Twelve Years a Slave Twelve Years a Slave is a memoir and slave
narrative by Solomon Northup, as told to and edited by David Wilson.
Northup, a black man who was born free in New York, details his kidnapping in Washington,
D.C. and subsequent sale into slavery.
After having been kept in bondage for 12 years in Louisiana by various masters, Northup was
able to write to friends and family in New York, who were in turn able to secure his
release.
Northup's account provides extensive details on the slave markets in Washington, D.C. and
New Orleans and describes at length cotton and sugar cultivation on major plantations
in Louisiana.
The work was published by Derby & Miller of Auburn, New York, soon after Harriet Beecher
Stowe's best-selling novel about slavery, Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), to which it lent
factual support.
Northup's book, dedicated to Stowe, sold 30,000 copies, making it a bestseller in its own
right.
After being published in several editions in the 19th century, the book fell into obscurity
for nearly 100 years, until it was re-discovered on separate occasions by two Louisiana historians,
Sue Eakin (Louisiana State University at Alexandria) and Joseph Logsdon (University of New Orleans).
In the early 1960s, they researched and retraced Solomon Northup’s journey and co-edited
a historically annotated version that was published by LSU Press in 1968.
The memoir has been adapted and produced as the 1984 PBS television movie Solomon Northup's
Odyssey and the 2013 Academy Award-winning film 12 Years a Slave.
Synopsis 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 downstate New York and Washington, D.C.
Soon 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
and one died.
In transit, Northup implored a sympathetic sailor to send a letter to his family.
The letter arrived safely, but, lacking knowledge of his final destination, Northup's family
was unable to effect his rescue.
Northup's first owner was William Prince Ford, who ran a lumber mill on a bayou of the Red
River.
Northup subsequently had several other owners, less humane than Ford, during his twelve-year
bondage.
At times, his carpentry and other skills contributed to his being treated relatively well, but
he also suffered extreme cruelty.
On two occasions, he was attacked by a white man he was leased to, John Tibeats, and defended
himself, for which he suffered severe reprisals.
After about two years of enslavement, he was sold to Edwin Epps, a notoriously cruel cotton
planter.
Epps held Northup enslaved for 10 years, during which time he assigned the New Yorker to various
roles from cotton picker, to hauler to driver, which required Northup to 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 the ensuing 12 years did not reveal his true history again to a single person, 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 white shopkeeper, Parker, sought the assistance of Henry B. Northup, a white attorney and
politician whose family had held and freed Solomon Northup's father, and with whom Solomon
had a longtime friendship.
Henry contacted New York state officials.
As 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.
Once in Louisiana, Henry Northup hired local Avoyelles Parish attorney, John P. Waddill,
to assist in securing Solomon Northup's freedom.
After a variety of bureaucratic measures and searches were undertaken, the attorney succeeded
in locating Solomon and freeing him from the plantation.
Northup later filed charges against the men who sold him into slavery but was unsuccessful.
He returned to New York and reunited with his family there.
Northup concludes his narrative with the following statement:
Reception and historical value Northup's facts supported Stowe's fictional
narrative in detail, as the area where Northup was enslaved was close to the fictional setting
of Simon Legree's plantation on the Red River, where much of Stowe's narrative takes place.
They are also similar in the structure of the arguments against slavery.
For instance, Uncle Tom's Cabin focuses on how the legal system prevents even kind owners
from treating slaves well and how it releases cruel owners from liabilities for their treatment
of slaves.
Such themes appear in Northup's narrative, too.
The similarities raise important questions of just how much the narrative was shaped
by Uncle Tom's Cabin and other antislavery literature.
Harriet Beecher Stowe used Northup's story as part of her non-fiction Key to Uncle Tom's
Cabin.
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.
Northup's account describes the daily life of slaves at Bayou Boeuf in Louisiana, their
diet and living conditions, the relationship between master and slave, and the means that
slave catchers used to recapture runaways.
Northup's slave narrative has details similar to those of some other authors, such as Frederick
Douglass, Harriet Ann Jacobs, and William Wells Brown.
However, he 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.
Early and mid-twentieth century historians of slavery, Kenneth Stampp, Stanley Elkins,
and Ulrich B Phllips, praised the historical accuracy of the book.
Eakin and Logsdon in 1968, wrote: "In the last analysis, narrative deserves to be believed,
not simply because seems to be talking reasonably, not merely because he adorns his tale with
compelling and persuasive details.
At every point where materials exist for checking his account, it can be verified."
These materials include trial records, correspondence, diary, and slave sale records.
Reissue After additional printings in the 19th century,
the book went out of print until 1968, when historians Joseph Logsdon and Sue Eakin restored
it to prominence.
Eakin discovered the story as a child growing up in Louisiana plantation country—the owner
of a first edition showed her the book, after finding it in a former plantation home.
Years later, Logsdon had a student from an old Louisiana family who brought a copy of
the original 1853 book to class; her family had owned it for more than a century.
Together Logsdon and 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.
In 1968, Eakin and Logsdon’s thoroughly annotated edition of the original book was
published by Louisiana State University Press, shedding new light on Northup’s story and
establishing its historic significance.
That book has been widely used by scholars and in classrooms for more than 40 years,
and is still in print.
In 1998, Logsdon was invited by scholars in upstate New York to participate in a search
for Solomon's grave.
However, bad weather prevented the search that year, and Logsdon died the following
June 1999.
In 2007, shortly before her death at age 90, Eakin completed an updated and expanded version
of their book; it includes more than 150 pages of new background material, maps, and photographs.
In 2013, e-book and audiobook versions of her final definitive edition were released
in her honor.
With permission, scholars may use Eakin’s lifetime archives through The Sue Eakin Collection,
Louisiana State University at Alexandria, Louisiana.
The Joseph Logsdon Archives are available at the University of New Orleans.
Historian Jesse Holland noted in a 2009 interview that he had relied on Northup's memoir and
detailed description of Washington in 1841 to identify the location of some slave markets
in the city.
Holland has also 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.
Editions and adaptations Twelve Years a Slave is in the public domain;
e-book versions can be downloaded from several sites and many reprints are still in print
by multiple publishers.
In 1968, historians Sue Eakin and Joseph Logsdon, both based in Louisiana, published an edited
and annotated version of Northup's narrative.
Updated and illustrated editions of this work have since been published, including an adaptation
for younger readers.
In 2012, David Fiske self-published the biography Solomon Northup: His Life Before and After
Slavery.
The book's Appendix C provides the publishing history for Twelve Years a Slave during the
19th century.
The book was expanded and re-issued by Praeger in August 2013 as Solomon Northup: The Complete
Story of the Author of Twelve Years a Slave, ISBN 978-1440829741, with co-authors
Clifford W. Brown, and Rachel Seligman.
Solomon Northup's Odyssey (1984), a PBS television film directed by Gordon Parks and starring
Avery Brooks 12 Years a Slave (2013), a feature film directed
by Steve McQueen and starring Chiwetel Ejiofor Twelve Years a Slave, narrated by Rob Board
(LibriVox, 2013), available online for free Twelve Years a Slave, narrated by Louis Gossett,
Jr.
(Eakin Films & Publishing, 2013) Twelve Years a Slave, narrated by Richard
Allen (Dreamscape Media, 2013) Twelve Years a Slave, narrated by Hugh Quarshie
(AudioGO, 2013) Twelve Years a Slave, narrated by Sean Crisden
(Tantor Audio, 2012)