Essay

History 17A, Dr. O’Brien

Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup

Published in 1853

While I encourage you to read the entire memoir, which is one of the best first-person accounts of life under slavery, I am including here a synopsis of the sections of the book not assigned as required reading, so you can place the reading in context.

Summary of chapters before required reading:

Solomon Northup’s father was born a slave to the Northup family in Rhode Island, and was emancipated when the patriarch died, taking his last name. Solomon was born a free African-American in Minerva, New York in 1808. His father worked as an agricultural laborer and was able to acquire enough wealth to provide his children with an education and meet the property qualifications to be able to vote. Solomon married Anne Hampton and had three children, Elizabeth, Margaret, and Alonzo. He was variously employed as a construction worker on the Champlain Canal, as a navigator shipping lumber down river on barges, as an agricultural worker, a carriage driver, and a violin player at parties and events.

In March 1841, Northup met two men who offered him a short-term job playing violin music in their circus in Washington, DC. As DC was a slave state, Northup was careful to procure papers proving he was free before the journey, but after several days in DC, Northup became very ill. His two employers used the opportunity, since he was barely conscious, to steal his money and free papers and to sell Northup to a slave trader, James Burch.

After Chapter 3 (required reading), Burch changed Northup’s name to “Platt,” and he and the other slaves held by Burch were taken to New Orleans to be sold. As you will read in the rest of the required chapters, over the next 12 years, Northup was owned by three different slaveowners—William Ford, John Tibeats, and finally Edwin Epps.

Summary of the rest of the book after chapter 18:

In 1853, he managed to get word of his captivity and location to his former employers in New York, who exerted considerable effort to free Northup and return him to his family. When he returned to New York, he was encouraged to write about his experiences under slavery and his memoir was published, adding support to abolitionist’s calls to abolish slavery everywhere in the U.S. Northup wrote, “I can speak of slavery only so far as it came under my own observation—only so far as I have known and experienced it in my own person. My object is, to give a candid and truthful statement of facts: to repeat the story of my life, without exaggeration, leaving it for others to determine, whether even the pages of fiction present a picture of more cruel wrong or severer bondage.” (1)