Twelve Years a SlaveLeeftijdsaangepaste versie

I was born a free man in New York, and lived more than thirty years in freedom before I was tricked, drugged, and stolen away, and held as a slave for twelve years. This is my story, without decoration or exaggeration. Let others decide if a made-up tale could be worse.

My father, Mintus Northup, was born a slave in Rhode Island. He belonged to the Northup family. When his master died, a will set him free, and he took the name Northup in thanks for the family that had kept him. He was a hardworking, honest man. After he became free, he settled in Minerva, Essex County, and there I was born in July 1808.

Later we moved to Granville, and finally to a farm on the road between Fort Edward and Argyle. My father worked the land, bought a little property, and earned the right to vote.

He taught my brother Joseph and me to read and write, more than most in our position ever learned. He spoke warmly of those he had served, but he knew what slavery was, and he grieved over it.

He taught me to hold to what is right, to work honestly, and to put my trust in God. Many times, far away in Louisiana, I thought of his words while I lay on the hard floor of a slave cabin, longing for the grave that had shielded him from the whip.

Until my father died, I lived mostly by farm work. In my free time, I read or played the fiddle. The fiddle was my joy in youth, and later the comfort of my heart. On Christmas Day, 1829, I married Anne Hampton, a beautiful and capable young woman who had worked many years at Eagle Tavern and for a minister in Salem. She was of mixed heritage—red, white, and black blood flowed in her veins—giving her face a gentle look.

My mother was a quadroon. We set up house on our own in Fort Edward. That winter I worked on the Champlain Canal. When spring came, I bought horses and equipment, hired men, and took on the job of floating timber rafts down Lake Champlain to Troy.

I quickly grew steady on the water, a skill I would later need in the swampy waters of the southern states.

I also traveled to Montreal and Kingston. After the canal closed for winter, I took a contract to chop wood. For a time, we farmed in Kingsbury. Anne ran the house and took care of everything, while I plowed, sowed, and harvested. In winter, I played at dances; my fiddle was known far and wide.

She was also known as the best cook during court sessions. With fiddle, cooking pots, and farmland, we lived well and were happy. The years passed, and in 1834 we moved to Saratoga Springs. I drove horses and carriages, worked at hotels in summer, laid railroad in winter, and took playing jobs.

In Saratoga, I met for the first time slaves from the South who followed their masters north.

They were nicely dressed and seemed well provided for, but nearly every one carried a quiet, burning wish for freedom. Some asked for advice, and I always said: Watch, wait for the right moment, and seize it. I could not understand how anyone could be content as a slave, and I could not believe that any law or faith that bound one person to another could be just.

By spring 1841, we had three children: Elizabeth, nearly ten; Margaret, two years younger; and Alonzo, five. The house was full of laughter when I came home. I loved to wander with them through the trees near Saratoga and feel richer than any rich man. One morning early in March that year, I went out without any special errand when two well-dressed gentlemen, strangers to me, greeted me and introduced themselves as Merrill Brown and Abram Hamilton.

One was short and sturdy, quick-eyed; the other tall, fair, and smooth, with a city man's ease.

They told me they were connected to a circus that was in Washington, but that they were now traveling north with a small show to cover expenses. They needed a musician and offered me a dollar a day and three dollars for each evening I played, plus a return ticket from New York. The offer was tempting, not just for the money, but for the chance to see the big city. I said yes. It was only supposed to be a few days, so I did not write to Anne.

We rode in a fine carriage past Ballston and the same day to Albany. That evening I played while Brown threw balls and danced on a tightrope, fried pancakes in a hat, and made invisible pigs squeal. The audience was thin, but the companionship was warm, and they acted as if they had my best interests at heart. The next day we hurried on, and soon we were in New York.

There they pressed me to come along to Washington. They promised better pay and said the circus would go north when summer came.

The morning before we headed south, they said: "Let's get free papers, so you can show who you are when we reach the slave states." It seemed sensible. We went to what I thought was the customs house, swore I was free, got papers stamped, paid the fees, and I tucked them in my pocket. I thought they were hardly worth the money, for it never occurred to me that anyone could take my freedom away.

We traveled through Philadelphia, stayed overnight, and on to Baltimore, and from there by train to Washington. We checked into Gadsby's Hotel. It was the evening before General Harrison's funeral; the whole city was in mourning. The two men were eager to show me the sights. They took my hand, spoke kindly, and everything about them seemed considerate. Later in the evening, they called me in, told me not to go out into the streets because I was unfamiliar with the city, and paid me forty-three dollars, more than I had earned. I was touched by their kindness and gave them my full trust.

The next day, the city was filled with booming cannons, mourning banners, and slow parades moving through the streets with drums and thundering salutes. All day I stayed by their side. A couple of times we went into drinking places. They drank themselves, and then poured a glass for me. I was not drunk, but soon after dusk, a terrible headache crept in, heavy and sickening.

Food smelled bad. My lips dried, and everywhere I saw before my inner eye water—rivers, wells, dripping buckets.

