Twelve Years a Slave

by Solomon Northup

  199. “Bits and picayunes” were a part of the Spanish monetary system widely used in Louisiana; the names are sometimes used in Louisiana to this day. A “bit” is half of a quarter in U.S. money, and the term “picayune” is frequently used as a derogatory term, a holdover from the time a picayune represented 1/16 of a dollar [See Johnson, 245-58].

  Chapter Twenty-One

  200. There is no mention of a letter mailed to Anne Northup, but to William Perry, Cephas Parker, and Judge Marvin. Attorney Henry Northup, abolitionist and political figure that he was, wrote the letter signed by the wife of Solomon to appeal for the designation of an agent to rescue the free citizen of New York. [See a photo of Henry Northup in the Extras & More section of our website at www.TwelveYearsASlave.org].

  Anne Northup was not literate, as shown by the fact that in a judgment from the Supreme Court, Warren County, rendered against Anne Northup on March 25, 1859, Anne Northup’s acknowledgement of her indebtedness is signified by a mark. In part the document reads:

  I, Ann Northup, defendant hereby confess myself indebted to the Glens Falls Bank in the Sum of forty-nine dollars and seventy-five cents with interest from the 26th of September 1857 and authorize said Bank or its attorney or assigns to enter judgment against me for that amount . . . And I hereby state that above sum by one [word unclear] is justly due to the said Bank.

  Dated March 21, 1859

  Ann Northup X [her mark]

  [See Benjamin P. Burham vs. Ann Northup]

  201. Henry Northup, an attorney and leading Whig political figure in New York, was a passionate abolitionist who had championed another beleaguered black in a hard-fought lawsuit. In another book also published in 1853, Wilson wrote about that event. L.R. Lewis, respected attorney and also a leading New York Methodist, wrote concerning the other case:

  Henry B. Northup represented Joseph S. Brown, a negro preacher and missionary to Liberia in a New York civil case demanding that Brown’s superior official in the African church admit the inaccuracy of slanderous remarks made by the official against Brown. I think he had to do with “Brown’s Journal” which is the story of the negro preacher’s experiences leading up to his efforts in Liberia and concluding with the conclusion of the civil action. [See Lewis to Morton]

  202. The letter Samuel Bass wrote for Solomon Northup arrived at a most opportune time. Henry Northup was able to secure the appointment to rescue Solomon while a fellow Whig, Washington Hunt, was still governor of New York. That same fall, Hunt had lost his bid for reelection to a Democrat, Horatio Seymour, who might not have been receptive to a Whig request to be named the agent to rescue the f.m.c. (free man of color) who was a citizen of New York. Henry Northup’s timely appointment while he could secure it from a Whig governor was only one of a series of events critical to Solomon Northup’s rescue. Without Henry Northup’s gaining free time to pursue the project, there would probably have been no rescue attempt at that time [See New York Times, January 20, 1853].

  203. The Northup rescue was taking place in an atmosphere of growing acrimony between North and South. By the 1850s the conflict had become more and more bitter. The Compromise of 1850 with the Fugitive Slave Act did nothing to allay the anger of either section. In Avoyelles Parish, Louisiana, as all through the South, hostility over what citizens considered an invasion of their states’ rights rose to fever pitch. At stake was the plantation system, the base of the economy on which the entire population, including that of New Orleans, depended. Tempers flared quickly on what to Southerners seemed the destruction of their only means of a livelihood. Had politically powerful figures, including Soulé, attempted to dictate a course of action to Avoyelles Parish officials, Solomon Northup would likely have lived out his life as a slave on a Bayou Boeuf plantation.

  204. Had attorney Northup gone on to New Orleans rather than take passage up Red River to Marksville 3.5 miles away, he would have missed Bass, and finding Northup among the thousands of slaves on Bayou Boeuf would have been like looking for a needle in a haystack. His timing—later than he had originally planned for the trip—happened to be equally fortunate. Northup had pressing business of his own in his bid to become a New York Congressman representing the Whig party in Washington. With his own party selecting him to run for the office, he was in the midst of a campaign for the election, which he lost to a Democrat who had once belonged to the Free Soilers. The election was so close Whigs challenged the outcome, and the final decision in favor of the Democrat was not made until November [See Saratoga Whig, October 22; November 12, 26, 1852, as cited in footnotes 1 and 2, Twelve Years a Slave (1968), 227].

