Summary
Chapter V
The brig Orleans heads downriver and arrives at Norfolk, where it takes on four more slaves. One, Arthur, had also been a free man, and he struggles mightily before he is subdued. During the day, the slaves are allowed to remain on deck. Solomon is in charge of cooking. In the evening, they are locked in the hold.
Solomon asks the reader not to judge him too harshly for what he is about to relate: he and the other slaves planned a mutiny, and they were going to have to kill the first mate and the captain. Unfortunately, though, Robert contracts smallpox and he dies when the brig reaches New Orleans.
Everyone on board is panic-stricken by smallpox, which compounds Solomon's frustration that the mutiny could not occur.
One sailor kindly asks Solomon why he is so down, and, trusting the man’s warm mien, Solomon tells him the truth. The man promises to take a letter from Solomon and mail it to Henry B. Northup. Solomon later learns it did reach Sandy Hill and that Northup took it to Governor Seward, but there was no info about Solomon’s location at the time so there was nothing to do but wait.
On the crowded wharf in New Orleans, Solomon realizes that he knows no one. His wrongs will not be avenged and he feels desolate.
Traders and consignees come aboard the ship. Burch’s gang is consigned to Burch’s partner, Theophilus Freeman. Freeman calls out for “Platt” and no one answers. He consults his list, looks at Solomon, and tells him he answers the description so therefore must be Platt. From now on, this will be his name.
The group is taken to Freeman’s slave pen, where about fifty people are staying.
That night, Solomon is still overcome by the absurdity and horror of his situation. Is this real? His sorrow seems to be overflowing, and he cries out to God.
Chapter VI
The next day, the slaves wash and get dressed for the sales-room. They are to be smart, lively, and polite, and Solomon plays the violin. Many customers come to inspect the group. One old gentleman almost buys Northup, but Freeman will not take the price he offers. A planter from Baton Rouge purchases Lethe and the boy Randall. Eliza is hysterical and begs him to buy her too, but the man cannot afford it. Freeman threatens her to be quiet; the man, Randall, and Lethe depart.
That evening in the pen, little Emily complains of feeling ill. It turns out that all of those who came on the brig Orleans have come down with smallpox. Solomon is blind for three days and almost dies. Though his circumstances are grim, death appalls him. Thankfully, he recovers.
One day after the pox has passed, Freeman calls everyone to the room. There is a good-looking and cheerful middle-aged man there, and he moves about the group of slaves. He offers a sum for Solomon, Eliza, and Harry. When Eliza hears she is to be separated from Emily, she becomes hysterical again, weeping and clinging to the child. She begs the man to buy Emily, but Freeman asserts that the girl is not for sale because in a few years her beauty will make her a prime offering.
Freeman tears Emily away from Eliza and takes his new slaves away. Eliza never hears of nor sees Emily or Randall after that. Her intelligence, information, and brief time experiencing a higher life make this situation utterly unbearable to her.
Chapter VII
The steamboat Rodolph begins its trek up the Mississippi to the Red River. Solomon's new owner is William Ford, who resides in the Great Pine Woods in the parish of Avoyelles in the heart of Louisiana. He is a minister, and Solomon asserts that “there never was a more kind, noble, candid, Christian man than William Ford” (57). All the same, Ford is a product of his time and thus sees things in the same light as those who brought him up. He treats his slaves well, though, and is a model master.
The river passage takes a couple of days; Solomon almost tells Ford the truth about himself, but he decides not to. In retrospect, he thinks it may have helped, but it was not worth the risk. His identity would have consigned him to the remote depths of slavery, and he could have been taken into Texas or over the border.
When their time on the steamship is over, the only way to reach the plantation is to walk. Ford, Solomon, Eliza, and Harry begin their trek on an extremely hot day. Ford, who rides his horse, is solicitous of their condition, but it is still very arduous.
The land is low and marshy. There are numerous trees and wild cattle all around. The four stop at the summer residence of Mr. Martin, a rich planter who stays here during the summer season due to the shade and cooler temperatures. Ford dines with Martin and the slaves eat in the kitchen.
They traverse five more miles; as the sun begins to sink, they arrive at Ford’s plantation. The house is large and surrounded by woods, and Solomon finds it lonely but pleasant. He meets a slave named Rose, another one named Sally, and a teenager named John. Harry and Solomon sleep, and in the morning they meet Rose’s husband, Walton.
At this time, Ford is a wealthy man. He has a lumbering establishment on Indian Creek, this seat in Pine Woods, and, in his wife’s name, a plantation on Bayou Boeuf.
Harry and Solomon work throughout the summer at Indian Creek, piling lumber and chopping logs. Every Sunday they have Sabbath and Master Ford reads to them from the Bible. Another of Ford’s slaves, Sam, becomes very spiritual that summer. Some white men see that Ford has given Sam a Bible and criticize him for that, but Solomon writes that those who treat their slaves leniently get more labor out of them.
