Solomon Northup
Solomon Northup (born July 10, c. 1807–1808; died c. 1864) was an American abolitionist and the primary author of the memoir Twelve Years a Slave. A free-born African American from New York, he was the son of a freed slave and a free woman of color. A farmer and a professional violinist, Northup had been a landowner in Washington County, New York. In 1841, he was offered a traveling musician's job and went to Washington, D.C. (where slavery was legal); there he was drugged and kidnapped into slavery. He was shipped to New Orleans, purchased by a planter, and held as a slave for 12 years in the Red River region of Louisiana, mostly in Avoyelles Parish. He remained a slave until he met Samuel Bass, a Canadian working on his plantation who helped get word to New York, where state law provided aid to free New York citizens who had been kidnapped and sold into slavery. His family and friends enlisted the aid of the Governor of New York, Washington Hunt, and Northup regained his freedom on January 3, 1853.[1]
Solomon Northup
c. Between 1863 and 1875 (aged 55–68)
- Author
- abolitionist
- raftsman
- fiddler
- laborer
- carpenter
Writing Twelve Years a Slave
The slave trader in Washington, D.C., James H. Birch, was arrested and tried, but acquitted because District of Columbia law at the time prohibited Northup as a black man from testifying against white people. Later, in New York State, his northern kidnappers were located and charged, but the case was tied up in court for two years because of jurisdictional challenges and finally dropped when Washington, D.C. was found to have jurisdiction. The D.C. government did not pursue the case. Those who had kidnapped and enslaved Northup received no punishment.
In his first year of freedom, Northup wrote and published a memoir, Twelve Years a Slave (1853). He lectured on behalf of the abolitionist movement, giving more than two dozen speeches throughout the Northeast about his experiences, to build momentum against slavery. He largely disappeared from the historical record after 1857, although a letter later reported him alive in early 1863;[2] some commentators thought he had been kidnapped again, but historians believe it unlikely, as he would have been considered too old to bring a good price.[3] The details of his death have never been documented.[4]
Northup's memoir was adapted and produced as the 1984 television film Solomon Northup's Odyssey and the 2013 feature film 12 Years a Slave. The latter won three Academy Awards, including Best Picture, at the 86th Academy Awards.
Life[edit]
Canal worker, farmer, and violin player[edit]
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]
Kidnapped and sold into slavery[edit]
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[i] 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 Yellow House, 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][j] Henry was a lawyer, a relative of 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]
