Solomon Northup

It is possible that "Brown" and "Hamilton" incapacitated Northup—his symptoms suggest that he was drugged with belladonna or laudanum, or with a mixture of both—and sold him to Washington slave trader James H. Birch for $650, claiming that he was a fugitive slave. However, Northup stated in his account of the ordeal in Twelve Years a Slave in Chapter II, "[w]hether they were accessory to my misfortunes – subtle and inhuman monsters in the shape of men – designedly luring me away from home and family, and liberty, for the sake of gold – those who read these pages will have the same means of determining as myself." Birch and Ebenezer Radburn, his jailer, severely beat Northup to stop him from saying he was a free man. Birch then wrongfully presented Northup as a slave from Georgia. Northup was held in the slave pen of trader William Williams, close to the United States Capitol. Birch shipped Northup and other slaves by sea to New Orleans, in what was called the coastwise slave trade, where Birch's partner Theophilus Freeman would sell them. During the voyage, Northup and the other slaves caught smallpox. A slave named Robert died of the disease en route.

Northup's memoir was adapted and produced as the 1984 television film Solomon Northup's Odyssey and the 2013 feature film 12 Years a Slave. The latter won three Academy Awards, including Best Picture, at the 86th Academy Awards.

Years later, in The Bench and Bar of Saratoga County (1879), E. R. Mann mistakenly wrote that the Saratoga County kidnapping case against Merrill and Russell had been dismissed because Northup had disappeared. Mann speculated, "What his fate was is unknown to the public, but the desperate kidnappers no doubt knew." In 1909, John Henry Northup, Henry's nephew, wrote: "The last I heard of him, Sol was lecturing in Boston to help sell his book. All at once, he disappeared. We believe that he was kidnapped and taken away or killed." According to John R. Smith, in letters written in the 1930s, he said that his father Rev. John L. Smith, a Methodist minister in Vermont, had worked with Northup and former slave Tabbs Gross in the early 1860s, during the Civil War, aiding fugitive slaves on the Underground Railroad. Northup was said to have visited Rev. Smith after Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, which was made in January 1863.

In 1875, Anne Northup was living in Kingsbury/Sandy Hill in Washington County, New York, and, in census information, her marital status was given as "now widowed." When Anne Northup died in 1876, some newspaper notices of her death said that she was a widow. One obituary, while praising Anne, says of Solomon Northup that "after exhibiting himself through the country [he] became a worthless vagabond".

Northup was not listed with his family in the 1860 United States Census. The New York state census of 1865 records his wife Anne Northup (but not Solomon); she was recorded as married, not widowed, and living with their daughter and son-in-law, Margaret and Philip Stanton, in nearby Moreau in Saratoga County. In 1870, Northup's wife was enumerated as a cook in the household of Burton C. Dennis. At the time, Dennis kept the Middleworth House hotel in Sandy Hill, New York. Solomon Northup is not listed among those living at the hotel. That same year, his daughter, Margaret Stanton, and his son-in-law appear in the census schedule for Moreau, New York, but Northup's name is not there, either. Northup's son, Alonzo, is included in the 1870 census for Fort Edward, New York; his household includes only him, his wife and his daughter.

During the summer of 1857, Northup was in Canada for a series of lectures. It was widely reported that Northup was in Streetsville, Ontario, but that a hostile Canadian crowd prevented him from speaking. There is no contemporaneous documentation of his whereabouts after that time. The location and circumstances of his death are unknown. Rumors ran rife. In 1858, a newspaper reported, "It is said that Solomon Northup, who was kidnapped, sold as a slave, and afterwards recovered and restored to freedom has been again decoyed South, and is again a slave." Shortly thereafter, even his benefactor Henry B. Northup is said to have believed Solomon had been kidnapped from Canada while drunk.

After regaining his freedom, Solomon Northup rejoined his wife and children. By 1855, he was living with his daughter Margaret Stanton and her family in Queensbury, Warren County, New York. He was working again as a carpenter. He became active in the abolitionist movement and lectured on slavery on nearly two dozen occasions throughout the northeastern United States in the years before the American Civil War.

The New York trial opened on October 4, 1854. Both Northup and St. John testified against the two men. The case brought widespread illegal practices in the domestic slave trade to light. Through testimony during the court case, various details of Northup's account of his experience were confirmed. The respective counsels argued over whether the crime had been committed in New York (where Northup could testify), or in Washington, DC, outside the jurisdiction of New York courts. After more than two years of appeals, a new district attorney in New York failed to continue with the case, and it was dropped in May 1857. Washington, DC authorities declined to prosecute Merrill and Russell, and no further legal action was taken against those who had allegedly kidnapped and sold Northup into slavery.

