Summary
Chapter I
Solomon Northup narrates his own story of being kidnapped and sold into slavery, in which he remained for twelve years until he was freed. He states that he will tell his story as faithfully as possible.
Solomon paternal ancestors were slaves in Rhode Island, and eventually his father became free. Henry B. Northup of Sandy Hill, a lawyer and the person to whom Solomon owes his freedom, is a current relative of the family who freed his father. Solomon’s father moved to Minerva in Essex County, New York, where Solomon was born. He died and left Solomon, a brother, and their mother. He had been respected for integrity and industry, and he had peacefully worked in agriculture. Even though his time in slavery was not as bad as others’, he still saw the degradation of the system and taught his children morality and faith.
As a young man, Solomon worked with his father on the farm. He married Anne Hampton in 1829. Solomon and Anne lived near the Hudson River. Solomon worked diligently on navigation and rafting. He arranged to purchase part of the old Alden farm, where the family resided until 1834. Solomon often played the violin, and everyone nearby loved to hear him. Anne was known for her cooking.
The couple and their three children moved to Saratoga Springs. Solomon writes of purchasing items from storekeepers Mr. Cephas Parker and Mr. William Perry, who would later be helpful in delivering him from slavery.
While Solomon lived in the North, he did encounter slaves visiting with their masters from the South. Solomon observed that they always evinced the desire to escape but were afraid of punishment. Solomon could not understand how one could be content to live in those conditions, and he could comprehend neither the "justice" nor the religious systems that upheld the system of Slavery.
Solomon loved his three children, Elizabeth, Margaret, and Alonzo. His life was peaceful and comfortable while he resided in the North with his family.
Now, though, he comes to the part of the story where the cloud begins to overshadow him.
Chapter II
Anne is about twenty miles away with Elizabeth, engaged in culinary work. Alonzo and Margaret are with their aunt. Thus, Solomon is alone as he strolls about Saratoga Springs one day in 1841. He meets two respectably-dressed gentlemen named Merrill Brown and Abram Hamilton. They tell Solomon that they are part of a circus company, which was in Washington DC at the time, and that they were going to rejoin it. They hope that Solomon will accompany them and play the violin, as they had heard he was proficient at it. Solomon accepts because his expenses will be paid and he will earn more money. He assumes his absence will be brief and therefore does not write his wife. He is extremely happy to set out on this adventure.
On their journey, Solomon gets to see Brown and Hamilton do one of their performances and is struck by the sparse, uncouth nature of the audience. Nevertheless, he continues on. Leaving New York, the men suggest he get his free papers because they are entering a slave state. This is completed, and Solomon is relieved.
As they get closer to Washington, the men seem more and more anxious to arrive. They finally arrive on the occasion of President William Henry Harrison’s funeral. The men tell Solomon that the circus is leaving tomorrow but thst they plan to stay another day on account of the funeral. Solomon never suspects anything strange of them at this time. Looking back, he knows they must have known what was happening and have been part of it, but it is still difficult to fathom.
The next day, a great pageant is held for Harrison. Solomon stands with Brown and Hamilton watching the pomp. They venture into a few saloons and the men order Solomon drinks. He accepts but does not become drunk. However, he begins to feel extremely ill. Brown and Hamilton advise him to retire, and he does.
In his room, he cannot sleep and his thirst becomes acute. He is in a strange lodging house; he makes his way downstairs to get water. When he returns, though, the thirst has started up again. He feels a wild, burning pain and desire for water.
In a stupor, Solomon hears voices in his room. He thinks he hears them saying that he must go to a doctor. However, when he wakes up from his insensibility, he finds himself alone in the dark and chained up. He is faint, weak, and confused, knowing neither where he is nor why he is chained. There is a blank period in his mind that he cannot account for. His pockets are empty, his money and free papers gone. He starts to wonder if he has been kidnapped, but he knows it is a mistake because he is a free citizen of New York. He weeps bitterly.
