Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 starsAMERICAN Tragedy
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on November 30, 2013
The tragic life of Solomon Northup as an American Black man who was born free in New York state but kidnapped in Washington, D.C., sold into slavery and kept in bondage for 12 years in Louisiana before the American Civil War. Northup account details the slave markets in Washington, D.C. and New Orleans, as well as describing at length cotton and sugar cultivation on major plantations in Louisiana.
Northup's book sold 30,000 copies and was considered a bestseller. It went through several editions in the 19th century. Northup’s first-person account of his twelve years of bondage proved a dramatic story in the national political debate over slavery that took place in the years leading up to the Civil War. It drew endorsements from major Northern newspapers, anti-slavery organizations, and evangelical groups.
In his home town of Saratoga, New York, Solomon Northup, a free negro who was a skilled carpenter and violinist, was approached by two circus promoters. They offered him a brief, high-paying job as a musician with their traveling circus. Without informing his wife, who was away at work in a nearby town, he traveled with the strangers to New York and Washington, D.C. After arriving in the capital, he awoke to find himself drugged, bound, and in the cell of a slave pen. When Northup asserted his rights as a free man, he was beaten and warned never again to mention his free life in New York.
Transported by ship to New Orleans, Northup and other enslaved Blacks contracted smallpox. In transit, Northup implored a sympathetic sailor to send a letter to his family. The letter arrived, but, lacking knowledge of his final destination, Northup's family was unable to effect his rescue.
Northup's first owner was William Ford, a cotton planter on a bayou of the Red River. He subsequently had several owners during his twelve-year bondage. At times, his carpentry and other skills meant he was treated relatively well, but he also suffered extreme cruelty. On two occasions, he was attacked by a white man who he was leased to, John Tibeats, and defended himself, for which he suffered great reprisals. After about two years of enslavement, he was sold to a notoriously cruel Edwin Epps. He held Northup enslaved for 10 years, during which time he assigned him to various roles from cotton picker to hauler to driver, which required he oversee the work of fellow slaves and punish them for undesirable behavior.
After being beaten for claiming his free status in the slave pen in Washington, D.C., Northup in 12 years did not reveal his true history again to a slave or owner. Finally he confided his story to Samuel Bass, a white carpenter and abolitionist from Canada. Bass, at great risk to himself, sent letters to Northup’s wife, and friends in Saratoga.
A shopkeeper, Parker, sought the assistance of Henry B. Northup, a white attorney and politician whose family had held and freed Solomon Northup's father. Henry Northup contacted New York state officials. Since the state had passed a law in 1840 to provide financial resources for the rescue of citizens kidnapped into slavery, the governor appointed Henry Northup as an agent to travel to Louisiana and work with law enforcement to free Solomon Northup. After a variety of bureaucratic measures and searches were undertaken, the attorney succeeded in locating Solomon Northup and freeing him from the plantation.
Northup filed charges against the men who sold him into slavery, but was unsuccessful later in prosecuting them. He returned to New York and was reunited with his family there.
Northup's account was unique in documenting being kidnapped as a free man and sold into slavery. His perspective was always to compare what he saw to what he knew before as a free man. While there were hundreds of such kidnappings, he was among the few who were freed from such slavery.
1968, historians Dr. Joseph Logsdon and Sue Eakin studied Northup’s account, documenting it through the slave sales records of Washington, D.C. and New Orleans; by retracing his journey and bondage in Bayou Boeuf plantation country in central Louisiana and through its records, and documenting his New York State origins. They found his father’s freeman’s decree, and the case files for the legal work that restored Northup’s freedom and prosecuted his abductors.
Historian Jesse Holland researched the roles of ethnic African slaves who as skilled laborers helped build some of the important public buildings in Washington, including the Capitol and part of the original Executive Mansion.