A black servant showed me to a room on the ground floor. My companions said I should go to bed early. I pulled off my boots and jacket and lay down, but sleep would not come. At midnight, I could not bear the thirst any longer. I fumbled my way out and down to the cellar, where a couple of servants sat. Then—as if a heavy door slammed shut behind my consciousness—everything went black.

When I woke, everything was dark. I lay on a flat wooden seat, handcuffs scraping my wrists, and ankle chains bound me to a ring in the floor. My head pounded, my body was weak. I could not understand where I was, felt in my pockets as far as the chains would allow, and discovered that both my money and my free papers were gone. At first, I thought it must be a terrible mistake. I was a free man from New York. I had never done anyone wrong. But the more I looked around, the clearer the thought became: I had been kidnapped. I bowed my head against my chained hands and wept.

At last, I heard the sound of a key turning, and the door swung open. A rough-built man with a bristly face and cold stare stepped in, followed by an assistant. "How do you feel now, my boy?" he said. His name was James H.

Burch, a slave trader in Washington. I answered that I was sick and asked why I was locked up. He laughed shortly and said I was his slave. He had bought me, and I was to be sent to New Orleans.

When I said loudly and clearly that I was a free man from Saratoga, that my wife and children were free, he answered with curses and called for a paddle and a cat-o'-nine-tails—a club of wood, drilled with holes, and a multi-tailed rawhide whip with knots at the ends.

They tore my clothes off and dragged me over the bench while his assistant held my legs fast. Burch struck, again and again. Each time he grew tired, he asked if I was still foolish enough to say I was free.

I said yes, and the blows fell even faster. When the paddle split, he grabbed the whip.

Each stripe burned like fire. I begged for mercy, but only got more blows. At last, I could not say another word. Radburn, the man holding me, said it was enough for now. Burch leaned over me, hissed that if I ever again said I was a free man, he would kill me. They left the ankle chain on and abandoned me in the dark.

Days passed. My body was covered with blisters, and the pain kept me awake. After a while, they opened the door and let me come out into a walled yard. It was within sight of the Capitol itself—a slave pen in the shadow of that house where they spoke of freedom. In the yard, I met several others: a young boy of ten, Randall; a wise and calm man, Clemens Ray; and John Williams. Clem told me this was Williams' slave pen. He urged me strongly never to mention my freedom. Burch was known for his cruelty.

One evening, they brought in a woman who was crying, with a beautiful child at her side—a little girl with curls and a fine dress. They were Randall's mother, Eliza, and his half-sister, Emily. Eliza told me, as she held her children close through the night, how she had lived in plenty with a man named Berry, who had promised to free her and her children for faithful service.

But after a division of his estate, a relative named Brooks had gotten her as property, and he hated her.

That same day, he had brought her to town with a promise of free papers. She had dressed both herself and little Emmy in their best for freedom's sake. Instead, he had sold her to Burch. The paper they got was not a freedom deed but a sales contract. From happiness to misery in a single day.

One night, they woke us with lanterns, chained us two by two, and marched us quietly into the streets. I carried Burch's suitcase with my free hand. The little group—men, a woman, and two children—was driven aboard a steamboat. The clock struck slowly and heavily as we glided past Washington's tomb. A deep sorrow settled over us. Clem and Eliza let their tears mingle. I made plans for escape, but understood that the only wise thing now was silence.

So began the journey south—by wagon and train to Richmond, where we were herded into another slave pen. Before me stood a short, stout man with a dark beard: Goodin. He shook Burch's hand. As he examined my arms, hands, and teeth, it slipped out that I came from New York. Burch winked coldly.

Afterwards, he pulled me aside and said: "If you say one word about New York or freedom, I'll kill you."

In the attic, we slept on rough benches. A large yellow man, Robert, was chained together with me. He was born free in Cincinnati, with a wife and children, but had been tricked and beaten into silence, just like me. We became friends. Shortly after, we stood side by side on the deck of a brig called the Orleans, bound for New Orleans.

More people came aboard from a small boat. One of them, Arthur, shouted loudly that he was a free man from Norfolk, and fought until blood ran, but was thrown into the hold anyway. I was made steward for the slaves, and handed out salt meat and bread, two meals a day. When a powerful storm hit the ship, many lay praying.

Afterwards, the sea grew completely still, and we drifted for days. In that stillness, Arthur and I hatched a daring plan. We would take the ship.

We knew where two pistols and a saber lay in the cabin, and we whispered about who among the crew could be overcome, and how to throw open the hatch and call the other slaves up.

Hope rose in my chest. But Robert caught smallpox. He grew worse day by day, and just before we reached New Orleans, he died. They sewed him into a blanket, with a stone at his feet, and let him slide into the sea. Our plans sank with him.

Yet there was kindness on deck too. An Englishman among the sailors, John Manning, heard my story and promised to help. Hidden under the longboat on deck, I wrote a letter to Henry B. Northup in Sandy Hill, told him I had been kidnapped, and begged for help. Manning took the letter and promised to send it. When we docked at the levee in New Orleans, I saw him disappear into the city and come back—he gave me a small wave. The letter reached its destination. Henry took the matter to the authorities, but they did not know where I was, and the case lay still.

