What Happened
Solomon Northup is a professional violinist and family man living in Saratoga when two circus performers lure him to Washington D.C. with the promise of high wages. Instead of a job, he is drugged, robbed of his free papers, and awakened in a slave pen. Stripped of his name and called 'Platt,' he is shipped to the Louisiana bayous. For over a decade, he navigates the varying temperaments of his masters, surviving a near-lynching by a carpenter named Tibeats and the relentless cruelty of Edwin Epps. The narrative documents the machinery of the slave trade and the desperate, years-long struggle to smuggle word of his identity back to the North.
Key figures
- Solomon Northup
A free New York citizen kidnapped and enslaved for twelve years.
- Edwin Epps
A cotton planter and Northup's final master on Bayou Boeuf.
- Bass
A Canadian carpenter who risks his safety to mail Solomon's letters.
- Henry B. Northup
The legal agent and family friend who secures Solomon's rescue.
- Eliza
A fellow captive separated from her children in a Washington pen.
What it's really about
- The precariousness of freedom
- A single night and stolen papers can erase a man's legal identity.
- The anatomy of labor
- Detailed accounts of cotton picking, sugar harvesting, and overseer brutality.
Why it's memorable
- Solomon standing in the Great Pacoudrie Swamp surrounded by alligators and moccasins while escaping dogs.
- The Christmas dances where Epps forced his slaves to perform for his own amusement.
Where it lands
After a legal confrontation in Marksville, Edwin Epps signs the surrender papers, and Solomon returns to New York to reunite with his wife Anne and their grown children.
For your book club
- The legal loophole of May 14, 1840, that allowed New York to recover kidnapped citizens.
- The contrast between the 'generous' Master Ford and the 'brutal' Master Epps.