Twelve Years a Slave
by Solomon Northup
Twelve Years a Slave, originally published in 1853, is the true account of one man's harrowing experiences under slavery.
In 1841, Solomon Northup was an educated, free black man and a respected resident of Saratoga, New York. A couple of white strangers noticed Northup's talent for playing the fiddle and engaged his services. Northup followed the two men to Washington, D.C. -- and soon found himself drugged, beaten into insensibility, and confined in a slave mart in the shadow of the nation's Capitol.
Northup describes his purchase by a slave trader and his journey
to the swamps of Louisiana, where he became a slave on the cotton plantations
of the notorious "Bayou Boeuf." For twelve years he labored for a succession
of masters, some cruel and some kind. Overwhelmed with the hopelessness of
his plight, Northup sometimes despaired of ever seeing his family again.
However, he refused to relinquish his status as a man, and once thrashed
his master with a bullwhip in an astonishing display of defiance that almost
cost him his life.
The story of Northup's rescue and return to his family in 1853 is compelling, as is the thoughtful way he relates the details of his ordeal. Writing about the condition of slavery, Northup states: "There may be humane masters, as there certainly are inhuman ones. Men may ... discourse flippantly from arm chairs on the pleasures of slave life. But let them toil with him in the field -- sleep with him in the cabin -- feed with him on husks; let them behold him scourged, hunted, trampled on, and they will come back with another story in their mouths."
While the nineteenth-century diction of Northup's writing may seem stilted to modern readers, the rewards of this book are great. The recent edition published by LSU Press contains editor's notes confirming the details of Northup's account and the status of this book as a popular read of its day, second only to "Uncle Tom's Cabin."
Twelve Years a Slave is available from
LSU Press.
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