On the levee, men came aboard with lists. A tall, thin man with sharp eyes, Theophilus Freeman, called out for someone named "Platt." No one answered. "Who shipped that negro there?" he said, pointing at me.

"Burch," the captain answered. "Your name is Platt," Freeman barked. "You answer when I call." From then on, that was my name. He drove us into his slave pen with high planks like sharp teeth all around.

The very next morning, we had to wash, shave, put on new cheap clothes, and line up—the tallest first.

Then the training began. We had to lift our heads, walk quickly, smile, turn nicely. "Look lively and hold your place!" Freeman shouted, coaxed, scolded, and kept us going all day long.

We even had to dance, I with the fiddle in my hand, because I played better than his boy, he said. That was how we were shown to customers, measured and handled, mouths and teeth opened, scars examined, like horses at a market.

An older city man took a particular interest in me. He needed a coachman, he said, but Freeman demanded fifteen hundred dollars. The two haggled but could not agree, and he left. One by one, my companions were sold. David and Caroline got to stay together; they smiled bravely.

Lethe disappeared in rage to a plantation in Baton Rouge. Then came little Randall's turn. The buyer tried the boy, made him jump and run. Eliza begged and cried: "Buy us together, please! I'll be the most faithful slave there is!"

The man shook his head; he could not pay for everyone.

Freeman raised his whip and forbade her sniffling. But a mother's heart cannot be silenced. Randall was led away, and he called out: "Don't cry, Mama. I'll be a good boy.

Don't cry." That evening, many of us fell sick, and the doctor said it was smallpox. Eliza, little Emily, Harry, and I were taken to a marble hospital on the edge of town. I was blind for three days. The church bell rang almost without stopping for those who were carried out. But I survived, and we were sent back.

Soon after, a buyer came whom none of us had expected. He was tall, slightly stooped, gentle in manner, with an honest face. After asking us many questions, he offered Freeman a thousand dollars for me, nine hundred for young Harry, and seven hundred for Eliza. Freeman thought it over, agreed—but when the stranger offered to take Emily as well, to spare mother and child, Freeman slapped his hand away.

"She's not for sale.

When she's older, she'll be worth five thousand for her extra fine looks," he said roughly. Eliza broke down. She begged, crawled, cried, stretched out her hands, but Freeman tore the child from her. "Don't leave me, Mama!" the girl screamed as the mother was shoved away. The sound of her voice followed us a little way down the street before it faded. Eliza never saw her children again.

Our new master was named William Ford. He lived in the Great Pine Woods in Avoyelles, Louisiana, and was a Baptist preacher. He was not a cruel man. He honestly believed that God allowed him to own us, but he treated us with kindness and fairness as he understood it. If everyone had been like him, half the bitterness would have been gone.

On the way up the river, he let us rest when we were tired from sickness. When we set out on the road from Bayou Lamourie to his forest house, he let us stop to catch our breath and eat sweet potatoes and bacon at a neighbor's.

Toward evening, we walked into his yard, a green, bright place in the middle of the woods, with a main house, kitchen, corn sheds, orchard, and several slaves who came out onto the steps.

His wife laughed and asked if he had bought the "negroes" she had heard about. We were sent to Sally's cabin. There, two small children lay in the grass. The slave John stuck his head in, stared, and ran laughing back to the kitchen.

Life with Ford was better than I had dared to hope. I helped build a sawmill and a gristmill, handled timber rafting well, and Ford praised my effort. But such times rarely last. Ford ran into financial trouble. A heavy debt fell on him, and he owed money to a carpenter named John M. Tibeats. To settle it, he sold eighteen slaves. Seventeen went together; I was sold to Tibeats—probably because I knew a little carpentry—with Ford keeping a mortgage claim of four hundred dollars on me. I owe my life to that mortgage, as it would turn out.

Tibeats was small and mean on the inside, full of bile. He was never satisfied. From first light until late at night, I worked, but only got scolding. One morning, he sent me to get nails from the overseer Chapin, an honest man from Pennsylvania who was in charge of Ford's property on Bayou Boeuf. I carried up a barrel of nails and began to panel the wall of the weaving house.

As the day brightened, Tibeats came along, sniffing with displeasure. "G—d d—n you! I thought you knew something," he screamed, grabbed a short whip with a rawhide lash, and commanded me to strip naked.

I looked him in the eye and said: "Master Tibeats, I will not." He lunged at me, his hand at my throat, but before the whip could fall, I grabbed his coat collar, tipped his foot, and threw him to the ground.

I held his leg against my chest, put my foot on his neck, tore the whip from his hand, and let the blows fall—not from pleasure, but from raging despair. He screamed murder and called on God. Then Chapin came storming on horseback. "What in the world is going on?" I explained.

He said to Tibeats: "I sent him these nails.

If they are wrong, I'll give him others myself. You are in the wrong. And besides: Ford has a claim on Platt. If you hang him, Ford loses his money.

