assistance of a local attorney in Louisiana as well as Bass, established that Northup was working on the Epps plantation.
The scene where these gentlemen find Northup working in a field, and tell him he will now be free, is one of the great moments in literature, and is lovingly remembered by Northup in the last pages of the book.
OTHER KIDNAPPING CASES
Corrupt Northern officials were sometimes engaged in kidnapping (for example, the so-called “Kidnapping Club” in New York City), but there were other cases where law enforcement officers went to great lengths to rescue victims and bring their abductors to justice.
In 1819, New York City constable John C. Gillen went undercover pretending to be interested in buying some African Americans to be shipped south and sold as slaves. In doing so, he made contact with the man who was in the process of tricking one Mary Underhill into going away, and whom he planned to sell as a slave. Gillen's efforts averted the kidnapping, and the potential kidnapper was tried and convicted.
In another case, two policemen from New York City went to Baltimore, Maryland, in 1858 in search of the couple who had received permission from a 14-year-old girl's mother to take her away from home. They had said she would work in a New Jersey household, but instead they took her to Washington, D.C. and tried to sell her. The transaction was averted when the girl raised a ruckus, and she was able to return home. Learning the whereabouts of the perpetrators, the policemen laid a trap: one impersonated a post office worker in order to identify the kidnappers when one of them came to collect his mail. He was hauled back to New York where he was put on trial and convicted.
On occasion, officials in the South actually intervened to save victims. In 1858, the mayor of Richmond, Virginia, Joseph Mayo, wrote to the mayor of New York City telling him of a young African American man, George Anderson, who claimed to be free, and whom Mayo believed had been kidnapped. The Southern mayor's information resulted in Anderson's rescue, and the apprehension and conviction of his kidnapper.
Although officials and anti-slavery organizations played roles in rescuing victims, numerous individual citizens undertook arduous trips to bring home the kidnapped and apprehend their kidnappers. The case of Eli Terry is remarkably similar to that of Northup. Terry had accepted a work opportunity, leaving Indiana with a white man. After the job was completed, his employer took him to Texas and sold him as a slave. It was years before friends in Indiana received information as to his whereabouts. But at the end of 1849, three men made the long journey (at one point they passed through Alexandria, Louisiana – putting them, unknowingly, within a few miles of Northup). After going to court, they got a judgment that Terry was a free man, and took him home.
A final case: Joshua Coffin traveled to Tennessee in 1838, in search of the kidnapped Isaac Wright. Finding Wright at his master's home, with the master away, Coffin got Wright onto a steamship and headed north. Wright was returned to his home in New York. Writing to an acquaintance, Coffin said: “I have in fact kidnapped him into freedom.” (10)
NORTHUP'S POPULAR LEGACY
Northup's story cries out for dramatization, and he himself was involved with two projects that brought the story to the stage. These plays were not entirely faithful to his book, and sources indicate that they may not have been particularly successful. Minor productions were presented in Troy, New York, in 1858 (11), and in New York City in 1859 (12). The play in Troy was described as “the moral drama of ‘Sol Northrop [sic], the Slave,’ with lots of singing and dancing.” It was presented at the National Theatre in New York as The Slave: Or, The Kidnapper's Victim, and per an advertisement included four characters: Ichabod Bass, “Platt, the slave,” Sam (“a consequential nigger”), and Eliza (“a Quadroon”). Yankee Leffler and Miss Clara Le Roy appeared in both the Troy and New York productions, assisted by W. M. Ward and W. M. Reeve, who played the additional roles in the New York version.
Despite the fame it won on release, Twelve Years a Slave soon faded from public consciousness, and over a century became obscure. It was not until Louisiana State University Press's publication of the Lodgson/Eakin annotated edition in 1968 that the Northup story became better known again, and not only to scholars of slavery. In 1984, awareness was increased when an American Playhouse production aired on PBS, titled Solomon Northup's Odyssey (also known by the title Half Slave, Half Free), directed by Gordon Parks.
However, it would take until 2013 for Northup to once again become a household name. British director Steve McQueen had long wanted to bring a story of slavery to the screen, and was struggling with a fictional script based on a free man sold into bondage. Then his partner, cultural historian Bianca Stigter, discovered the then little-known Northup account. She could not put it down, and told her husband, “You do not have to write a script any more, this book is the script.” (13). The subsequent film, 12 Years a Slave, won nine Academy Awards, including Best Picture.
The script, credited to John Ridley and Solomon Northup, is largely true to the 1853 book. A few liberties are taken here and there. The film incorrectly gives the impression that Northup's first owner in Louisiana, William Prince Ford, was aware of Northup's background as a freeman – and didn't care. But Northup writes that, for his entire time in the South (with the exception of Samuel Bass, whom he had come to trust), he kept silent about his Northern heritage and having been kidnapped.
MODERN SLAVERY
It would be wonderful if slavery was an entirely historical phenomenon. This is not the case. Definitions of modern slavery vary, but encompass debt bondage, involuntary servitude, and sexual exploitation. The International Labour Organization puts the number of modern slaves at 40 million people. That includes 25 million in forced labor, 5 million in forced sexual exploitation, 4 million in state-run labor programs (such as in China and North Korea), and 15 million in forced marriages. (14) The U.S. State Department publishes an annual Trafficking in Persons Report, which highlights kidnapping incidents around the globe.
Of course, unlike in Northup's time, slavery is officially illegal everywhere, ironically making it more hidden and harder to identify. “Human Trafficking Is Illegal,” a brochure issued by a New York State agency, observes: “Trafficking victims are often lured with false promises of good jobs and better lives, and then forced to work under brutal and illegal conditions. Men, women, and children of all ages and races are vulnerable to human trafficking – it does not discriminate.” This is remarkably similar to what was experienced by Northup and numerous other victims a century and a half ago.
In Chapter XVIII, Northup describes the 10-year-old son of his master Edwin Epps. The boy, apparently, viewed enslaved blacks as mere work animals “to be whipped and kicked and scourged through life – to address the white man with hat in hand, and eyes bent servilely on the earth …” Northup then notes: “Brought up with such ideas … no wonder the oppressors of my people are a pitiless and unrelenting race.”
Let us keep in mind today's Solomon Northups, and the fact that slavery brutalizes the oppressors as it ruins the lives and chances of the enslaved.
REFERENCES
1 1. Pellet, Elias Porter. History of the 114th Regiment, New York State Volunteers. Norwich, New York: Telegraph & Chronicle Power Press, 1866, p. 77.
2 2. Rome [New York] Citizen, 20 July 1853.
3 3. Green Mountain Freeman, 25 January 1855.
4 4. Frederick Douglass' Paper, 3 March 1854.
5 5. Frederick Douglass' Paper, 27 January, 1854
6 6. Essex County Republican, 13 August