  205. The most critical action marking the success of the venture came with the meeting between New York attorney Henry Northup and the Marksville attorney Waddill, himself a planter and owner of over 200 slaves. The backlash in Marksville against the fervor of the North to free the slaves involved more than profound respect for the law by Waddill and that of other Avoyelles Parish officials. The dignity and respect with which Henry Northup stated his mission to Waddill and the instantly positive response of the Avoyelles attorney contributed the sine qua non to the success of Northup’s rescue effort. With the business-like approach of these men, they were able to get the job done. Waddill followed the law and Henry Northup obtained the freedom of a New York citizen.

  Waddill, although an Avoyelles courthouse authority, could not have prevailed without the New Yorker’s mannerly request for help in freeing the free man of color. Clearly, this was no simple situation with a slave to be located bearing a name unheard of in Bayou Boeuf country.

  As it happened, the two men enjoyed moments of conversation about politics in their respective states during the interval in which Waddill developed his plan. Waddill searched for answers as to how to locate Platt, lost among the thousands of slaves on plantations along both sides of Bayou Boeuf about twenty-three miles south of Marksville. After the puzzle of Northup’s identity was solved when Waddill determined that Bass had written the letter, Waddill knew that speed was of the essence in reaching Bayou Boeuf. The rescuers reached the Epps place in a buggy or carriage traveling over new land where there were no roads; some areas may well have been covered with water from sub-tropical rains.

  206. Louisiana was one of the five “Cotton States” bordering the Gulf of Mexico. Settled by the French beginning in 1699 and owned by the Spanish for most of the last half of the eighteenth century, it was after Louisiana became a state in 1812 that English-speaking pioneers migrated into the state by the thousands, often bringing slaves. The rich lands along the Mississippi River were settled, and New Orleans was becoming a city, but much of inland Louisiana remained unsettled. After a short staple cotton crop was developed that would grow on almost any soil, farmers from the mostly North Louisiana hills and would-be planters alike migrated to the rich lands along the rivers, bayous, and some creeks to develop cotton plantations. The boom had come after 1793 when Eli Whitney developed a small cotton gin that separated cottonseed from the lint. Bayou Boeuf had a five-mile stretch of some of the richest land in the world. The “Great Pine Woods” stretched from its fringe to the Sabine River, which forms the border between Louisiana and Texas.

  Cheap, unsettled land that had to be cleared of trees before being developed into plantations sold for as little as $1.25 an acre. A few wealthy entrepreneurs with political clout received grants of thousands of acres, most of which was slowly developed into plantations.

  With all of the work converting the frontier into livable, workable plantations, slaves became nearly one-half the plantation country population, while few lived in the hill country.

  207. Sugar mills such as the Northup party viewed that day were located on many plantations along Bayou Boeuf all the way to the port of Washington. They consisted of a small machine near the mill to which was attached a long pole. To the pole was harnessed a mule, horse, or probably, in some cases, an ox, that walked endlessly in circles to grind several stalks of cane stoked by the man runn
ing this operation. Cane juice, dark in color, poured into a large barrel placed under the machine. When the barrel was full, workmen carried the juice to the small mill. The mill consisted of a series of at least three iron kettles over a brick furnace fueled with wood, often pine knots. Into the largest kettle, located toward the opening to the mill, the juice from the barrel was poured. A skilled workman watched the progress of the juice until it became thicker and was poured into the second largest kettle. The quantity from first to second and then from the second kettle to the third was smaller. The boiling continued until a raw brown sugar was produced. Barrels were filled with moist brown sugar to be shipped to market in New Orleans as quickly as possible.

  Before the Civil War these mills were located about a mile and a half apart on the lines of plantations on either side of Bayou Boeuf. These were almost all destroyed during the Union invasions of Red River in 1863 and 1864. The sugar industry in this region was destroyed during the war, including its small sugar mills that were built on almost all of the sugar plantations which lined the bayou. It was decades before the industry was restored.