As long as that claim stands, no one touches him. Do you understand that?" Tibeats ground his teeth and rode off with curses, but soon came back with two men, a rope, and large whips. They tied my hands, tight knots, and wrapped rope around my elbows. They put a noose around my neck and looked around for a suitable branch.

I said nothing. The pull of the rope, the dust, the sight of the house, and Rachel's despair in the doorway—everything drifted by like in a dream.

They dragged me toward the tree. Then Chapin came out on the porch with a pistol in each hand. "The one who moves that slave one more foot is a dead man. He has not deserved this. You, Tibeats, are no better than a murderer. Remember the claim? Get out of here!" The men rode away. Tibeats slunk after them.

But fear is not so easily untied as a rope. I knew he would come again. And so he did. Another day, he flew at me with an axe, and I tore the tool out of his hands and ran. He rode after me with dogs.

For me, it was either to run or to kill him. I chose the first. Over ditches, through brush, with barking jaws at my back. There lay the Pacoudrie Swamp, an endless world of black water, rotting logs, and veiled sky. The water rose to my waist, then my chest.

I waded and swam. The dogs came to the edge, whined helplessly, and the sounds of men drowned in the forest's hum.

Snakes glided by, alligators lurked. I stood a long time on a half-sunken log and watched night come, praying for life, for strength, for morning. At dawn, I walked west, out of the swamp, onto dry ground.

At last, I reached a small clearing and met a white boy on a pony and a slave catching pigs. The boy stared. "Where are you going, negro?" "To Master Ford. Someone wants to kill me."

He pointed out the way. At Ford's house, he came running onto the porch. "Platt! What has happened?" I told him.

He gave me food and a blanket. I slept like a stone on the floor.

The next day, he let me rest for three days. I cleaned his orchard beds in thanks. Then we rode together toward Bayou Boeuf.

We met Tibeats, who burst out about the hunt. Ford said calmly that he had never had a more faithful boy than me, and that hats and axes were shameful things to use on people. "You and Platt cannot live together. Sell him or hire him out, or I will see to it myself that he gets away from your hands."

A tall man named Eldret came by and said he had hired me to work in the Big Cane Brake, deep in the wilderness along the Red River. I went willingly, for anything was better than being near Tibeats. We chopped palmettos, oak, and sycamore, built huts and carried timber, plagued by mosquitoes and gnats that got into ears and noses.

But in the evenings, I could lie down without fear. Soon, four young women woodcutters came, strong as men, and felled trees faster than anyone could believe.

Eldret promised me a visit to Ford after four weeks if I worked well. When the time came, Tibeats jumped out and forbade it. I had already packed my blanket.

"Are you going without a pass?" he shouted. "Yes," I said, and left. That day, I trudged the thirty-eight miles back to Ford's. There I learned what I perhaps had secretly wished: Tibeats had sold me. The new master was named Edwin Epps.

Epps was large and heavy-bodied, light-skinned, with a merchant's sharp glance. When he drank, he became rowdy and coarse, laughed with an open mouth, smashed glasses, and danced with the slaves before hitting them. When he was sober, he became quiet and frightening, and his whip always found the softest spots. He first leased land on Bayou Huff Power and grew cotton. I soon learned what that meant.

The field was laid in rows with a plow, often guided by women plowers. The seeds were laid in the furrow and covered with a harrow. After the sprouts came up, the plow went on each side several times during the spring. We followed with hoes, weeded the green, and left small, firm clumps two and a half feet apart. When the plow went once, the hoers went once—all under the watch of a rider with a whip. The one first on the row set the pace. The one who fell behind paid the price.

At the end of August, the picking began. Each got a sack over the shoulder and a large basket at the end of the row. In the evening, the cotton was weighed. The first evening, they measured us to know our strength. Then a new measure was set each day.

An ordinary day was two hundred pounds. If you fell short, the whip came. If you exceeded, you risked having tomorrow's measure raised. The one who picked the most on Bayou Boeuf was Patsey. She was faster than anyone.

"The queen of the cotton field," they used to say. I picked far too slowly.

The first day, I got ninety-five pounds. Epps worked himself up with curses and harshness, but eventually he let me carry wood, drive cotton to the gin house, and do other things—all while he kept watch. So the days went: Before dawn, the horn blew.

We lit a fire, ground corn in the mill, baked bread, fried bacon, filled gourds and calabashes with water. At first light, we had to stand in line. If we fell asleep or ate too long, we got twenty lashes. All day, we were afraid: of falling behind, of losing leaves in the basket, of the weight at the gin house at dusk, of falling asleep too heavily and not hearing the horn.

Our beds were planks and a coarse wool blanket. The cabin was of timber without windows, the floor of hard dirt, and rain found its way between the logs. The diet was corn and bacon—a little over three and a half pounds of meat for a week, enough corn for a peck of meal, and no coffee, tea, sugar, or salt. The pigs got the corn shelled and dry in the trough, but we got it on the cob.

