APPENDICES
APPENDIX 1. Author’s Biography
Solomon Northup was an American abolitionist and the author of Twelve
Years a Slave. He was a free-born African American in Minerva, New York, July 10,
1808. He was the son of a freed slave named Mintus Northup who was originally
enslaved to Capt. Henry Northup from Rhode Island, but he was freed after the
family moved to New York. In gratitude Mintus took hid former master’s family
name. His mother was a free woman of color. He described his mother as quadroon,
meaning that she was one-quarter African American, and three-quarters European.
His father eventually acquired his own farm and enough land to fulfill the property
ownership requirement that
by this time built up a successful farming business and was able to provide an
education, and music lesson, for his sons, Solomon and his brother Joseph. As a
young man, Solomon worked with his father on his family’s farm.
On Christmas Day in 1829, Solomon wed Anne Hampton, a woman of
multi-racial descent; she was of African, European and Native American descent.The
couple lived i
Kingsbury. Solomon had a reputation in the community as the most excellent of
fiddlers with his wife also able to earn income for her in-demand cooking skills. The
In March 1841 he was recruited by two men who claimed to be circus
performers and offered him money to join their act as a fiddler, traveling south from
New York. On their arrival in Washington, D.C., in early April, Solomon was
drugged, lost consciousness, and awoke to find himself chained in an underground
cell. He was conveyed to Richmond, Virginia, and then delivered by ship to New
Orleans, where in June he was sold at a slave market under the name Platt Hamilton.
He spent the ensuing 12 years in slavery in the Bayou Boeuf plantation region of
central Louisiana’s Red River valley.
Solomon was owned first by William Prince Ford,whom he praised for his
kindness. Unfortunately, Ford was forced by financial difficulties to sell Solomon to
the brutal John M. Tibeats in 1842, a carpenter who had been working for Ford on
the mills. He also had helped construct a weaving-house a
Bayou Boeuf plantation. As Tibeats did not have the full purchase price, Ford held a
security for the loan.
Under Tibeats’ control, Solomon suffered cruel treatment. Tibeats used him
to help complete construction at Ford's plantation. At one point, Tibeats whipped him
because he did not like the nails Solomon was using. But Solomon fought back,
beating Tibeats severely. Enraged, Tibeats recruited two friends t
the slave, which a master was legally entitled to do. Ford's overseer Chapin
interrupted and prevented the men from killing Solomon, reminding Tibeats of his
debt to Ford, and chasing them off at gunpoint. Solomon was left bound and noosed
for hours until Ford returned home to cut him down. Later, Tibeats decided at
fled to the protection of Ford and stayed in Ford’s house for four days. The planter
convinced Tibeats to "hire out" Solomon to limit their conflict and take the fees he
could generate.
Tibeats hired Solomon out to a planter named Eldret, who lived about 38
miles south on the
Solomon and other slaves, clear cane, trees, and undergrowth in the
order to develop cotton fields for cultivation. With the work unfinished, after about
five weeks, Tibeats sold Solomon to Edwin Epps.
In April 1843 Solomon was sold by Ford and Tibeats to Edwin Epps, under
whose ownership he remained for the next decade. Epps used Solomon both as an
artisan slave and as a field hand, occasionally leasing him out to sugar planters and
processors. Throughout this time, Solomon was often a “driver” in charge of other
slaves. Epps, who was proud of his expertise with a lash, had a sadistic streak.
Solomon contrived to escape several times during that period but was unsuccessful.
It was not until a
Epps’s farm in June 1852 that Solomon was able to arrange to have letters delivered
to friends in New York to alert them of his situation and set in motion his rescue.
One letter was forwarded to Anne Northup, who enlisted the help of Henry B.
Northup, a lifelong friend of Solomon and the grandnephew of the person who had
manumitted Mintus.
Henry mobilized widespread support for Solomon among the leading citizens
of Sandy Hill (now Hudson Falls) and Fort Edward, New York, and, under an 1840
statute designed to rescue New York citizens sold into slavery, in November 1852
Solomon. Armed with documentation, along with letters from a senator and a
Supreme Court justice, Henry traveled to Louisiana and hired local counsel. With the
help of Bass, they were able to locate Solomon, and his freedom was legally obtained
on January 4, 1853.
Solomon was reunited with his family later that month. His rescue was
widely publicized. Stopping in Washington, D.C., on his way to New York, he
brought charges against James H. Burch, the slave dealer who had imprisoned him.
Because of his race, though, he was not permitted to testify, and the case was
dismissed after two other slave dealers testified on behalf of Burch. That same year,
together with local writer David Wilson, Solomon penned his
a Slave. The book sold some 30,000 copies in the ensuing three years, and Solomon
used the proceeds to purchase property in upstate New York, where he lived with his
family.
From 1853 to 1857 Solomon engaged in extensive speaking tours. As a result
of the story’s widespread notoriety, the New York kidnappers were identified,
arrested, and indicted in 1854. After much legal maneuvering, the case reached the
state supreme court and then the court of appeals, but the charges were ultimately
dismissed in May 1857. Solomon subsequently disappeared from public view and,
the best evidence indicates, joined the
in New England helping escaped slaves reach Canada. The time and circumstances
of his death, as well as his place of burial, are unknown. His last public appearance
was in Streetsville, Ontario, Canada, in August 1857. He was not accounted for in
APPENDIX 2. Summary of the Novel
Twelve Years a Slave is a slave narrative that portrays slavery in America in
19th century. This novel tells about Solomon Northup’s life story as a slave for
twelve years in the Southern states. It shows a black free-man’s struggles in
captivity, slavery, and finally free again.
