Who Is The Narrative Of 12 Years A Slave?

Slavery is a controversial topic that has been taught to us from a very young age in history classes. Though we have learned about slavery, we have never been put into the reality of the lives that these slaves have endured. 12 Years a Slave opens the door for readers to see what life was like for a person of color back in the days when slavery was running rampant. Solomon Northup was a free man in the state of New York who was drugged and sold into captivity. 12 Years a Slave gives important insight into what life was like for free black men, the struggles of free black men being kidnapped and sold into slavery, as well as what these slaves had to endure as field slaves in this era.
The narrative of 12 years a slave begins with us considering
the life of Solomon Northup as a free man. We learn that Northup’s father was a slave who was emancipated and eventually moved to New York, where his son Solomon was born in July of 1808. Therefore, Solomon Northup was born a free man who would reside in the state of New York and build his life and family there. Solomon at this point had only known about slavery from stories his father had shared with him about his life in captivity. Solomon pens, “Sometime after my father’s liberation, he removed to the town of Minerva, Essex county, N.Y., where I was born, in the month of July 1808” (Northup 4).Solomon was a husband and father who lead a very successful and abundant life in New York; “We always returned home from the performance of these services with money in our pockets; so that, with fiddling, cooking, and farming, we soon found ourselves in the possession of abundance, and, in fact, leading a happy and prosperous life” (Northup 7). Had the Northup family remained on that farm, Solomon may not have ended up enslaved. Solomon and his family took residence and worked in the United States Hotel, he met many slaves that would travel with their masters. They always seemed to be well dressed and well cared for but upon speaking to them they always declared their hope for freedom. As we have learned in history classes throughout our lives, there were slaves that were fortunate enough to escape their horrific lives and find their way to freedom. However, their freedom could be taken away again in the blink of an eye do to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. This law“made it the duty of all law officials to arrest escaped slaves. The law also established a low threshold for proof of ownership—a claimant's word. Since the legislation prohibited accused runaway slaves from testifying on their own behalf, a number of free blacks had no recourse after they were arrested and were sold into slavery. Others fell prey to criminal whites, as in the case of Solomon Northup (b. 1808), a free black man from Saratoga, New York, who fell in with a couple of smooth-talking criminals who promised him high wages to play his violin on tour with them. It took him twelve years to recover his freedom” (Woodworth 224).While Solomon was born into a normal life of a free black man, this successful life he and his family created would be stolen from him by men he had considered to be his friends.
Bounty Hunting and Kidnapping was something that free black men would have to worry about.
Bounty Hunters were often paid by slave-owners to find free black men and bring them into captivity. In 12 Years a SlaveSolomon writes a very powerful passage which depicts the moment that Solomon Northup’s life as a free man was stolen from him. Solomon writes, “In the course of an hour or more after my return from the kitchen, I was conscious of some one entering my room. There seemed to be several—a mingling of various voices, - but how many, or who they were I cannot tell. Whether Brown and Hamilton were among them, is a mere matter of conjecture... My impression is there were then three persons with me, but it is altogether indefinite and vague, and like the memory of a painful dream. Going towards the light, which I imagined proceeded from a physician’s office, and which seemed to recede as I advanced, is the last glimmering recollection I can now recall. From that moment I was insensible. How long I remained in that condition—whether only that night, or many days and nights—I do not know; but when consciousness returned I found myself alone, in utter darkness, and in chains” (Northup 13). Solomon was very trusting of Brown and Hamilton,however many circumstances leading up to this passage seem to point out that Solomon’s trust was being taken advantage of. Brown and Hamilton seemed to have a lot of money, which the reader can assume was from the pay they received to capture free men and bring them into captivity. These men seemed to be experts at bounty hunting, and could smooth-talk their way into earning respect of innocent free black men to imprison them and turn a large profit.In Solomon’s case, these “bounty hunters received a commission from the planters, and were not always particular about whether they had captured the correct individual or not” (Burton 128). Brown and Hamilton did not care at all that he was really a freeman. The money they made by doing
this outweighed their morals and sense of compassion. These Bounty Hunters were not in search of escaped slaves, they were in search of new “models” they could sell into slavery. After the kidnappers did their part and brought Solomon into the custody of James H. Burch, a slave-dealer in Washington, Burch continued to beat Solomon and feed him with lies. Burch stated that Solomon was an escaped slave from Georgia and wanted him to uphold this lie in order for Burch to be protected by the law.The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 allowed these men to capture escaped slaves and bring them back into captivity, therefore Burch did not want anyone to know Solomon was free.“All his brutal blows could not force from my lips the foul lie that I was a slave” (Northup 16).Though Solomon knew he was a freeman he began to keep this quiet knowing full well that had he divulged this information he would eventually be killed by the men who would then sell him off as a field slave.
Solomon had experienced many different masters through his life lived in captivity. Life as a field slave is described as an excruciating experience.Per Burton,“Planters demanded that their bondmen do a full day's work whether in cotton, tobacco, rice, sugar, hemp, or building fences. Because of excessive expectations, field hands were routinely overworked” (Burton 50). The conditions that these slaves worked in was horrifying. They were to work all day, sometimes up to 15 hours, and if there was a full moon, they would work into the night. This is evidenced in Solomon’s quote: “The hands are required to be in the cotton field as soon as it is light in the morning, and, with the exception of ten or fifteen minutes, which is given them at noon to swallow their allowance of cold bacon, they are not permitted to be a moment idle until it is too dark to see, and when the moon is full, the often times labor till the middle of the night. They do not dare to stop even at dinner time, nor return to the quarters, however late it be, until the order to halt is given by the driver” (Northup 70).The cruel reality of the lives these slaves led is shown several times through this novel, but the fact these slaves were forced to work day in and day out through the middle of the night, on no sleep and live off of small pieces of cold bacon is horrifying. The human body is not designed to undertake such torturous conditions.Because of Solomon, readers have learned what living the life of many of these slaves in the 1800s was truly like.
Solomon went from being a freeman born from a former slave in the free state of New York to living a life deep in slavery.12 Years a Slave has opened the eyes of many by giving insight into what life was like for free black men, the struggles of free black men being kidnapped and sold into slavery, as well as what these slaves had to endure as field slaves in this era.Now that we know the harsh realities of life these people had to endure, if you were alive in this era, what would you have done? Even though slaves have been emancipated and we have come many years from this horrible era in our country, there are still several instances of injustice all around us. Will you speak up about these injustices like those in this era that helped abolish slavery, or will you just stay silent?