In the middle of this, I fell sick. Cramps and fever chased me in turns. I staggered in the row but was forced to stand—the whip could give strength for a while, it is true, but not heal. At last, late in summer, I lay all day in the cabin and could not move. Only then did Epps send for Doctor Wines. He said it was climate sickness and forbade me meat for a while. When I got a little better, I had to go out again—first with a sack, but my numbers were too low, so back to other labor.

With Epps, I lived for many years. He moved in 1845 to a plantation farther down the Bayou Boeuf. There were nine of us: Abram, old and gentle, a philosopher who never tired of talking about General Jackson; silent Wiley from South Carolina, who dreamed of home; Phebe, Bob, Henry, young Edward, and Patsey. Patsey was slender and straight, upright in the back and full of spirit. She jumped over fences as if they were threads, and her hands moved faster than our eyes could follow.

But I have never seen a human being trampled so hard as her.

Epps was obsessed with her. His wife, who had once fed Patsey as a little girl, now hated her like a poison snake. Every time Epps came home "warm from Holmesville," it ended with Patsey paying the price—not for a mistake, but for jealousy's sake. In the evening, if the master was merry, he gathered us to dance.

Even when we could barely stand, we had to jump around, and the whip's lash lay like a promise in his hand. My fiddle often saved me. I played for white people's parties, and on the sugar plantations in St.

Mary's when poor cotton crops forced planters to send workers out for hire. There we earned Sunday money—the only things we got to keep.

With those small coins, we bought knives, pots, harnesses for water buckets, pretty ribbons. Once, I played at a big party in Centreville, and they collected seventeen dollars for me. I felt like a rich man and dreamed of buying everything a cabin could need.

Between all this, we had to find food in other ways when the bacon crawled with maggots or the ration was not enough. Some hunted raccoons or possums at night, but after twelve hours of labor, the desire was gone. I made a trap in the bayou by my cabin—a frame with a sliding door and movable bottom, with sticks stretching out like rays. When the fish hit them, the door slammed shut. Soon I had food almost every day. Others built traps like mine after that.

Some things that happened between white people in the area made me tremble. A rich man named Marshall shot a man from Natchez after a quarrel about land, and when the trial was over in Marksville, he came home more honored than before. Men carried bowie knives at their hips, and hacking at each other was neither rare nor harshly punished.

Slavery made hearts hard. If every day you see people whipped, thrown to dogs, die alone without care, grow into scars and wounds, even a kind soul becomes mute in the face of suffering. I knew good men—as good as the conditions allowed—but the system was decisive. The law said: the stick belongs to the slave. And hearts were shaped accordingly.

Yet there was a glimpse of joy each year: Christmas. Some let us have three days off, others four, five, or six. Then we could go with a pass. Tables were set out in the open air, covered with pork and vegetables, bread and pies, and we danced in the starlight. I was always the fiddler.

They called for me from plantation to plantation. We started a Virginia Reel, and when the fiddle grew tired and silent, the "patting" continued: hands against knees, hands against each other, hands against shoulders, while feet kept the rhythm and a raspy song—"Harper's creek and roarin' ribber"—carried us until dawn.

In the weeks after, some couples were ready to ask the owners' permission to live together, as husband and wife as well as could be in chains. Such three days a year were like a dream in a year full of work, fear, and bruises.

There were also soldiers in our quarters who whipped on the owner's behalf: black drivers with whips around their necks. If they did not use them as expected, they tasted them themselves. After a few years, Epps made me a driver. It was the bitterest duty I ever bore. I learned to swing the whip so it cracked the air close to the back without touching the skin, and we had signals between us, my friends and I, so they screamed when Epps was watching, and stopped when no one looked.

But if he was drunk, no trick was safe. One day, he came upon me while I was hoeing next to Patsey. Drunk and reckless, he drew his knife and said he would cut my throat. He held the knife with his teeth to open it. I tore off my shirt and ran across the rows, more laughing in my heart than scared, because I knew he would forget it. When I reached his wife at the fence, he quieted down.

All those years, one plan lay in my chest: to get a letter north. But everything was closed. No paper, no ink, not even a scrap of feather could be found for us. No one could leave the field without a pass, and the postmaster would not take a letter from a slave without the owner's word. Nine years passed before I got hold of a single sheet.

Epps' wife sent me to Holmesville for writing paper while Epps was in New Orleans. I stole one sheet and hid it under the plank I slept on.

I boiled white maple bark into ink and cut a quill from a duck feather. Lying by the embers, I wrote a letter to an old acquaintance in Sandy Hill. I only lacked a hand to carry it.

A poor white man named Armsby, who had sunk so low that he worked side by side with us, seemed like a possibility. At night, I crept to the porch of the man he was staying with, showed him a roll of small coins I had saved from playing jobs, and asked him to send the letter from Marksville.

He gave his word. But two days later, I saw him sitting on the fence with Epps, and they whispered together for a long time.

That evening, Epps came into the cabin with the whip. "I hear I have a learned negro who writes letters. Do you know who it is?" I lied. I said Armsby made up stories to get a job as overseer. Epps cursed him up and down and left. Then I put the letter in the fire and watched years of hope become smoke and ash.

