Solomon Northup: Twelve Years A Slave

"Commenting on the literally hundreds of slave narratives published during the antislavery crusade, Ephraim Peabody, a contemporary writer, noted that they were 'calculated to exert a very wide influence on public opinion' because they contained 'the victim's account of the workings of this great institution.' Among the autobiographies  by former slaves, a few were especially effective in presenting a clear picture of the nature and operation of that 'peculiar institution.' The most famous were Frederick Douglass' Narrative, published in 1845, William W. Brown's Narrative, published in 1853. Northup's account is considered one of the most authentic descriptions of slavery from the viewpoint of the slave himself. Ulrich B. Phillips, who doubted the value and authenticity of many of the slave autobiographies wrote of Northup's book: '...this one has a tone which engages confidence. Its pictures of plantation life and labor are of particular interest'" (Philip S. Foner, Introd. Twelve Years a Slave).

Solomon Northup (1808-1863) was born in New York State to a father who was a freed slave, and a mother who was a free woman of color (1). A successful farmer, landowner and violinist, he was lured to Washington D.C. in 1841 on the promise of a job with traveling entertainers and taken hostage. Northup was drugged and sold at auction in New Orleans to a Louisiana planter. From the time of his kidnapping, Northup's family and friends had no knowledge of his whereabouts, and during his twelve year enslavement, he tried numerous times to contact them without success (1).

It is ironic that the United States banned the slave trade in 1808, the very year in which Solomon Northup was born to free parents. Nevertheless smuggling and illegal activities continued, and kidnappings were frequent as well. According to Philip S. Foner, Northup's case was the most famous--or infamous. Foner notes "he had been a raftsman and farmer around Lake Champlain in New York until 1841 when, on the ground of his talent with the fiddle, two strangers offered him employment in a circus which they said was then at Washington. Going there with them, without even bidding farewell to his wife and children, for what he thought would be temporary employment at good wages, Northup was drugged, shackled, robbed of his free papers, and sold to the firm of Price, Burch and Co., a well-known slave-trading establishment. Each time he protested that he was a free man, Northup was whipped until he learned not to mention the fact to anyone" (iv).

According to another source, Northup was sold to a number of different planters, but eventually was settled onto a plantation in Bayou Beouf, LA., where he toiled under the control of planter Edwin Eppes. While there, Northup "never revealed to his peers that he had once lived free for fear of...being sent further away." In his memoir Twelve Years a Slave, Northup recounts the plights of other slaves he witnessed being mistreated, such as Eliza, whose young son had been sold away from her, and Patsy, who endured routine and relentless sexual abuse from Eppes (2). On January 3, 1853, Northup was made a free man once again and returned to his family.

Perhaps what adds to the distinction of Northup's narrative is that its subject was kidnapped a free man on American soil. Unlike Olaudah Equiano, whose recollections of his village in Africa created a dramatic contrast between the Edenic early years of the author's life against the Middle Passage and New World slavery, Northup suffered a swift and horrifying transition from freedom and family to chattel slavery within the confines of the United States. His home was not a distant and dim memory, but one that was recent and otherwise accessible. Unlike Frederick Douglass who had been born a slave, Northup's narrative has the distinction of imagining a life in freedom that is destroyed by slavery. Northup's narrative allows its readers to examine even more closely the deteriorating and dehumanizing nature of slavery, and to analyze further the very nature of freedom.