Solomon suggests to Ford that he may be able to reduce the shipping costs of lumber if they use the river and rafts. His own experience is critical to this, and he works hard to build a raft and navigate it to Lamourie. This creates a sensation, and people throughout the Pine Woods laud his intelligence. He is in charge of the project until its culmination.
Indian Creek flows through an incredible forest, and a tribe of Native Americans still resides on its shores. They host tribes from elsewhere and once Solomon was present at a great dance where the music was melancholy and mesmerizing.
One day, Mistress Ford asks Ford to buy a loom so Sally can weave cloth for the winter garments of slaves; Ford offers that he can build a loom. It is finished and works perfectly, and he continues to make more.
A carpenter named John M. Tibeats arrives to do work for Ford, and Solomon is instructed to leave off his looms and assist Tibeats for two weeks. To his dismay, Tibeats is the complete opposite of Ford. He is ignorant, vengeful, quick-tempered, and disliked by slaves and white men. He reveals to Solomon the real, dark side of slavery, as opposed to the benignity of Ford.
Clouds are gathering on the horizon for Solomon, and he is “doomed to endure such bitter trials as only the poor slave knows” (66).
Chapter VIII
Unfortunately, Ford’s financial situation begins to deteriorate and he has to sell Solomon to Tibeats due to Solomon’s skill as a carpenter. Ford does take out four hundred dollars in excess of what he sold Solomon for, which will prove crucial later.
Tibeats takes Solomon down to Bayou Boeuf to continue working on the unfinished contract for Ford. Bayou Boeuf is sluggish, stagnant, and teming with alligators. Plantations line each side; Mistress Ford’s is here, as is that of Peter Tanner, her brother.
At Bayou Boeuf, Solomon meets with Eliza, who did not please Mistress Ford because all she did was brood and sulk all day. She does not look well; she droops and spends her time remembering her children. Ford’s overseer here is Mr. Chapin, a friendly man who has no love for Tibeats.
Solomon must labor very hard from dawn until dusk and never seems to please Tibeats, who curses and complains. The two of them have their first major conflict when Tibeats orders Solomon to procure nails from Chapin and start putting on clapboards. Solomon sets off on his errand but does not want to wake Chapin, so he waits until he arises. Solomon then begins nailing the clapboards, but Tibeats comes to him and irritably asks why he is not further along. Solomon explains, but Tibeats grows angry and cuts him off. He then procures the whip and moves toward Solomon.
Solomon and Tibeats are alone. Everyone else is in the field; Rachel and Mrs. Chapin are somewhere close but out of view. Solomon is frustrated because he knows he did nothing wrong. He considers running but decides against it. His anger mounts, and he tells Tibeats he will not strip his clothes. Tibeats goes to strike him, but Solomon catches his collar, throws him down, places his foot on his back, and whips him over and over again. Tibeats screams, and Solomon looks up to see Mrs. Chapin and Rachel.
Chapin gallops up quickly, and Solomon explains about the nails. Chapin rebukes Tibeats; Tibeats groans and sneers that he will have revenge. He leaves.
Solomon does not know whether to fly or stay for the punishment. Chapin goes inside and then comes back out in a rush. He tells Solomon not to go anywhere and fears that Tibeats will be back soon. Solomon realizes how stupid he has been and fears for his life.
Tibeats and two other horsemen arrive. They are carrying whips and a long coil of rope. Solomon knows his fate, and he walks down to them. His feet and hands are bound, and the noose put around his neck. Solomon can see Chapin pacing up and down the piazza, Rachel crying, and Mrs. Chapin peering out the window. He is certain it is the time for his death.
Suddenly he sees Chapin striding purposefully toward them with two pistols. He addresses the men evenly and tells them they’d better listen. He states that Platt is a faithful slave and Tibeats is a scoundrel. He says it is his interest to protect Ford’s property and that Ford has a mortgage out on Platt for $400; there is a law for the white man, and he cannot take another’s property. He tells the other two men to leave if they value their safety — and they do. Tibeats also sneaks off, like a coward.
Chapin orders a slave named Lawson to fetch Ford as quickly as he can. He writes Lawson a pass and Lawson rides the mule away.
Chapter IX
Solomon remains completely bound in the hot sun. He feels near collapse and his limbs ache, but he cannot move. Chapin never relieves him, but he paces the porch. Perhaps he wanted Ford to see how badly Tibeats had treated Solomon, or perhaps he did not want to interfere more.
Rachel comes out once to give Solomon water and tells him she pities him.
Finally, Ford comes riding up, and all he says is that Solomon is in a bad state. He cuts his bonds and rushes into the house. Solomon topples over, unable to walk. He sees Tibeats and his two friends approach the house and talk to Ford, only to depart again.
Solomon crawls to his cabin at dusk because he cannot work. He is in great misery. The other slaves return from their labors. They listen to Solomon’s story and give him food and water. Rachel adds what she saw. Lawson also tells his version of the story.