Our escapes and dreams often shattered. Wiley, the silent one, slipped out one night without a pass to see his family. Patrols—mounted guards with dogs—caught him on the way back. The dog grabbed his leg, and they whipped him on the spot. Life became unbearable for him.

He baked his week's ration and disappeared without telling anyone. For three weeks, he was gone. We prayed for him and feared the swamps had taken him.

Then he came back. At the Red River, he had been stopped for a pass, sent to jail in Alexandria, where Mrs.

Epps' uncle recognized him, paid the fee, wrote a letter to Epps, and begged for mercy. That letter meant nothing. Three days later, Wiley was tied to a post and given such a beating that the scars stayed with him for life. He never tried to run again.

Others ran too. While I belonged to Ford, six slaves hid in a place in the Pine Woods. They tried to rob me of the pig I was carrying, and I fought back, threw a pine knot so hard that one fell. Later, some white men and an Indian tribe caught them and claimed the reward. One on a neighboring plantation, Augustus, was found by Carey's pack of dogs at the top of a cane thicket.

The dogs tore him to pieces. They carried him home alive, but he died the next day. A young woman, Celeste, hid for months under the heavy roof of palmetto leaves deep in the swamp, where light never fully reached.

The dogs did not follow her. She was eventually found and whipped at the stake, with her neck in the iron collar, and sent back to the rows.

Worst of all was what happened the year before my arrival, when a clever slave, Lew Cheney, built a plan to escape to Mexico. When he thought it was doomed, he betrayed everyone. They were caught in chains and hanged, some without any fair trial. Only when soldiers came from Texas and tore down the gallows did the slaughter stop. Lew survived, but none of his own will speak his name without contempt.

A single piece of gossip could cost dearly. One day, the tanner O'Niel stood on the porch talking with Epps. Phebe overheard and ran to me, bright-voiced, saying they might sell me. "That would be good," I said. "I'm tired of scraping cotton."

The mistress was standing on the porch without my knowing. The next morning, when the deal fell through, Epps ordered me to my knees, tore off my shirt, and let the whip blows fall: "How do you like being tanned, Platt?" he shouted with each blow. Another day, I came into the cabin and found old Abram lying in blood. Epps had stabbed him with a knife while drunk. The wounds were ugly, but his wife sewed them up, and he lived. Such things wear on the souls that carry them.

All this was horrible, but the worst came one Sabbath. In the middle of the hoeing and weeding season, Patsey was gone. When she came back from Shaw, a notorious man, Epps raged. He assumed the worst. She said boldly that she had been to Harriet, Shaw's wife, to get soap.

"Tell the truth, or I'll whip you till you die!" he roared. She held up a piece of soap. "You lie," he screamed. I was ordered to drive four stakes into the ground.

They tied her naked to them, wrists and ankles. He handed me the whip. "Strike," he said. His wife stood on the porch with the children.

The other slaves stood with tears in their eyes behind the cabins.

Patsey begged, cried, pleaded. I struck, but soon threw down the whip. I could not. Epps took it and laid it across her back with ten times my force. The skin tore, the blood ran.

When he finally stopped, I carried her away. Her dress stuck to the wounds, and she lay for days and weeks on her stomach. After this, the light in her died. She, who had always smiled deep and bright, fell into silence and darkness. She woke at night and begged mercy from empty air. I have never seen a heart more broken.

The spring after, a carpenter named Avery began building a new house for Epps. With him came a man to whom I owe everything: Bass. He was from Canada, light, strong, and calm, with a way of speaking that made people listen, even when he said things they hated. He was friendly, liked to help, and he said things about slavery that made Epps roar.

"It is wrong from root to top," he said. "What right do you have to your negroes?"

"I bought them," said Epps. "The law keeps them mine." "The law lies," Bass said calmly.

"Is everything the law says right? In God's eyes, what difference is there between white and black? Only in your own thoughts. They are not allowed to learn. You whip someone for reading a book. This nation carries a sin." Epps called him a fanatic. Bass just shrugged: "Then I am one."

I burned to speak to him alone. One day, I asked where he came from. "Canada," he said. I said I knew Canada, Montreal and Kingston, that I had been there, and in New York State. He looked at me a long time and asked, low: "How did you come here?"

"If justice had been done, I would never have been here," I answered. We met at midnight in the unfinished house. There, in the shadow of the beams, I told my story from beginning to end. He listened and said he would write letters for me.

We met again by the bayou's edge, where I lit a wax candle hidden in tall reeds, and he wrote down the names: William Perry, Cephas Parker, and Judge Marvin in Saratoga.

He also wrote to the collector in New York. In a postscript, he hinted that I was not the one holding the pen: "He that is writing for me runs the risk of his life if detected." Then I put out the candle with my fingers, and we crept back, each our own way.

The days crawled. Six weeks, eight, ten. No answer came. The house was finished. Bass had to move on. Before he left, he said: "If no one writes, I will travel north myself. I will find your friends." He took my hand. "If it costs my life." He came back on Christmas Eve. He slipped into the cabin at dawn.