In 1853, after the intervention of an official agent of the state of New York, he was freed. He filed charges against his kidnappers but after a long trial, the charges were dropped on legal technicalities and Northup was never compensated for his years in slavery. He orally related his story to a New York legislator, David Wilson, who published it in a book titled 12 Years A Slave. The book was published less than a year after Northup's freedom and it sold over 30,000 copies.

In 1852, itinerant Canadian carpenter Samuel Bass came to do some work for Epps. Hearing Bass express his abolitionist views, Northup eventually decided to confide his secret to him. Bass was the first person he told of his true name and origins as a free man since he was first enslaved. Along with mailing a letter written by Northup, Bass wrote several letters at his request to Northup's friends, providing general details of his location at Bayou Boeuf, in hopes of gaining his rescue.

Bass did this at great personal risk as the local people would not take kindly to a person helping a slave and depriving a man of his property. In addition, Bass's help came after passage of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, which increased federal penalties against people assisting slaves to escape.

At the New Orleans slave market, Birch's partner Theophilus Freeman sold Northup (who had been renamed Platt) along with Harry and Eliza (renamed Dradey) to William Prince Ford, a preacher who engaged in small farming on Bayou Boeuf of the Red River in northern Louisiana. Ford was then a Baptist preacher. (In 1843, he led his congregation in converting to the closely related Churches of Christ, after they were influenced by the writings of Alexander Campbell.) In his memoir, Northup characterized Ford as a good man, considerate of his slaves. In spite of his situation, Northup wrote:

In the winter of 1842, Ford sold Northup to John M. Tibaut, a carpenter who had been working for Ford on the mills. He also had helped construct a weaving-house and corn mill on Ford's Bayou Boeuf plantation. Ford owed Tibaut money for the work. Since the amount Ford owed Tibaut was less than the purchase price agreed upon for Solomon, Ford held a chattel mortgage on Northup for $400, the difference between the two amounts.

Born a free man in New York, Northup was drugged and kidnapped in Washington, D. C. in 1841 and sold into slavery there. He was soon taken with other slaves by ship to New Orleans and sold into further slavery. He eventually came into contact with a Canadian abolitionist, who was able to notify his family of his whereabouts.

Northup persuaded John Manning, an English sailor, to send to Henry B. Northup, upon reaching New Orleans, a letter that told of his kidnapping and illegal enslavement. Henry was a lawyer, the son of the man who had once held Solomon's father as a slave and freed him, and a childhood friend of Solomon's. The New York State Legislature had passed a law in 1840 to protect its African-American residents by providing legal and financial assistance to aid the recovery of any who were kidnapped and taken out of state and illegally enslaved. Henry Northup was willing to help but could not act without knowing where Solomon was held.

After selling their farm in 1834, the Northups moved 20 miles to Saratoga Springs, New York, for its employment opportunities. Northup played his violin at several well-known hotels in Saratoga Springs, though he found its seasonal cycles of employment difficult. He was busy during the summer, but work was scarce at other times. He worked at an assortment of jobs, constructing the Champlain Canal and the railroad, and as a skilled carpenter. Anne worked from time to time as a cook at the United States Hotel and other public houses, and she was highly praised for her culinary skills. When court was in session at the county seat of Fort Edward, she worked at Sherrill's Coffee House in Sandy Hill (now Hudson Falls) to earn extra money.

Mintus Northup married and moved with his wife, a free woman of color, to the town of Minerva in Essex County, New York. Their two sons, Solomon and Joseph, were born free according to the principle of partus sequitur ventrem, as their mother was a free woman. Solomon described his mother as a quadroon, meaning that she was one-quarter African, and three-quarters European. A farmer, Mintus Northup was successful enough to own land and thus meet the state's property requirements for the right to vote. From 1821 on, when it revised its constitution, the state retained the property requirement for black people, but dropped it for white men, thus expanding their franchise. It is notable that Mintus Northup was able to save enough money as a freedman to buy land that satisfied this requirement, and registered to vote. He provided an education for his two sons at a level considered high for free black people at that time. As boys, Northup and his brother worked on the family farm. Mintus and his wife last lived near Fort Edward. He died on November 22, 1829, and his grave is in Hudson Falls Baker Cemetery.

In 1828 or 1829, Solomon Northup married Anne Hampton. A "woman of color", she was of African, European, and Native American descent. Between 1830 and 1834, the couple lived in Fort Edward and Kingsbury, small communities in Washington County, New York.

Solomon Northup was born on July 10, 1807 or in 1808. His father Mintus was a freedman who had been a slave in his early life in service to the Northup family. Born in Rhode Island, he was taken with the Northups when they moved to Hoosick, New York, in Rensselaer County. His master, Capt. Henry Northup, a great grandson of Stephen Northup, manumitted Mintus in his will. After being freed by Henry Northup, Mintus adopted the surname Northup as his own. The name appears interchangeably in records as Northup and Northrup.