Twelve Years a Slave

Twelve Years a Slave is a memoir by Solomon Northup, a black man who was born free in New York and kidnapped by two men who sold him into slavery. Northup spent 12 years as a slave in the Deep South, encountering slave markets in Washington, DC and New Orleans and working on numerous cotton and sugar plantations throughout Louisiana. Northup narrated his memoir to American lawyer and writer David Wilson, who then edited Northup’s accounts into a manuscript. Twelve Years a Slave was published in 1853 and quickly became a bestseller, selling over 30,000 copies. The memoir has since been adapted into two film versions: a 1984 PBS series called Solomon Northup’s Odyssey and the Oscar-winning 2013 film 12 Years a Slave, directed by Steve McQueen. This guide uses the 2013 Penguin Books edition (which coincided with the release of McQueen’s film).

Solomon Northup’s memoir opens with a description of his life as a freeborn Black man in Saratoga Springs, New York. He explains that he is the son of an emancipated slave, Mintus Northup. Growing up under the mentorship of his father, Solomon Northup becomes an accomplished man, learning to read, write, and play the violin. He marries an equally accomplished cook named Anne Hampton, and together, they have three children: Elizabeth, Margaret, and Alonzo.

In March of 1841, Anne and the children leave Saratoga Springs for Anne’s annual short-term position at Sherrill’s Coffee House 20 miles away. Northup meets Brown and Hamilton, who introduce themselves as circus promoters seeking musical talent. They offer him a brief performing job with high wages touring from Saratoga Springs to Washington, DC. Northup accepts the job without telling his wife, as the job is so brief he believes he will return home before her. During a celebratory dinner in Washington, DC, Brown and Hamilton drug Northup’s wine, and they sell him to a slave pen. Northup wakes up bound in a basement prison cell. When he attempts to assert his rights as a free man, he is brutally beaten and repeatedly told that he is a slave.

Northup is transported by ship to a slave market in New Orleans, along with several other illegally enslaved Black men, women, and children. In New Orleans, a slave trader named Theophilus Freeman changes Northup’s name to Platt. Northup is sold to William Ford, who owns a lumber mill on the Red River bayou. Ford is a gentle master known for his Christian faith and his generosity toward his slaves. Though Northup respects Ford as a good man, he reflects that Ford’s position owning workable land in the Deep South—and his life among other slave owners—“blinded him to the inherent wrong at the bottom of the system of Slavery” (57).

Ford finds himself in dire financial straits and is forced to sell Northup to a cruel carpenter named John Tibeats. Tibeats is an ignorant man who resents Northup’s intelligence and frequently punishes him in situations where he has done no wrong. On one such occasion, Northup fights back and is nearly hanged as a result. His life is saved by Ford’s overseer, Mr. Chapin, who reminds Tibeats that Ford holds a mortgage on Northup. He declares, “If you hang him he loses his debt. Until that is canceled you have no right to take his life” (74).

Tibeats vengefully sells Northup to a notoriously ruthless slave master, a cotton plantation owner named Edwin Epps. Northup works under Epps for 10 years, serving variously as a picker, hauler, and driver. As a driver, Northup is forced to whip his fellow slaves for even the slightest transgressive behavior (such as standing still to rest). Epps frequently terrorizes his slaves not only with brutal beatings, but with late-night gatherings wherein he drunkenly makes them dance to Northup’s violin music, insensitive to their desperate need for rest. A young woman named Patsey is the most terrorized of Epps’s slaves. Epps frequently rapes her, then “punishes” her to satisfy the wrath of his jealous wife. On one particularly horrific occasion, Northup is forced to whip Patsey for visiting a nearby plantation to obtain a bar of soap. When Northup cannot bring himself to torture Patsey any longer, Epps takes the whip and flays her back raw.

After many years of enduring Epps’s inhumane treatment, Northup almost loses hope of regaining his freedom. When an abolitionist carpenter from Canada, Bass, is hired to work for Epps, Northup reveals the story of his unlawful captivity. Bass agrees to help Northup send word of his situation to friends in Saratoga Springs, and Northup is freed as a result. Upon his return to New York, Northup attempts to sue the men who sold him into slavery, but his suit is unsuccessful.

Published as a contemporary of other widely read, lauded slave narratives—including Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845) and Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852)—Twelve Years a Slave is an exemplar of its genre, detailing the systemic violence, inhumane conditions, and psychological tolls of slavery. Northup’s memoir also serves as a significant work of historic and social criticism, deconstructing the economics of slavery and examining it as an American capitalist institution.