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Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} 12 Years a Slave by Solomon Northup 12 Years a Slave by Solomon Northup. Solomon Northup, b. 1808 Twelve Years a Slave: Narrative of Solomon Northup, a Citizen of New-York, Kidnapped in Washington City in 1841, and Rescued in 1853 Auburn [N.Y.]: Derby and Miller, 1853. Solomon Northup was born a free man in Minerva, New York, in 1808. His father, Mintus, was originally enslaved to the Northup family from Rhode Island, but he was freed after the family moved to New York. As a young man, Northup helped his father with farming chores and worked as a raftsman on the waterways of upstate New York. He married Anne Hampton and they had three children together. During the 1830s, Northup became locally renowned as an excellent fiddle-player. In 1841, two men offered Northup generous wages to join a traveling musical show, but soon after he accepted, they drugged him and sold him into slavery. After years of bondage, he came into contact with an outspoken abolitionist from Canada, who sent letters to notify Northup's family of his whereabouts. An official state agent was sent to Louisiana to reclaim Northup. After he was freed, Northup filed kidnapping charges against the men who had defrauded him, but the lengthy trial that followed was ultimately dropped because of legal technicalities, and he received no remuneration. Little is known about Northup's life after the trial, but he is believed to have died in 1863. Twelve Years a Slave was recorded by David Wilson, a white lawyer and legislator from New York who claimed to have presented "a faithful history of Solomon Northup's life, as [I] received it from his lips" (p. xv). Northup's book was published in 1853, less than a year after his liberation. It sold over thirty thousand copies. It is therefore not only one of the longest North American slave narratives, but also one of the best- selling. The first two chapters of Twelve Years a Slave relate the Northup family history, Solomon's marriage to Anne, his employment as a raftsman, a farmer, and a fiddle-player, and his abduction. Promised "one dollar for each day's services" and three dollars for every show that he played, Northup travels willingly with the two con artists to New York City and then to Washington, D.C. (p. 30). The men offer Northup a drink that causes him to become "insensible," and when Northup awakens, he is "alone, in utter darkness, and in chains" (p. 38). Northup is sold to the notorious Washington-based slave trader James H. Burch, who brutally whips him for protesting that he is a free man. While in the slave pen, he makes the acquaintance of several other slaves, including Eliza, whose sad history he relates in detail (pp. 50-54). The slaves are handcuffed and transported together via cars and steamboats to Richmond and then to New Orleans. He is delivered to Theophilus Freeman, a New Orleans slave trader who informs Northup that his new name is "Platt" (p. 75). Northup is purchased by a Baptist preacher named William Ford, and is put to work stacking and chopping logs at Ford's lumber mill. Realizing that Ford ships his lumber by land at great expense, Northup devises a set of rafts to deliver them by canal, greatly increasing Ford's profits. Despite (or perhaps because of) his value as a laborer and de facto engineer, Northup is sold in the winter of 1842 to John Tibeats, a "quick- tempered" carpenter to whom Ford had become indebted (p. 103). When Tibeats attempts to whip Northup for a dubious offense, Northup fights back, and with his foot on the master's neck, he whips Tibeats "until my right arm ached" (p. 111). Later, when he attacks Northup with a hatchet, the slave again bests the master, and this time he flees from the plantation, chased by hounds. Northup escapes by running and swimming through the "Great Pacoudrie Swamp," evading water moccasins and alligators (p. 139). He makes his way back to Ford's plantation, where he is protected from harm. The second half of Northup's narrative is chiefly devoted to describing life on a cotton and sugar plantation. Though his account reveals the misery and despair of field slaves, like many other slave narratives, it also reflects the wry humor with which Northup endured his situation. For example, in describing the meager rations allotted for each week's subsistence, he quips that "no slave of [Edwin Epps's] is ever likely to suffer from the gout, superinduced by excessive high living" (p. 169 ) Twelve Years a Slave occasionally ventures into nature writing and ethnography, as Northup describes southern flora, fauna, and culture from the perspective of a northern traveler. Northup seems to find the talk and behavior of Southerners equally interesting; he