington, DC, outside the jurisdiction of New York courts.[13] After more than two years of appeals, a new district attorney in New York failed to continue with the case, and it was dropped in May 1857.[5]

He worked again as a carpenter after he moved back to New York. He became active in the abolitionist movement and lectured on slavery in the years before the American Civil War.[5][14][82] During the summer of 1857, Northup was in Canada for a series of lectures. In Streetsville, Ontario, a hostile Canadian crowd prevented him from speaking.[83]

After 1857, he was not living with family[lower-alpha 8] and there was speculation by family, friends, and others that he was enslaved again.[3][84][85][86] The 21st-century historians Clifford Brown and Carol Wilson believe it is likely that he died of natural causes,[3] because he was too old to be of interest to slave catchers.[4]

According to John R. Smith, in letters written in the 1930s, his father Rev. John L. Smith, a Methodist minister in Vermont, had worked with Northup and former slave Tabbs Gross in the early 1860s, during the Civil War, aiding fugitive slaves on the Underground Railroad.[2] Northup was said to have visited Rev. Smith after Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, which was made in January 1863.[2]

There is no contemporaneous documentation of his death.[4][87] It is believed by historians that he died in 1863 or 1864.[2][5][14][88]

• Former U.S. poet laureate and Pulitzer Prize winner Rita Dove wrote the poem "The Abduction" about Northup, published in her first collection, The Yellow House on the Corner (1980).[101]
• In 1984, Twelve Years a Slave was adapted as a PBS television movie titled Solomon Northup's Odyssey, directed by Gordon Parks. Northup was portrayed by Avery Brooks.[102]
• In 2008, composer and saxophonist T. K. Blue, commissioned by the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA), recorded Follow the North Star, a musical composition inspired by Northup's life.[103]
• The episode "Division" of the 2010 television miniseries America: The Story of Us depicts Northup's slave auction. Significant emphasis is placed on Eliza being separated from her children, and the actor portraying Northup does voiceover of direct passages from Twelve Years a Slave.
• The 2013 feature film 12 Years a Slave, adapted from his memoir, was written by John Ridley and directed by Steve McQueen.[104] British actor Chiwetel Ejiofor portrays Northup, for which he earned an Oscar nomination for Best Actor in a Leading Role. The film was nominated for nine Academy Awards,[105] winning 3—for Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, for John Ridley,[106] and Best Supporting Actress for Lupita Nyong'o, who played the slave Patsey in her debut film role.[106]