Twelve Years a Slave

“I can speak of Slavery only so far as it came under my own observation—only so far as I have known and experienced it in my own person. My object is, to give a candid and truthful statement of facts: to repeat the story of my life, without exaggeration, leaving it for others to determine, whether even the pages of fiction present a picture of more cruel wrong or a severer bondage.” 

Solomon Northup begins his book with this affirmation of its truthfulness and objectivity, making it clear that none of the cruelty or mistreatment he details has been “exaggerat[ed].” In this way, Northup primes the reader to accept his memoir as a factual historic document and a collection of verifiable evidence—one that can be used to bolster the abolitionist movement.

“Thus far the history of my life presents nothing whatever unusual—nothing but the common hopes, loves, and labors of an obscure colored man, making his humble progress in the world.” 

Northup makes this statement at the end of Chapter 1, providing a summary of his life as a free man in New York prior to his illegal kidnapping and enslavement. He emphasizes that his story is not sensationalized in any way, suggesting that his experiences could’ have been those of any other average “obscure” Black man entrusting his well-being to a self-serving White man. With this assertion, Northup also implies that the horrors he experienced in slavery were not exceptional, but rather the day-to-day reality for many thousands of Black people in the Deep South.

“Strange as it may seem, within plain sight of this same house, looking down from its commanding height upon it, was the Capitol. The voices of patriotic representatives boasting of freedom and equality, and the rattling of the poor slave’s chains, almost commingled. A slave pen within the very shadow of the Capitol!” 

In Chapter 2, Northup points out the situational irony of his capture and imprisonment in Washington, DC. In a moment of verbal irony, Northup also reveals that the illegal slave pen where he is being held is “within plain sight of” the Capitol building. Thus, Northup suggests that the US government has turned a proverbial blind eye to the unjust dealings happening right in front of it. These reflections deepen Northup’s investigations into slavery as a socioeconomic system, showing how slavery is not only socially perpetuated, but politically sanctioned.

Northup’s memoir does not directly address the history of the Capitol, but his reflections resonate with another layer of dark irony, given that the building itself was constructed by enslaved Black Americans. The city planner of Washington, DC, Pierre L’Enfant, leased 122 slaves from their masters to build numerous monuments in the city from 1795 to 1800, including the Capitol building.

“He would make us hold up our heads, walk briskly back and forth, while customers would feel of our hands and arms and bodies, turn us about, ask what we could do, make us open our mouths and show our teeth, precisely as a jockey examines a horse which he is about to barter for or purchase. Sometimes a man or woman was taken back to the small house in the yard, stripped, and inspected more minutely. Scars upon a slave’s back were considered evidence of a rebellious nature or unruly spirit, and hurt his sale.” 

Here, Northup details the ways prospective slave masters inspect slaves at the market. He explains how they’re examined “precisely as a jockey examines a horse,” illustrating the emotional removal slave masters feel from the humans they purchase. As Northup suggests, slaves are not considered as individuals with autonomous desires or personal longings, but as draft animals designed to perform labor on a plantation. By vividly describing this dehumanization, Northup shows how deeply ingrained this emotional removal between slave masters and slaves is within the Deep South. This emotional removal is firmly emphasized by the fact that scars are viewed impersonally and without regard for slaves’ well-being, only considered as evidence of potential rebelliousness.

“The man remarked that he was not in need of one so young—that it would be of no profit to him, but since the mother was so fond of her, rather than see them separated, he would pay a reasonable price. But to this humane proposal Freeman was entirely deaf. He would not sell her then on any account whatever. There were heaps of money to be made of her, he said, when she was a few years older. There were men enough in New Orleans who would give five thousand dollars for such an extra, handsome, fancy piece as Emily would be, rather than not get her.”

In this scene, Northup further exposes the ways slaves are viewed as economic commodities rather than human beings. For the slave trader Freeman, Eliza’s separation from her children is immaterial. He cares far more about the “heaps of money” he can make from selling her beautiful daughter when she is a grown woman. In this passage, young Emily’s sexual commodification mirrors her mother’s own previous commodification as the mistress of her former master. 