frequently quotes and explains colloquialisms, such as the verbs "allowed" (p. 153) and "toted" (p. 167. He also repeatedly notes the abilities of female slaves in a manner that suggests a sort of proto-feminist sensibility. Whether his subject is the Southern landscape or the Southerners themselves, Northup frequently writes with the bemused curiosity of an intellectual tourist. Northup's first attempt to write a letter home is thwarted when the white field-laborer in whom he confides exposes the plan to Edwin Epps. Later, he meets a Canadian carpenter named Mr. Bass, who agrees to mail several letters for him. After a lengthy delay that causes Northup to despair of ever being rescued, he is found and liberated by Henry B. Northup, a member of the same white family that his father had served years before. The final chapter outlines the legal proceedings that followed. The narrative concludes with Solomon's reunion with Anne, his daughters, and a grandson whom he had never met. Works Consulted : Born, Brad S., Northup, Solomon, in The Concise Oxford Companion to African American Literature , via the Oxford African American Studies Center," referenced 15 November 2010; Olney, James, "'I Was Born': Slave Narratives, Their Status as Autobiography and as Literature," in The Slave's Narrative, ed. Charles T. Davis and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (New York: Oxford UP, 1985); Smith, David L., "Northup, Solomon," in African American National Biography,, via the "Oxford African American Studies Center," referenced 15 November 2010; Stepto, Robert Burns, "I Rose and Found My Voice: Narration, Authentication, and Authorial Control in Four Slave Narratives," in The Slave's Narrative, ed. Charles T. Davis and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (New York: Oxford UP, 1985). Biography of Solomon Northup, Author of Twelve Years a Slave. Solomon Northup was a free Black resident of New York State who was drugged on a trip to Washington, D.C. in the spring of 1841 and sold to a dealer of enslaved people. Beaten and chained, he was transported by ship to a New Orleans market and suffered more than a decade of servitude on Louisiana plantations. Northup had to hide his literacy or risk violence. And he was unable, for years, to get word to anyone in the North to let them know where he was. Fortunately, he was eventually able to send messages which prompted legal action that secured his freedom. The Narrative's Impact on North American 19th-Century Activism. After regaining his freedom and miraculously returning to his family in New York, he collaborates with a local attorney to write a shocking account of his ordeal, Twelve Years a Slave , which was published in May 1853. Northup’s case and his book attracted considerable attention. Most such narratives were written by those born into enslavement, but Northup’s perspective of a free man kidnapped and forced to spend years toiling on plantations was especially disturbing. Northup’s book sold well, and on occasion, his name appeared in newspapers alongside such prominent North American 19th-century Black activist voices as Harriet Beecher Stowe and Frederick Douglass. Yet he did not become an enduring voice in the campaign to end enslavement. Though his fame was fleeting, Northup did make an impact on how society viewed enslavement. His book seemed to underscore activist arguments advanced by people such as William Lloyd Garrison. And Twelve Years a Slave was published at a time when the controversy over the Fugitive Slave Act and events such as the Christiana Riot were still on the minds of the public. His story came to prominence in recent years thanks to a major film, “12 Years a Slave,” by British director Steve McQueen. The film won the Oscar for Best Picture of 2014. Northup's Life as a Free Man. According to his own account, Solomon Northup was born in Essex County, New York, in July 1808. His father, Mintus Northup, had been enslaved from birth, but his enslaver, a member of a family named Northup, had freed him. Growing up, Solomon learned to read and also learned to play the violin. In 1829 he married, and he and his wife Anne eventually had three children. Solomon found work at various trades, and in the 1830s the family moved to Saratoga, a resort town, where he was employed driving a hack, the horse-drawn equivalent of a taxi. At times he found employment playing the violin, and in early 1841 he was invited by a pair of traveling performers to come with them to Washington, D.C. where they could find lucrative work with a circus. After obtaining papers in New York City establishing that he was free, he accompanied the two White men to the nation’s capital, where enslavement was legal.

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