Twelve Years a Slave (Originally published in 1853 with the
sub-title: "Narrative of Solomon Northup, a citizen of New-York,
kidnapped in Washington city in 1841, and rescued in 1853, from a
cotton plantation near the Red River in Louisiana") is the written
work of Solomon Northup; a man who was born free, but was bound
into slavery later in life. Northup's account describes the daily
life of slaves in Bayou Beof, their diet, the relationship between
the master and slave, the means that slave catchers used to
recapture them and the ugly realities that slaves suffered.
Northup's slave narrative is comparable to that of Frederick
Douglass, Harriet Ann Jacobs or William Wells Brown, and there are
many similarities. Scholars reference this work today; one example
is Jesse Holland, who referred to him in an interview given on
January 20, 2009 on Democracy.now. He did so because Northup's
extremely detailed description of Washington in 1841 helps the
neuromancers understand the location of some slave markets, and is
an important part of understanding that African slaves built many
of the monuments in Washington, including the Capitol and part of
the original Executive Mansion. The book, which was originally
published in 1853, tells the story of how two men approached him
under the guise of circus promoters who were interested in his
violin skills. They offered him a generous but fair amount of money
to work for their circus, and then offered to put him up in a hotel
in Washington D.C. Upon arriving there he was drugged, bound, and
moved to a slave pen in the city owned by a man named James Burch,
which was located in the Yellow House, which was one of several
sites where African Americans were sold on the National Mall in DC.
Another was Robey's Tavern; these slave markets were located
between what are now the Department of Education and the
Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, within view of the Capitol,
according to researcher Jesse Holland, and Northup's own account
1]. Burch would coerce Northup into making up a new past for
himself, one in which he had been born as a slave in Georgia. Burch
told Northup that if he were ever to reveal his true past to
another person he would be killed. When Northup continually asserts
that he is a freeman of New York, Burch violently whips him until
the paddle breaks and Rathburn insists on Burch to stop. Northup
mentions different kind of owners that Northup had throughout his
12 years as a slave in Louisiana, and how he suffered severely
under them: being forced to eat the meager slave diet, live on the
dirt floor of a slave cabin, endure numerous beatings, being
attacked with an axe, whippings and unimaginable emotional pain
from being in such a state. One temporary master he was leased to
was named Tibbeats; the man tried to kill him with an axe, but
Northup ended up whipping him instead. Finally the book discusses
how Northup eventually ended up winning back his freedom. A white
carpenter from Canada named Samuel Bass arrived to do some work for
Northup's current owner, and after conversing with him, Northup
realized that Bass was quite different from the other white men he
had met in the south; he said he stood out because he was openly
laughed at for opposing the sub-human arguments slavery was based
on. It was to Bass that Northup finally confided his story, and
ultimately Bass would deliver the letters back to Northup's wife
that would start the legal process of earning him his freedom back.
This was no small matter, for if they had been caught, it could
easily have resulted in their death, as Northup says.
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