“From descriptions of such men as Burch and Freeman, and others hereinafter mentioned, they are led to despise and execrate the whole class of slaveholders, indiscriminately. But I was sometime his slave, and had an opportunity of learning well his character, and disposition, and it is but simple justice to him when I say, in my opinion, there never was a more kind, noble, candid, Christian man than William Ford. The influences and associations that had always surrounded him, blinded him to the inherent wrong at the bottom of the system of Slavery.” 

Northup uses this description of William Ford’s “kind, noble, candid, Christian” character to illustrate that not all slave owners are inherently evil and that slavery is much too complex of a socioeconomic institution to be reduced to simple “good” or “bad.” Northup urges the reader to consider how slavery is normalized even among kind men such as Ford. Because Ford is surrounded by other men who own slaves, he is “blinded” to “the inherent wrong at the bottom of the system of Slavery.” Northup implies that even a kind man like Ford has been raised to view slavery as a “sacred thing”—a day-to-day system of operations practiced without remorse by neighbors, friends, and relatives. These observations follow the book’s thematic interest in the social construction and perpetuation of slavery. 

“Ford holds a mortgage on Platt of four hundred dollars. If you hang him he loses his debt. Until that is canceled you have no right to take his life. […] There is a law for the slave as well as for the white man.”

William Ford enters dire financial straits and is forced to sell Northup to John Tibeats, a cruel carpenter who frequently abuses Northup for no reason. During one of these instances of abuse, Northup defends himself and thus incites Tibeats’s murderous rage. To punish Northup, Tibeats hangs him with two other men and is only stopped when Ford’s overseer accuses Tibeats of violating Ford’s “mortgage.” The overseer’s language is telling, implying that slaves’ “laws” pertain not to their rights, but to the White man’s rights around them as property. 

“That n***** that don’t take care—that don’t obey his lord—that’s his master—d’ye see?—that ‘ere n***** shall be beaten with many stripes. Now, ‘many’ signifies a great many—forty, a hundred, a hundred and fifty lashes. That’s Scripter!” 

Tibeats briefly lends Northup to Ford’s brother-in-law, Master Tanner. Like Ford, Tanner leads sermons for his slaves every Sunday. Unlike Ford—whose sermons are spiritually dignifying—Tanner’s sermons twist the language of the Bible to support his own needs, aims, and bigoted beliefs. This passage suggests that many slave masters use religion—and other systems of rhetoric said to contain a “message”—as a means of controlling their slaves’ behavior. This passage further develops Northup’s theme of slavery as a social system (that both masters and slaves are taught to perpetuate). 

“Not provided with a pass, any white man would be at liberty to arrest me, and place me in prison until such time as my master should ‘prove property, pay charges, and take me away.’ I was an estray, and if so unfortunate as to meet a law-abiding citizen of Louisiana, he would deem it his duty to his neighbor, perps, to put me forthwith in the pound. Really, it was difficult to determine which I had most reason to fear—dogs, alligators, or men!”

In this passage, Northup describes the various terrifying obstacles he faces when running away from Tibeats’s abuse. He reveals the legal network through which slavery and slave ownership are enforced even outside the plantation (through “law-abiding citizen[s]” who consider the capture of runaway slaves to be their “duty to [their] neighbor[s]”). Northup thus reveals how deeply ingrained slavery is as a Southern social system. He also shows how difficult it is for slaves to simply run away and thus dismantles the myth that slaves are passive and content in their roles, which was commonly upheld against abolitionists in the 1850s.

“Grief had gnawed remorselessly at her heart, until her strength was gone, and for that, her last master, it is said, lashed and abused her most unmercifully. But he could not whip back the departed vigor of her youth, nor straighten up that bended body to its full height, such as it was when her children were around her, and the light of freedom was shining on her path.” 