Suddenly, Chapin appears at the door and tells Solomon he will sleep in the floor on the great house tonight. On their walk over, he says that he believes Tibeats will be back before morning to kill Solomon, and if he kills him in front of other slaves, no one could lift a finger against him in court.
Solomon lies on the floor and tries to sleep. Around midnight, the dog begins to bark; Chapin looks outside but sees nothing. He tells Solomon that he thinks Tibeats is somewhere skulking around the property, but he is not sure. The dog barks again; Chapin investigates, but there is nothing. The rest of the night is uneventful.
The next morning, Solomon sets out to do his day’s work. Chapin tells Solomon to be wary, as Tibeats has bad blood in him and he may do him wrong some day. Tibeats rides up at that moment, and Solomon feels a great weariness that this is his life now: he must toil and suffer the slights and dangers of monsters. Would that he had died when he was young.
It takes a week to complete the weaving-house, and Solomon learns to his delight that Tibeats has sold him to Peter Tanner to work with another carpenter named Myers.
Solomon’s reputation has preceded him across the bayou, and Tanner impresses upon him that he is severe with his slaves, though Solomon gleans that he has some good humor. Solomon works for Myers for a month.
Tanner has a habit of reading the Bible to his slaves on the Sabbath, and one day he reads that servants who do not do their Lord’s will should be beaten with many stripes. He calls up three of his slaves — Warner, Will, and Major — and tells them that they are melon-stealing, Sabbath-breaking slaves and must go into the stocks. He orders Solomon to stand watch over them.
When the Tanner family goes off to church, the three slaves beg Solomon to let them out. He gives in; they all eat melons, and then the men go back into the stocks when Tanner comes home.
This levity is short-lived, though, for Solomon’s great conflict with Tibeats looms ahead.
Analysis
Northup spends a good deal of time painting the terrible picture of Eliza and her children, demonstrating beyond a shadow of a doubt that the separation of a mother from her children was one of slavery’s grossest inhumanities. The mournful, hysterical, and disconsolate Eliza would have garnered sympathy from Northern white women who would not have been able to fathom such a monstrous thing happening to them. Critic Vanessa Vaughn writes of this scene that “the description is… aimed at the white reader and seeks to reinforce the overall argument that slavery was an inhumane and unjust institution that inflicted legal, physical, and emotional damage upon those who suffered under it.”
Indeed, the slave auction was one of the most potent images of abolitionists seeking to reveal to their audiences just how unjust and immoral nearly every single aspect of the system of slavery was. It humiliated and stripped slaves of their humanity, reduced them to the property and chattel they were perceived to be, and reminded them that they had no control over their own body and fate of their family members. Nothing Eliza did could preclude her children from being taken from her, and, as Northup recounts, nothing could ever fill that hole in her heart.
Northup’s first master, the minister William Ford, is a good, kind, Christian man whom Northup is careful to present as evidence that not every Southerner was a monster. For Northup, Ford is simply a reminder of how slavery wasn’t just an economic system but rather an entire way of life that permeated the South’s consciousness. He writes that Ford was blinded to the wrongs of slavery, that “he never doubted the moral right of one man holding another in subjection. Looking through the same medium with his fathers before him, he saw things in the same light. Brought up under other circumstances and other influences, he is notions would undoubtedly be different” (17). It might seem unbelievable to modern readers that a man as Christian and benevolent as Ford would think slavery was okay, but Northup’s words remind us of slavery's power and prominence in the South. It is no wonder that slavery was only exterminated with a brutal war, given its entrenchment.
Unfortunately for Northup, his time with Ford is relatively short-lived and he is forced to work for the coarse, ruthless, and vengeful Tibeats. For Northup and the reader, Tibeats is a prominent example of how a man’s whiteness allows him a more elevated social position despite his shortcomings in intellect, morality, and work ethic. Northup is Tibeats’s superior in every possible respect, but the color of his skin means that he has to submit to the man. For a man like Northup who was — and still is, at least legally — free, offering obeisance to a man like Tibeats is nearly impossible. Thankfully, Tibeats’s reputation is well-known in the area, and Ford and Chapin’s intervention is seen as right; all the same, Northup has the chilling reminder that his blackness means he is considered the lowliest of all men.
Working under Tibeats also reveals to Northup what most slave labor is actually like. He did work hard for Ford, yes, but he was not privy to the capricious punishments, unrealistic expectations, or backbreaking tasks that Tibeats and especially Epps require of their slaves. Now under, Tibeats, he is “forced to labor very hard. From earliest dawn until late at night, I was not allowed to be a moment idle. Notwithstanding which, Tibeats was beer satisfied... I was his faithful slave, and earned him large wages every day, and yet I went to my cabin nightly, loaded with abuse and stinging epithets” (68). Life was labor for most slaves, which is something that will only become more apparent to Northup when he is sold to Edwin Epps.