Chapter III
Solomon hears footsteps above him. He seems to be in an underground space; it is damp, dark, and moldy. Finally, two men enter: the first is James H. Burch, a repugnant, coarse, and cruel slave trader; and Ebenezer Radburn, a lackey and a turnkey. The light coming into the room reveals more of its dimensions. There is a stairwell that leads up and out to a yard surrounded by a tall brick wall. In this place, the black man’s fate is sealed. On the outside of the house, though, everything appears normal, pleasant, and private. Ironically, the Capitol building is visible from this slave pen.
Burch addresses Solomon, and Solomon bursts into protestations about his freedom and the treatment he has received. Burch becomes enraged and blasphemes Solomon, viciously beating him. Solomon refuses to yield even though he feels like he is amongst the flames of Hell. He cannot speak anymore. Radburn tells Burch he should stop now, and Burch sneers at Solomon that if he ever says anything about being free, or kidnapped, or anything else, Burch will conquer or kill him.
Solomon is left alone in the dark again. Radburn returns with a bit of food and water and seems disposed to be more sympathetic. Solomon’s wounds preclude him from moving about. For the next few days he lingers there, heartsick and in pain. His spirit is not broken, though, and he thinks about how he can escape. Perhaps Hamilton and Brown can be addressed? Alas, he now knows the extent of man’s inhumanity to man.
In a few days, Solomon is allowed into the yard. There, he meets three other slaves. There is Clemens Ray, an older man who’d been laboring in Washington and is horrified to be going south. He is smart and tells Solomon that they are in Williams’ Slave Pen. He tells Solomon he should not mention his freedom around Burch anymore. The second man is John Williams, taken by Burch as payment for a debt. There is also a young child about ten years old named Randall. He occasionally cries for his mother and does not quite comprehend his situation.
Ray and Williams ask Solomon many questions about New York. They are in the pen for two weeks, and the night before their departure, a woman and a young girl arrive. They are Eliza, Randall’s mother, and Emily, his sister. Eliza is inconsolable. She is wearing lovely, rich clothing and accessories and cannot grasp why she is here. She knows her children will be taken from her and cannot stem her grief on that account. She tells the men her story: she was the slave of Elisha Berry, who separated from his wife and daughter and took Eliza as a wife in a house at the edge of his property. She resided with him for nine years, had servants of her own, and had Emily by him. Her young mistress, Elisha’s daughter, married a Mr. James Brooks. When Elisha Berry’s property was divided against his will, Eliza and Emily fell to Mrs. Brooks and her mother, who hated both Eliza and Emily. Brooks had brought the two to the city under the pretense of getting them their free papers, but it was actually a bill of sale. All of Eliza’s hopes were dashed at that instant.
Solomon writes that Eliza is now dead, resting somewhere up the Red River. Her heart broke from the loss of her children.
Chapter IV
It is a long night, and Eliza speaks bitterly of Mr. Brooks and how Elisha would never have done that to her. Around midnight, Burch enters and tells the group to get ready to go on the boat without delay. They are marched through the silent streets of Washington. Little lights flicker, but no one is out of bed. Solomon considers breaking away, but he is handcuffed. They pass through the city of Washington, a city ironically dedicated to liberty and equality.
The slaves are hustled onto the steamboat and the vessel starts down the Potomac. Clem Ray is wholly overcome with the idea of going south, and he and Eliza bemoan their cruel fate. Solomon will say nothing more of being a free man, but he resolves that he must escape.
The next day, the boat continues along. The fields along the river are lovely and birds are singing. They make it first to Fredericksburg, and then to Richmond. In Richmond, the slaves are taken off the ship to a slave pen. When the man, Goodin, looks at Solomon and asks where he came from, Solomon accidentally responds with New York. He tries to cover his tracks, especially as Burch looks at him. Burch approaches him later and threatens him, but Solomon promises he meant no harm.