When Northup re-encounters Eliza at Ford’s plantation, he sees just how much her lifelong grief over the loss of her children has deteriorated her. This passage emphasizes how slavery destroys the foundations of Black families (for the sake of uplifting White families). The language of this passage also ironically reveals the deep misunderstanding within slave masters’ systems of behavioral enforcement: “[H]e could not whip back the departed vigor of her youth, nor straighten up that bended body to its full height.” In short, the system of slavery has created the very problem it punishes Eliza for.

“When a new hand, one unaccustomed to the business, is sent for the first time into the field, he is whipped up smartly, and made for that day to pick as fast as he can possibly. At night it is weighed, so that his capability in cotton picking is known. He must bring in the same weight each night following. If it falls short, it is considered evidence that he has been laggard, and a greater or less number of lashes is the penalty.”

In Chapter 12, Northup explains the brutal system through which cotton-picking productivity quotas are met. This explanation vividly illustrates the dehumanization of slaves. Their physical and emotional needs (including the need for rest) are not considered; the only concern that matters to the overseer (and—by extension—the slave master) is harvesting as many pounds of cotton as possible. 

“The number of lashes is graduated according to the nature of the case. Twenty-five are deemed a mere brush, inflicted, for instance, when a dry leaf or piece of boll is found in the cotton, or when a branch is broken in the field; fifty is the ordinary penalty following all delinquencies of the next higher grade; one hundred is called severe: it is the punishment inflicted for the serious offense of standing idle in the field; from one hundred and fifty to two hundred is bestowed upon him who quarrels with his cabin-mates, and five hundred, well laid on, besides the mangling of the dogs, perches, is certain to consign the poor, unpitied runaway to weeks of pain and agony.” 

This moment—when Northup explains the system of punishment on Epps’s plantation—serves several functions. The precision of Northup’s details—including the specific number of lashes and the specific behaviors aligned with them—serves as defensible evidence of his experience and supports his slave narrative as a work of nonfiction. By outlining the hierarchy of punishments on the plantation—which offenses are considered the worst—Northup also reveals the intricate social system of the plantation, in which any stirring of discontentment, rebellion, or violence among slaves is considered extremely dangerous. Finally, this moment provides context and foreshadowing for Northup’s later examinations of whipping as punishment (when he serves as an appointed overseer, and when he is forced to beat Patsey).

“With a slash, and crack, and flourish of the whip, he would shout […] and away they would go once more, pell-mell, while I, spurred by an occasional sharp touch of the lash, sat in a corner, extracting from my violin a marvelous quick-stepping tune. The mistress often upbraided him, declaring she would return to her father’s house in Cheneyville; nevertheless, there were times she could not restrain a burst of laughter, on witnessing his uproarious pranks. […] Bent with excessive toil—actually suffering for a little refreshing rest, […] many a night in the house of Edwin Epps have his unhappy slaves been made to dance and laugh.” 

Epps further exemplifies plantation owners’ systematic dehumanization of their slaves with his disregard for their needs for personal time and non-laboring hours of rest. Just as Eliza’s overseer doesn’t care that the depression he punishes her for is caused by her enslavement, Epps doesn’t care that his slaves’ slowed performance in the fields is a direct result of these late-night dance “parties.” The laughing reaction of Epps’s wife—whom Northup previously described as a generally kind, gentle woman—develops Northup’s examination of slavery as a social contract among all Whites in the Deep South, whether cruel and mean-tempered (like Tibeats and Epps) or refined and generous (like Ford and Mistress Epps). Almost all White people in the Deep South treat slaves as tools of labor or objects of amusement rather than autonomous human beings. Thus, dehumanizing perceptions and behavior are socially normalized. 

“Naturally, she was a joyous creature, a laughing, light-hearted girl, rejoicing in the mere sense of existence. Yet Patsey wept oftener, and suffered more, than any of her companions. She had been literally excoriated. Her back bore the scars of a thousand stripes; not because she was backward in her work […] but because it had fallen to her lot to be the slave of a licentious master and a jealous mistress.” 

