In 1841, he was offered a traveling musician's job. He went to Washington, D.C., where slavery was legal. He was drugged, kidnapped, and sold as a slave.[1][2] He was taken to New Orleans and was a slave for 12 years in Louisiana.[3]
He remained a slave until he met Samuel Bass, a Canadian working on his plantation who helped send letters to New York. New York state law helped New York citizens who had been kidnapped and sold into slavery. His family and friends got help from the Governor of New York, Washington Hunt, and Northup got his freedom again on January 3, 1853.
Speaker
Northup traveled through the United States making speeches about what happened to him. He did this because he wanted voters to end slavery. Northup wrote his speeches down as a book, 12 Years a Slave, and Derby published it in 1853. Northup's book was published one year after Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe. By then, people were saying that surely Beecher Stowe had only made up how bad slavery was. Northup dedicated the book to Beecher Stowe. He and Derby both said 12 Years a Slave helped prove that Beecher Stowe had not lied about slavery being bad. They called it "Another Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin."[4][5]
Death
Northup is believed to have died in 1863 as that was when he was last seen or heard of.[6][7]
The Solomon Northup Trail, LSU's Acadiana Historical project: maps and descriptions of sites from Northup's memoir, based on Eakin's and Logsdon's 1968 research.
.jpg)