This novel begins with Solomon’s background and life as a free black man
living in upstate New York. Born in July 1808, he was the son of an emancipated
slave. He grew up working on a farm at his father’s side, and also was educated to a
degree of competence in reading and writing. Additionally, he learned to play the
violin, a skill that would be both a blessing and curse to him in coming years. On
Christmas day, 1829, he married Anne Hampton, and they settled down to raise a
family. Solomon worked in many trades, including farming, lumberjacking, and
performing on the violin, while Anne earned money as a cook. They had three
children.
In 1841, Solomon met two white men who offered him lucrative work with a
circus—if he would travel with them to Washington, D.C. Unsuspecting, he joined
them in their travels and they convinced him to obtain "free papers" before leaving
New York. However, once in Washington, the men offered him a drink that causes
him to become insensible, and when he awoke, he was alone, in utter darkness, and
in chains in a slave pen within the very shadow of the Capitol.
Solomon was sold to James H. Burch, a brutal slave trader in Washington,
D.C. When Solomon protested his captivity and asserted his right to freedom, Burch
mentioned his freedom again. At length, Solomon was allowed to join the other
slaves being held by Burch, and he discovered just how hopeless his situation was.
While in the slave pen, he made the acquaintance of several other slaves, including
Eliza, whose sad history he related in detail. Surrounded by slaves and a few other
kidnap victims, Solomon was handcuffed and transported together via cars and
steamboats to Richmond and then to New Orleans. They had to experience a
miserable event aboard the steamboat such as violent storm, sea-sickness, and so on.
Solomon planned a mutiny with two of his fellow slaves, but the plan was foiled
when one of them contracted smallpox and died.
Solomon and the rest of “Burch’s gang” were transferred into the slave pen of
Burch’s associate, Theophilus Freeman. Freeman changed Solomon’s name to
“Platt,” thereby erasing any connection to his past. Solomon was put up for sale, but
his sale was delayed when he contracted smallpox, which nearly killed him. After he
finally recovered, he was sold, along with a slave girl named Eliza, to a man named
William Ford.
As a slave named Platt, Solomon was working on the plantation and lumber
mill of William Ford, deep in the heart of Louisiana. Ford was a kindly master,
devout in his Christian faith, and given to generosity toward his slaves. Solomon
found it almost a pleasure to be in Ford’s service and even figured out a way for Ford
to save considerable time and money by transporting lumber via waterway instead of
by land. Solomon was well-liked by Ford in return. However, a series of financial
Tibeats soon became Platt’s worst enemy, constantly threatening and berating
him. While working on a project, Tibeats became so enraged that he attempted to
whip Platt. Platt was the stronger of the two, though, and he turned the tables on his
new master, whipping him instead. Hell-bent on revenge, Tibeats twice attempted to
murder Platt. Only the intervention of William Ford and his overseer, Mr. Chapin,
saved the slave’s life. Unable to kill him, yet bearing murderous hatred toward him,
Tibeats sold Platt to the notorious “nigger breaker,” Edwin Epps.
For a decade Solomon lived under the tyranny of Edwin Epps on two
different plantations in Bayou Boeuf, along the banks of the Red River in Louisiana.
He described his life on a cotton plantation. He provided detailed descriptions of the
processes of planting, cultivating, and picking cotton, character sketches of his
fellow slaves, and gradations of punishment for various offenses. As he was
periodically hired out to sugar plantations as well, he described the methods of
planting, harvesting, and processing the cane in similar detail. Not only describing
his life on a cotton and sugar cane plantation, he also described his master, Epps, and
his bad habit towards slaves. Epps was a cruel master. A whip was his constant
companion, and he used it almost daily on his slaves. Solomon described his life
under Epps in detail, relating stories of abuse, humiliation, and deprivation among all
the slaves.
Patsey, a slave girl, got the worst of Epps’ treatment: She was repeatedly
raped by him and also whipped by him at the insistence of his jealous wife. At the
worst point, she visited a friend at a nearby plantation simply to get a bar of soap
furious, thinking her guilty of a sexual encounter. Platt was forced to whip a naked,
helpless Patsey while she screamed for mercy.
The years pass by, and Solomon almost lost hope. Then he met a carpenter
named Bass, an abolitionist from Canada who was hired to work on a building
project for Epps. Bass learned of Solomon’s story and decided to help. He sent letters
to Solomon’s friends in the North, asking them to come and rescue the slave from his
captivity. Thanks to the faithfulness of Bass, Solomon’s friends in the North were
alerted to his location and come to set him free. Henry B. Northup, a white man who
was a relative of the person who once owned Solomon’s father, gathered legal
support and traveled to Louisiana to find the slave. After some searching, he found
“Platt” and, with the help of a local sheriff, emancipated him from the clutches of
Edwin Epps.
They travelled back to New York, stopping for a time in Washington, D.C.,
to pursue legal charges against James H. Burch for his role in the kidnapping of
Solomon Northup. In the end, though, Burch was acquitted because of false
witnesses and racist bias in the courtroom. After that, Solomon was finally reunited
with his family in Saratoga Springs, New York, where he found that his daughter had
married and he was now a grandfather. His grandson had been named in his honor:
