Twelve Years a Slave

Twelve Years a Slave (1853) is a non-fiction text by Solomon Northup, detailing his experiences as a free black man in America who was kidnapped and illegally sold into the slave trade. He remained as an enslaved person for twelve years. Below is a summary of the text and an explanation of the book's genre. You will also find an analysis of Twelve Years a Slave, facts about the text, and further background on Solomon Northup.

Twelve Years a Slave: summary

Twelve Years a Slave begins in 1841 in the town of Saratoga in New York state. Solomon Northup is a free black man who lives with his wife and three children. His father was previously enslaved but was freed by Henry Northup, a white lawyer. Solomon is a trained carpenter and talented violinist.

One day, he is approached by two men who claim to have a brief opportunity for Solomon to make money playing his violin in the circus. Believing them, Solomon leaves for Washington D.C. without informing his wife as he thinks he will not be gone long. However, these men have tricked Solomon. They are part of a slave trade that kidnaps black people from free American states and takes them to states where they can be sold into slavery. Solomon is drugged and taken to Louisiana.

Every time Solomon states he is a free man, he is brutally beaten by his captors. This is indicative of the treatment he will continue to receive as an enslaved black man in the south. Solomon is renamed Platt by the slave traders. This dehumanises Solomon and also ensures his friends and family will not be able to easily find him. Solomon is first sold to a plantation owner, William Ford. He describes Ford as a kind and benevolent man who only owns enslaved people because he knows nothing else. The two men get along well.

However, due to financial reasons, Ford eventually must sell Solomon to a much crueller enslaver, John M. Tibeats. Tibeats is harsh and violent, often brutally beating Solomon. However, Solomon is strong and, in one incident, whips Tibeats when Tibeats tries to whip him. In retaliation, Tibeats attempts to kill Solomon but is thwarted. Utterly infuriated, Tibeats sells Solomon to a notoriously vicious enslaver, Edwin Epps.

Twelve Years a Slave was an important text upon its publication in 1853. It was a first-hand account of an enslaved person's experiences in a time when slavery had not yet been abolished. Slavery was not officially abolished in America until 1865. Northup's story is a detailed description of the abuses enslaved people faced on a daily basis. This educated many people on the realities of slavery. White Americans were often ignorant to the plight of enslaved people or accepted what they suffered as normal.

However, Northup's depictions of the brutality he and other enslaved people faced made it much harder to ignore. One instance of this cruelty is quoted below. While working on Epps's plantation, Northup oversleeps. He states that he never typically did this, and to modern readers, oversleeping may seem something very minor. However, to a cruel enslaver like Epps, it was simply another excuse to inflict racially motivated abuse on Northup.

The preface put in Twelve Years a Slave by David Wilson is also important. Wilson was a respected white lawyer and politician. Because of the deeply racist society of nineteenth-century America, having Twelve Years a Slave edited by a white man would have given the text validity. As seen in the many discriminatory experiences Northup details in his book, black people in America at this time were often not believed or trusted. However, the words and stories detailed in Twelve Years a Slave remain Northup's own.

Twelve Years a Slave: facts

Read on for some further facts about Northup's text.

• Upon its release, Twelve Years a Slave proved very popular, selling many copies.
• Northup's account goes into great detail in describing his experiences, making it much harder for him to be accused of exaggerating or being inaccurate. This was a real risk in 1850s America.
• Northup includes the real names of those who traded and tortured him, forcing accountability.
• During Northup's initial trip to Louisiana, he and other enslaved people caught smallpox, with many of them becoming dangerously ill from it.
• Northup kept up his violin playing while an enslaved person, sometimes being permitted to go to other enslavers' houses and play. This was his only source of comfort.

Twelve Years a Slave: narrative of Solomon Northup

Solomon Northup was born the son of a free mixed-race woman and a free, formerly enslaved man. Because of his parents' free status, Northup received quite a good education for a black man at this time. He was able to live a relatively peaceful life, marrying Anne Hampton in either 1828 or 1829 and having three children. This all changed upon his kidnap. Northup's turbulent and traumatic experiences as an enslaved person are recorded in full in Twelve Years a Slave.

After Solomon Northup was finally freed, he and Henry Northup attempted to sue the men, namely the ringleader James H. Birch, who originally kidnapped Northup. The trial took place in Washington, D.C. but fell through because a black man was not legally permitted to testify against a white man in this state. This meant Northup could not fight for himself in court. However, Northup and his legal representatives also began a court case against Birch in New York.

Northup was able to testify in this case, but it also failed as the court was unable to prosecute someone for something that had happened outside the state. Despite these failures, the court cases brought Northup and his experiences widespread attention. It made white Americans more aware of the true inhumanities of slavery.