With his sensitive detailing of Patsey’s situation, Northup continues to examine the struggles specific to women in slavery. Just as Eliza is falsely blamed and punished for grieving her children, Patsey is falsely blamed and punished for Master Epps’s cruel behavior. As a young female slave, she is vulnerable to sexual abuse by her master, and she is unable to resist his advances without facing punishment.

Building upon his observations regarding Eliza’s deterioration, Northup exposes how the Eppses’ abuse of Patsey erodes her naturally “joyous” personality. Northup appreciates that hope is far more difficult to cultivate for a woman in Patsey’s position than it is for him. 

“The existence of Slavery in its most cruel form among them has a tendency to brutalize the humane and finer feelings of their nature. Daily witnesses of human suffering—listening to the agonizing screeches of the slave—beholding him writhing beneath the merciless lash […] it cannot otherwise be expected, than that they should become brutified and reckless of human life. […] It is not the fault of the slaveholder that he is cruel, so much as it is the fault of the system under which he lives.”

Northup continues to examine how slavery perpetuates itself as a social system. Here, he exposes how acts of cruelty—when performed every day as part of a methodical system “under which [the slave master] lives”—are normalized. This normalization furthermore desensitizes slave masters to their slaves’ suffering, allowing them to cultivate the feeling that slaves are lesser beings who deserve their cruelty.

“There may be humane masters, as there certainly are inhuman ones […] nevertheless, the institution that tolerates such wrong and inhumanity as I have witnessed, is a cruel, unjust, and barbarous one. Men may write fictions portraying lowly life as it is, or as it is not—may expatriate with owlish gravity upon the bliss of ignorance—discourse flippantly from arm chairs of the pleasures of slave life; but let them toil with him in the field—sleep with him in the cabin—feed with him on husks, let them behold him scourged, hunted, trampled on, and they will come back with another story in their mouths.” 

In this passage, Northup continues to debunk commonly maintained defenses against abolitionist calls for change. In the 1850s, slave owners in the Deep South often argued that slaves lived lives of blissful ignorance, being provided with food and housing by their masters. Frustrated by the outrageous fallacy of this argument, Northup calls for these men to live as he has lived—“scourged, hunted, trampled on”—and see if they can maintain their rosy views of slavery. 

“Up to the time of my departure I had to wear a whip about my neck in the field. If Epps was present, I dared not show any lenity, not having the Christian fortitude of a certain well-known Uncle Tom sufficiently to brave his wrath, by refusing to perform the office. From the piazza, from behind some adjacent tree, he was perpetually on the watch.” 

Northup reveals how slave masters such as Epps appointed their own slaves as overseers, forcing them to whip each other for transgressing plantation protocol. By making slaves participants in their own abuse, slave masters such as Epps further enforce—and normalize—systems of behavior. Northup also draws attention to the ways in which his own slave narrative differs from Uncle Tom’s Cabin, thus further dispelling suspicion that resemblances between this fictional narrative and his nonfictional narrative are anything but coincidental. 

“There is no truth in it. How could I write a letter without any ink or paper? […] That Armsby is a lying, drunken fellow, they say, and nobody believes him anyway. […] He wants to make you believe we’re all going to run away, and then he thinks you’ll hire an overseer to watch us. He just made that story out of whole cloth, ‘cause he wants to get a situation. It’s all a lie, master, you may depend on it.” 

Speaking to Epps, Northup exposes the intricate social hierarchy of the plantation, including not only Black slaves, overseers, and masters, but also poor White laborers such as Armsby. Northup plays upon Epps’s classism and defensive distrust and distaste of Armsby. Northup also further illustrates the extreme obstacles facing slaves attempting to obtain their freedom. It is virtually impossible for him to trust a White man, as they gain little from helping him and obtain social and material advantages from other White men for betraying him. Unfortunately, the only people who have been societally positioned to help and advocate for Northup are White men.