Solomon is handcuffed to a man named Robert who is also free but captured. The two lament their shared situation. There is a couple, David and Caroline, who are mulatto and distressed to be separated; there is a girl named Mary, who never knew anything but brute treatment; and there is Lethe, who looked more like a Native American woman, full of revenge and anger.
In the morning Clem Ray learns he will be taken back to Washington, and he is overjoyed. Solomon later learns Ray escaped to Canada. The others are taken to a ship and stowed away in the hatch. Burch and Ray remain in Richmond. Solomon doesn't see Burch’s face again until twelve years later. Burch is a slave trader, a speculator in human flesh, but he will eventually be seen as a criminal, cringing and unassisted by the law.
Analysis
Solomon Northup’s Twelve Years a Slave provides an utterly visceral look at the horrors of slavery. Northup’s perspective was unique in that he was a free man who was kidnapped and sold into slavery, which shocked Northerners, and that he had gained his freedom through legal, unimpeachable means and thus had nothing to fear by publishing the work (unlike Douglass or Jacobs, for example, who had run away). During its own time, Twelve Years was a key work for the abolitionist movement, and it is read today by scholars and students looking for insights into the “peculiar institution.” Northup prepared the work with David Wilson almost as soon as he returned to the North, knowing that it would be useful to abolitionists. This is why he not only provides an incredible wealth of detail, but also assures his readers numerous times that he is not fabricating or exaggerating anything, or leaving anything out.
Southerners denounced the work when it was published and sought to undermine it by identifying discrepancies or lies, but they could not accomplish their aim. In the early twentieth century, Sue Eakins, who’d found a copy of the narrative at a plantation, dedicated herself to tracking down details and confirming what Northup had written. Another historian, David Fiske, found reports of a corroboration from Edwin Epps. Union soldiers had met Epps in Louisiana and reported, “Old Mr. Epps yet lives, and told us a greater part of the book was true.” Fiske writes that “the inclusion of all these facts…has enabled modern researchers to make independent verification of many of the individuals and events described by Northup.”
Fiske suggests that the veracity of Northup’s account can also be seen in the fact that his ghostwriter and editor, David Wilson, was anti-slavery but not abolitionist, and that Northup could read and write, meaning that he was actually less dependent on Wilson than other slaves who needed their editor more. Northup had an incredible memory and was able to transcribe all of his experiences into his work. He also maintained an even, balanced tone. Fiske writes that he “exhibited a surprising lack of bitterness” and found a response from 1854 that praised Northup’s “unaffected simplicity, directness, and gentlemanly bearing” that “impressed us far more than many fervid appeals to which we have listened.”
One of the ways that Northup’s story achieves its impact is by his account of what his life was like before slavery and how, in one fateful instant, it all changed. Northup had a wife, children, a home, and a life. He knew the beauty of freedom and could not fathom how others were “content” to be enslaved. He would come to see the irony in his ruminations, for once he was enslaved he realized how difficult it was to extricate himself from it.
Northup uses metaphor and imagery to contrast his life before slavery and his life during slavery. When he approaches the part of his story during which he meets Brown and Hamilton, he writes, “Now had I approached within the shadow of the cloud, into the thickness whereof I was soon to disappear” from “the sweet light of liberty” (11). When he wakes up in the slave pen in Washington DC, he is submerged in darkness, barely conscious of what has happened or what is happening, which parallels his overall situation. He is in bondage now, severed from the light of his freedom. Critic Vanessa Vaughn notes that this “offers both a literal and a metaphorical description of the situation. He was literally sitting by himself in darkened space meant to hold slaves awaiting sale, chained to a ring on the floor; on a broader, more symbolic level he was without the protection of the law or even a sympathetic ally in the utter darkness of slavery.”
The light/dark contrast is paralleled in the powerful and ironic image of the chained slaves being paraded past the Capitol at night. This symbol of American government — of life and liberty — is made a mockery as the unfortunate slaves go by. It is an image meant to resonate with readers who similarly acknowledge the discrepancy between the founding principles of America and her current tolerance of the system of slavery.