  208. Henderson Taylor, the lawyer for Epps, is noted as the syndic [civil magistrate] for the District on June 9, 1853 [See Waddill, 86]. Henderson Taylor, forty-five, a lawyer, is listed in the United States Census of 1850 as having been born in South Carolina and owning real estate valued at $19,000. He had a wife, Louisa, a male slave named Josh Lewis, and four children: Clara, seventeen; John, fourteen; Simon, eleven; and Ellen, twelve. Aristide Barbin was the recorder for Avoyelles Parish court documents.

  209. Waddill, with an economy of words, noted on January 1, 1853:

  To-day I was employed by Henry B. Northup Esqr. of Sandy Hill, Washington County, State of New York, to bring suit against Edwin Epps, to reclaim from slavery a free Negro named Solomon Northup, who had been kidnapped in the City of Washington in 1841.

  On January 4, 1853, he noted:

  Today the slave Solomon was released & I received fifty dollars for my services. [See Waddill, 47; see an image of Waddill’s note in the Extras & More section of our website www.TwelveYearsASlave.org]

  The Villager, the weekly newspaper in Marksville, commented on the treatment of attorney Henry Northup in the village to obtain the freedom of Solomon Northup, as preserved in the New Orleans Bee on January 22, 1853:

  The Villager, published in Marksville, Avoyelles parish, in this State, in its edition of the 13th inst., notices the arrival in that parish of H.B. Northup, Esq., of New York, and gives the following account of the occasion of his visit and his reception by the citizens of Avoyelles parish. The striking contrast between the treatment he received, and that accorded to Southern gentlemen who visit the North for the purpose of recovering their property, is well set forth in the concluding paragraph:

  A free negro of New York having some twelve years ago, gone to Washington, D.C., in pursuance of his calling as a musician, was, while there, kidnapped by some villains, sent South and sold as a slave. After passing through the hands of several masters, he eventually came into the possession of a planter of our parish. As he knew how to read and write, he either personally or by others made his friends at the North acquainted with his condition and his residence. His friends at once communicated the intelligence of Mr. N., to whose ancestors the negro’s ancestors formerly belonged, who had himself appointed as agent of the State of New York and came South in that capacity.

  Mr. Northup, on his arrival here, after taking legal advice, commenced suit by having the negro sequestered. Mr. Epps, in whose possession the negro was, as being served with the writ, declared that he would offer no opposition, although he loses the amount he paid for him. On the next day Mr. Northup, accompanied by the negro, left for his home, Sandy Hill, New York.

  This gentleman remained in the midst of a slaveholding population for four days, without being, although his object was known, subjected to the slightest affronts and inconvenience; on the contrary received every facility and attention that he required. What a contrast this presents to the treatment the Southerners receive at the hands of the people of the North, when in pursuit of their fugitive slaves. How different it is from the Gorauch, Kennedy, Lensnob, and other cases, which are so common in Pennsylvania, New York, Massachusetts, and other free states. Well may the south boast of its justice and loyalty. [See New Orleans Bee, January 22, 1853]

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  210. The two Northups, Henry and Solomon, arrived in Washington, D.C., before January 18, 1853, the day an arrest was made of James H. Birch. The Northups participated in the trial of Birch and left for New York shortly after the trial was over [See New York Daily Times, January 19, 1853]. No records have been found and none probably exists of the Washington, D.C. trial of James H. Birch. From the National Archives, Washington, D.C. to Sue Eakin, July 17, 1995:

  This is in response to your May 3, 1995, letter, referral from our military record section, regarding the lawsuit against James H. Burch [sic].

  We have searched dockets of the U.S. Circuit Court as well as the criminal dockets of the U.S. Criminal Court for the District of Columbia Records of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia (Record Group 21), but did not locate a reference to the above lawsuit.

