On one such occasion, Northup fights back and is nearly hanged as a result. Tibeats is an ignorant man who resents Northup’s intelligence and frequently punishes him in situations where he has done no wrong. Though Northup respects Ford as a good man, he reflects that Ford’s position owning workable land in the Deep South-and his life among other slave owners-“blinded him to the inherent wrong at the bottom of the system of Slavery” (57).įord finds himself in dire financial straits and is forced to sell Northup to a cruel carpenter named John Tibeats. Ford is a gentle master known for his Christian faith and his generosity toward his slaves.

Northup is sold to William Ford, who owns a lumber mill on the Red River bayou. In New Orleans, a slave trader named Theophilus Freeman changes Northup’s name to Platt. Northup is transported by ship to a slave market in New Orleans, along with several other illegally enslaved Black men, women, and children. When he attempts to assert his rights as a free man, he is brutally beaten and repeatedly told that he is a slave. Northup wakes up bound in a basement prison cell. During a celebratory dinner in Washington, DC, Brown and Hamilton drug Northup’s wine, and they sell him to a slave pen. Northup accepts the job without telling his wife, as the job is so brief he believes he will return home before her. They offer him a brief performing job with high wages touring from Saratoga Springs to Washington, DC. Northup meets Brown and Hamilton, who introduce themselves as circus promoters seeking musical talent. In March of 1841, Anne and the children leave Saratoga Springs for Anne’s annual short-term position at Sherrill’s Coffee House 20 miles away. He marries an equally accomplished cook named Anne Hampton, and together, they have three children: Elizabeth, Margaret, and Alonzo. Growing up under the mentorship of his father, Solomon Northup becomes an accomplished man, learning to read, write, and play the violin. He explains that he is the son of an emancipated slave, Mintus Northup. Solomon Northup’s memoir opens with a description of his life as a freeborn Black man in Saratoga Springs, New York.

Northup 12 years a slave