he was kidnapped into slavery, instead of having been born into it, he has less reason to overstate the horrors of the trade. Most other narratives were written by people who had fled slavery. They ran away and, in doing so, they were breaking the laws of the time. To justify why they had absconded, they needed to give as evil an image of slavery as possible. Northup did not need to do that, and could afford, at times, to make certain aspects of his experience sound almost positive. Indeed, along with chilling portraits of men like James Burch (slave dealer), John Tibeats (carpenter overseer who tried to kill Northup several times) and, of course, Edwin Epps (brutal, drunken plantation master), Northup is careful to give accounts of better individuals in the slave system, including William Ford (his initial “owner” who treated his slaves kindly and who became a Baptist preacher), and Mr. Chapin, a white overseer who saved Northup from being lynched and hanged by Tibeats.
RECEPTION AND IMPACT
When Twelve Years a Slave was released in the summer of 1853, it was received very well by the public. Though not as popular as Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, a work of fiction, many readers liked that Northup's book related actual events. One reader recommended the book to “those persons who are so conscientious that they will not read ‘Uncle Tom's Cabin' because they say it is a Novel” and promised that after reading Northup, “they [would] acquit Mrs. Stowe of all exaggeration.” (6)
In the mid-nineteenth century the abolitionist movement was strong, but many Americans felt that slavery was basically the hand dealt to African Americans. For people living in the North who had little direct contact with the “peculiar institution,” it was not something that impacted their daily lives. However, they often encountered free blacks, who provided various services in their communities. That a decent, industrious man like Northup could be lured away from home, held in a slave pen, spirited away to the deep South, and made into a slave – this was unacceptable. Thus Twelve Years a Slave, while preaching to the congregation of those who hated slavery, also likely made converts of many who were still unsure of what they thought.
Abraham Lincoln, in a speech in 1854, estimated that if all the nation's free people of color were made into slaves, they would be worth $200 million. (7) So long as the United States had a population of blacks who were divided into free and slaves, kidnapping was arguably too profitable to disappear.
As a first-hand account that detailed the process of kidnapping from the inside, Twelve Years a Slave mostly stands alone in documenting the crime. There is also the Narrative of Stephen Dickenson, Jr. (8), and the Narrative of Dimmock Charlton. The former tells how three African American sailors were removed from the steamship they worked on, taken to a slave pen, and sold as slaves. The latter details how a black man – rescued from the slave trade by the British – was taken from a warship as a prisoner of war during the War of 1812, and then made into a slave in America.
In a 1999 lecture, historian Joseph Logsdon (who with Sue Eakin produced the first scholarly edition of Twelve Years a Slave) stated that he had begun the assignment thinking that kidnapping was rare. He quickly learned it was a reasonably common crime. Northup's narrative stands in for the many victims who did not have their stories told.
THE FORGOTTEN PHENOMENON
Thousands of books have been written on American slavery. Much less attention has been given to the kidnapping problem. Twelve Years a Slave stands as a reminder that it occurred, but the question of its prevalence has never been fully answered. Incidents that have been discovered come almost entirely from cases where the victims were rescued. Unknown is the number of people who were abducted or fooled into slavery via duplicity (as Northup was) but were never able to contact friends or relatives, and who never became the subject of a rescue mission.
These victims went on “dragging out lives of unrequited toil” (as Northup feared happened to Eliza Berry's two children who were sold away from her, in one of the book's more horrible scenes). Such people remained enslaved until death or emancipation – whichever came first. A correspondent for a Northern newspaper, reporting from Alabama just weeks after the end of the Civil War, came across a man in his seventies who had been born free in a Northern state and kidnapped at the age of 15. In all that time, he had never had the least chance to regain his liberty. (9) Even if a captive was able to read and write, it was virtually impossible to send a letter back home. Slaves were forbidden pen and paper, and if caught reading a book were invariably flogged.
To illustrate how common it was for free blacks to be kidnapped and sold into slavery, consider that among the few dozen African Americans on board the Orleans there were three who'd been kidnapped: Northup, Robert, and Arthur. Newspapers from those days contained many reports of kidnappings. Kidnappers could make substantial sums of money selling free persons as slaves, and for able conmen like Merrill Brown and Abram Hamilton (who got Northup to believe he was joining a travelling music show), it was not especially hard to do. Though victims were sometimes physically seized, criminals more often lured their victims away with promises of employment. Taking their victims to slave trading cities, kidnappers could readily secure a profit. Slave traders were anxious to purchase slaves – sometimes with no questions asked – and kidnappers could easily find buyers since newspapers carried advertisements crying “Cash for Negroes.” Once they were converted into slaves, there were plenty of ships ready to transport victims to the deep South, where prices were high for healthy men, women and children.
Adding to the ease with which kidnappers operated were the laws regarding fugitive slaves, especially the notorious Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. Blacks could be seized with minimal evidence that they were runaways, declared to be such at hearings in which they had no rights, and sent to slave states where their insistence that they were free usually fell on deaf ears.
The slave system was powered by deep, unquestioning racism. Many whites believed those of African descent belonged to an inferior race. Though there were some cases of whites being sold into slavery, it was rare. In many Southern slave states, blacks were generally assumed to be slaves, unless they possessed sufficient paperwork proving otherwise. A white woman named Abby Guy contested her enslavement in court, claiming to have been kidnapped when young. The court sessions, rather than investigating her claim, dwelled instead on whether she was black or white, with testimony from various experts on the matter. It was decided that she was white, and she and her children were set free.
THE HUMANITY OF RESCUERS
For kidnap victims, it was next to impossible for them to regain their liberty under their own steam. Victims were usually taken away from their familiar surroundings quickly, making it difficult for them to escape their captors and return home. They were often given different names, minimizing the chances that friends or relatives might locate them. (For most of his time as a slave, Northup was known as “Platt,” a name given him by slave trader James Burch.) Their testimony about having been kidnapped was disbelieved. Paperwork was necessary in order for them to prove their free status, yet they had no way to gather such information. Consequently, the help of white friends and acquaintances was virtually a necessity to regain their liberty.
In Northup's case, two white men were responsible for his rescue. Samuel Bass, originally from Canada, was a travelling carpenter who befriended Northup while working on the Edwin Epps plantation. After Northup confided in him, Bass wrote and posted letters on his behalf. Being an anti-slavery man in the deep South, Bass took on some peril to himself by becoming involved. After all, if successful, he would be depriving Epps of Northup – a valuable piece of property. When it seemed that the letters were receiving no response, Bass volunteered to go a step further by traveling to Saratoga Springs to get help for Northup.
Help did finally arrive in the form of Henry B. Northup, whose family had once owned Solomon's father as a slave (the 2013 film instead has a storekeeper, a recipient of one of Bass' letters, as Northup's rescuer). Henry Northup had assiduously gathered affidavits from Northup's former neighbors, presented them to the governor of New York State, and been appointed as an agent to seek out and retrieve Solomon Northup.