"No letters yet, Platt," he whispered. I sank down. He said the postmaster was suspicious, and that it was dangerous to write again. But he held to his word: as soon as he was done with his work in March or April, he would travel to Saratoga. I let him go with hope and fear fighting in my chest.

That Christmas, there was dancing again. I played for Miss Mary McCoy on the old Norwood estate. She was young, gentle, and good to her slaves. The tables groaned with turkey, pork, and cakes. I thought in my quiet mind that not everyone who owned people was equally hard, even if the system was.

But when the party was over, the joy died quickly. One Saturday, I overslept for the first time in years.

Epps found me, and I got ten to fifteen lashes. The Sunday after, the air was cold. My fingers were stiff.

Epps went out without a whip and shouted that he would "warm us" when he came back. We muttered low—Bob said his fingers were too cold—but our talk was interrupted by a wagon rolling into the yard. Two men came toward us across the cotton row.

To understand how those two men found me, I must go back to the letter from Marksville. Parker and Perry sent Bass' letter on to Anne, who now lived in Glens Falls and worked at Carpenter's Hotel, and the children ran with it to Henry B. Northup in Sandy Hill. He went to the governor of New York with a law from 1840 that said the state should help any free citizen kidnapped and held as a slave in another state.

Governor Washington Hunt gave Henry full authority on November 23, 1852, to find me and bring me home. Henry traveled to Washington D.C. and got letters of recommendation from men with names and power, among them a senator from Louisiana, who wrote that every honorable planter in his state must help.

Henry went to Marksville in Avoyelles around New Year. There he settled with lawyer John P. Waddill. They made a plan to search up and down the Bayou Boeuf, but without my real name, it would likely have been in vain. Then, while they sat talking about politics, Waddill said there was one single "friend of freedom" in all of Marksville—a carpenter named Bass. Waddill stopped, asked to see the letter again, studied the handwriting, and then said: "Where did Bass work last summer?" "Somewhere on Bayou Boeuf," his brother answered. "Then," said Waddill, "I know who can tell us everything."

They found Bass by the riverbed, on his way for an errand. Henry took him aside and said: "Did you write a letter for a colored man on Bayou Boeuf in August?" Bass did not want to answer at first. But Henry said he had come all the way from New York to answer that letter, that he was looking for Solomon Northup. Then Bass said it straight out: "Platt on Epps' plantation is the man you are looking for." He drew a map of the bayou, marked the road, and told everything he knew.

That night, Henry got the court papers. Sunday was supposed to be a day of rest, but rumors began to spread through Marksville that same evening about a stranger looking for one of Epps' slaves. The fear was that Epps would be warned, that he would hide me in the swamp. So when the lights went out in town, the judge was fetched from his bed to sign the papers.

By evening, the sheriff sat on the driver's seat and rolled toward Epps' farm with Henry beside him. The plan was this: Before I could say a single word to my old friend, the sheriff would test me with questions no one else could answer—my wife's maiden name, the children's names, the place I was married.

I stood with my sack in a cold, frozen row early Monday morning. We saw two white men walking across the field. Slaves stopped, straightened, and watched. They went up to Bob. "Where is the boy they call Platt?"

I took off my hat. "Are you Platt?" said the sheriff. "Yes, master," I said. He pointed at Henry.

"Do you know that man?" When I saw his face, memories came in strong waves—Anne and the children, my father, the years of snow and spring in New York. I threw my hands in the air and shouted: "Henry B. Northup! Thank God!"

I wanted to throw my arms around his neck, but the sheriff raised his hand.

"Wait a moment. Do you have any other name besides Platt?" "Solomon Northup is my name." "Did you have a family?"

"A wife and three children." "What were the children's names?" "Elizabeth, Margaret, and Alonzo." "And your wife's name before marriage?" "Anne Hampton."

"Who married you?" "Timothy Eddy, Fort Edward." "Where does this gentleman live?" "Sandy Hill, Washington County, New York." He nodded with a small smile. Before he could ask more, I was already in front of Henry. I grabbed his hands. I cried so hard I could not make a sound. "Sol," he said quietly, "I am glad to see you."

We walked toward the house. I whispered, asking if they were alive. He squeezed my hand and said Anne and the girls were in good health, that Alonzo was alive too, but that my mother had died. My heart felt weak, and the sheriff took my arm. Epps stood at the gate. He watched us come and did not know what to think. Inside the parlor, I heard my full name in cheerful sentences on paper—"the said Solomon Northup, free citizen of New York." I was asked to put more wood on the fire. My hand trembled as I stacked the wood, so I listened for a while by the warmth.

Epps came toward me. "Do you know that man?" I said I had known him all my life. "So you were free, then." He turned and cursed.

"Why didn't you say that when I bought you, you d—d negro?" I answered that he had never asked, and that when I once told a former owner, I had nearly been whipped to death. He demanded to know who had written letters for me. I did not answer. He screamed that if he had known an hour earlier, I would never have been found—I would be lying out in the swamp.