  Signed by John K. Vandereedt, Archives 1 Reference Branch, Textual Reverence Division.[See Vandereedt to Eakin]

  After Freedom Notes

  211. Mabee records from contemporary records: “Blacks are ‘growing up in ignorance of . . . everything that belongs to civilization,’ said the Long Island Farmer of December 5, 1822. They ‘have nowhere to look for instruction but to the Sabbath schools’.” Mabee continues, “. . . beginning about 1815, Sunday Schools sprang up in New York State.” While some whites helped found and teach in Sunday Schools for blacks, others organizing Sunday Schools for blacks “ran into continuous difficulty in finding adequate places for their Sunday school to meet . . . The reason for the difficulty, reported the Albany Sunday School society, which sponsored the school, was ‘the prejudice excited against the enlightening of these people.’” Mabee further continues, “In New York City in the 1860s Quakers discovered that when they tried to run a Sunday School for blacks, they often had to shift location, for ‘teaching them niggers’ was . . . very unpopular. Hoodlums sometimes pelted the teachers with stones” [See Mabee, 35-42].

  212. Fiske, David. Solomon Northup: His Life Before and After Slavery, 11.

  213. Most colored men in Saratoga Springs did domestic work. The United States and Grand Union hotels, for instance, employed all-black kitchen and waiting staffs. Joseph Smith wrote in 1897, “The waiters employed at the Spa are usually colored men, the States never having had any other.” Similarly Joseph Jackson, chief steward at the Help’s Dining Room of the Grand Union Hotel, recalled his boyhood years in early twentieth century Saratoga, “Most of the colored men in Saratoga did hotel work. They were waiters and cooks” [See Armstead et al., A Heritage . . ., 219]. Solomon was one of twenty-eight free men of color living in Saratoga Springs in 1840 [See Federal Census of Saratoga County, 1840, 495-537. See a map of 1840s Saratoga (with story points) and a sketch of the United States Hotel in the Extras & More section of our website at www.TwelveYearsASlave.org].

  214. Ibid., 11-12.

  215. Ibid., 12-13.

  216. The story of the legal proceedings following the arrest and identification of the kidnappers is told through testimony given in the hearing and through coverage by many New York newspapers.

  217. Documents for these three court cases are in the files of the Warren County Justice Court records; the Supreme Court of Warren County records; and the Wayne County Clerk’s office. [See Sale Between Abraham and Mary Ann Tice and Solomon Northup; John T.B. Traphagan and Charles R. Bennett vs. Solomon Northup; and Benjamin Carlle, Jr vs. Solomon Northup.]

  218. The Sandy Hill Herald, March 22, 1853, in its note beginning with “Uncle Sol,” had this statement: “We are informed that an extensive publishi
ng house in this state has offered Northup, the kidnapped slave, recently returned to this village, $3000 for the copyright of his book.”

  219. Under the title “Recovery of a Free Negro,” a writer in the The Salem Press of January 25, 1853, gave this information:

  We congratulate Mr. NORTHUP on the successful termination of his benevolent mission; and full of confidence in the comity of our sister States, hope, at an early day, to lay before our readers the intelligence that the merchants, shipowners, stock-jobbers and other influential citizens of Arkansas have contributed a generous purse of—say $5200—to “indemnify” this colored man in part for his twelve years of unpaid servitude, and to enable him to retire comfortably to a farm in Washington county or Texas, if he should prefer.

  220. See a map of Sandy Hill in the Extras & More section of our website at www.TwelveYearsASlave.org. The map includes the locations of Henry Northup’s home and residence, and the grave site of Solomon’s father, Mintus Northup. The website also includes a present-day photo of Solomon’s descendants.

  221. It is difficult to figure exactly how much time was spent in writing the book. Evidently the book was published prior to the summer of 1854, as the Washington County Post of July 14, 1852, published an account of the arrests and stated in the final paragraph that, “(t)he accused were discovered from the descriptions and incidents given in Northrup [sic] book.”

  The two Northups, Henry and Solomon, arrived in Washington, D.C., before January 18, 1853, the day an arrest was made of James H. Birch. The Northups participated in the trial of Birch and left for New York shortly after the trial was over [See New York Daily Times, January 19, 1853].