“There was not a day throughout the ten years I belonged to Epps that I did not consult with myself upon the prospect of escape. I laid many plans, which at the time I considered excellent ones, but one after the other they were all abandoned. No man who has never been placed in such a situation, can comprehend the thousand obstacles thrown in the way of the flying slave. Every white man’s hand is raised against him—the patrollers are watching for him—the hounds are ready to follow on his track, and the nature of the country is such as renders it impossible to pass through it with any safety.” 

Northup continues to dismantle perceptions of slaves as passive, content laborers by describing his profound desire to escape and the multitude of challenges preventing him from doing so. He once again appeals to White audiences by inviting them to occupy his perspective: "No man who has never been placed in such a situation, can comprehend the thousand obstacles thrown in the way of the flying slave.” 

“They are deceived who flatter themselves that the ignorant and debased slave has no conception of the magnitude of his wrongs. They are deceived who imagine that he arises from his knees, with back lacerated and bleeding, cherishing only a spirit of meekness and forgiveness. A day may come—it will come, if his prayer is heard—a terrible day of vengeance, when the master in his turn will cry in vain for mercy.” 

Building upon his earlier reflections, Northup very firmly speaks out against the notion of a passive “ignorant and debased slave.” He loudly denounces the idea that Black captives meekly forgive White men for their mistreatment rather than seeking to rise up against them, calling not only for abolition, but for a day of righteous reckoning. By turning the tables of violence in this passage, Northup seeks to evoke in his White readers the same fear he feels daily as a Black man and thus provoke a sense of urgency for the abolitionist cause.

“She had been reared no better than her master’s beast—looked upon merely as a valueless and handsome animal—[…] Happiness, in her mind, was exemption from stripes—from labor—from the cruelty of masters and overseers. Her idea of the joy of heaven was simply rest […].” 

Here, Northup echoes his themed examinations of humans as commodities, and specifically the ways women slaves are treated as sexual commodities. These reflections immediately follow a horrific scene in which Epps forces Northup to whip Patsey for her perceived infidelity to him (even though Northup knows she is innocent). In this scene, Patsey exposes that she left the plantation in search of a very simple need: a bar of soap to wash with. Likewise, even Patsey’s idea of heaven—the loftiest of abstractions—revolves around a simple need she is nevertheless denied: “rest.” This denial of Patsey’s simple needs entraps her in animalistic cycles of thought. In terms of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, Patsey is never able to rise above the most basic level: the physiological needs of food, clean water, and rest.

“‘The child is father to the man’ and with such training, whatever may be his natural disposition, it cannot well be otherwise than that, arriving on maturity, the sufferings and miseries of the slave will be looked down upon with entire indifference.” 

These reflections follow a recurring ritual Northup describes in Chapter 18. In this ritual, Epps takes his 10-year-old son out to the fields and encourages him to carry a whip and berate the slaves, essentially performing the role of his father. Epps urges his son onward in his performance by socially rewarding him. Thus, Northup provides evidence supporting Cowper’s words in the epigraph: “[…] even servitude, the worst of ills, / Because it is delivered from sire to son, / Is kept and guarded as a sacred thing.” 

“If I was in New England […] I would be just what I am here. I would say that Slavery was an uniquely, and ought to be abolished. I would say that there was no reason nor justice in the law, or the constitution that allows one man to hold another man in bondage. It would be hard for you to lose your property, to be sure, but it wouldn’t be half as hard as it would be to lose your liberty. You have no more right to your freedom, in exact justice, than Uncle Abram yonder. Talk about black skin, and black blood; why, how many slaves are there on this bayou as white as either of us?” 

In this scene, Mr. Bass—a Canadian carpenter working for Epps—argues on behalf of the abolitionist cause. Bass points to the idea of race as a social construction, citing the fact that many slaves on the bayou are physically “whiter” than they are. By illustrating that race is a social construction, Bass thus suggests that slavery is a similar social construction—one that can be systematically dismantled just as it was assembled.