Solomon Northup

Perhaps the best written of all the slave narratives, Twelve Years a Slave is a harrowing memoir about one of the darkest periods in American history. It recounts how Solomon Northup, born a free man in New York, was lured to Washington, D.C., in 1841 with the promise of fast money, then drugged and beaten and sold into slavery. He spent the next twelve years of his life in captivity on a Louisiana cotton plantation. After his rescue, Northup published...

Before slavery was outlawed in the United States in 1865, most free Americans had little understanding of this brutal institution. One of the abolitionist movement's few tools for illustrating its horrors was the slave narrative. Memoirs written by former slaves provided hard-hitting eyewitness accounts of the day-to-day cruelties of slavery. These narratives also gave hope. With their vivid imagery and thoughtfully poignant commentary, these stories...

Twelve Years a Slave, sub-title: Narrative of Solomon Northup, citizen of New-York, kidnapped in Washington city in 1841, and rescued in 1853, from a cotton plantation near the Red River in Louisiana, is a memoir by Solomon Northup as told to and edited by David Wilson. It is a slave narrative of a black man who was born free in New York state but kidnapped in Washington, D.C., sold into slavery, and kept in bondage for 12 years in Louisiana. He provided...