Outside, Phebe whispered that I was going to be free. Mrs. Epps came over in the kitchen and said low that she was more sorry to lose me than anyone else—no one else could fix a chair or play the fiddle for her. The other slaves stood around the corners and stared as if I were a different kind of being.

I was allowed to go out and say goodbye. "Goodbye, Platt," said Mrs. Epps. Epps muttered: "You're not gone yet. I'll look at this tomorrow." When I turned to go, Patsey ran forward and threw her arms around my neck. "Oh, Platt! You're going to be free. You've saved me from so many whippings. But Lord—what will become of me?" I loosened her hands and climbed into the wagon. She sank to the ground. The house disappeared around a bend. That is how our paths parted.

The next day, we met in Marksville—Epps with his advisor, the sheriff, the judge, Henry, and I. The papers were laid out, the court's words were clear, witnesses had sworn to my freedom and birth in New York. Epps was advised to give up the case. He signed a document acknowledging my right to freedom and surrendering me to the authorities of New York. We left immediately for the Red River, went aboard, and let the river carry us down. I thought of the moment twelve years before when I had sailed the opposite way, chained and lost. A couple of days in New Orleans, a legal pass from a judge, and then onward north.

In Washington D.C., we reported James H. Burch for kidnapping and sale. He was arrested. In court, men stood and lied for him: Shekels, a tavern keeper, said he had seen me sold, that my "master" said he wanted to sell me because he had "been on a drunk and gambled everything away," that I had cried because I was to be separated from him, and that I had said I was born in Georgia.

Another said he had seen a boy playing fiddle at his place in 1841 but would not swear the boy was me.

Radburn confirmed that I had been in Williams' slave pen that spring. Police books were brought. No sale was recorded. Burch said from the witness stand that he had had a sales contract, but that he "had lost it."

The one thing that could silence the lies was my own voice. But the court refused to let me testify because I was colored. So Burch went free in the court of men. He tried to take revenge by accusing me of conspiracy to take his money.

A court clerk even issued an arrest warrant for me.

When we stood before the judge, my lawyer demanded an immediate trial. Burch then withdrew the accusation on the spot. The court wrote "dismissed at the plaintiff's request" in the book. He wanted to erase the trail, but he did not succeed. I walked out without a verdict against me—but also without justice against Burch.

Then—the journey I had been waiting for, I took. We took the train north. I do not remember how day turned into night, and night into day. On January 21, 1853, we arrived in Sandy Hill. I saw the old houses, the snow in the ditches, faces I recognized.

The next morning, I went to Glens Falls, where Anne and the girls lived in a small cabin. My daughter Margaret came first. She looked at me without recognizing me.

When I left, she was a girl with toys in her lap. Now she was a woman, married, with a small boy beside her—he carried my name, she said, Solomon Northup Staunton.

Elizabeth came in, looked at me, turned pale, and then Anne came running from the hotel. They held me, cried softly and warmly, and I could do nothing but hold them. We sat by the fire and talked through all the time that had been wasted.

Anne told me that the girls had once come home from school quietly crying because in their geography book they had seen a picture of slaves in the field with a man with a whip behind them. They had thought of me. They had known from an old letter, and from what Clem Ray told them at a hiding place in Saratoga, that I had been taken away. But where, no one knew—until the letter from Marksville came.

I must say this in the end, for the sake of truth: There are those who have said since that I sold myself into slavery. Before God and men, I say: That is a lie. I never played fiddle in a Washington hotel to sell myself. I was never at the Steamboat Hotel. I had never seen Thorn or Shekels before they stood and lied about me in January after I was free.

If it had been true, I would not have traveled through Washington on my way home to have Burch arrested. I would not have voluntarily sought him out. I was driven by a burning sense of injustice to bring him to court. He was acquitted by a human court that refused me the right to speak, but one day—in another place, where all voices are heard—every truth will come out.

I also owe the law of my birth state my thanks. Without the law of May 14, 1840 in New York—which required the governor to send an agent to bring home a kidnapped free citizen—this day might never have come. My wife Anne wrote a petition to the governor, confirmed by many honorable men in Sandy Hill and Fort Edward—names that can be read in the court records.

And Henry B. Northup—my rescuer—let the papers speak, and walked the long road with them from winter in the north to warm swamps in the south.

It was through that road, and through Bass's brave pen and his resolve, that I could sit again by the fire with my children, close my eyes without hearing the whip, and hope that the final rest would one day come under the same earth that covered my father, he who taught me what is right, and that God will one day make all things new.

So ended my twelve years as a slave. If I have failed in anything here, it is in showing too much of the bright side of the picture. For I know in my heart: Hundreds have suffered as I did. And even as these words are read, there are those among men who were born free who in secret bear chains in Texas and Louisiana.

But words cannot do everything.

I lay down the pen with a heart that has been softened and bent by all I have carried. I am grateful to the Good One who let me return. And I ask only this for the rest of my life: To walk humbly, work honestly, and when the hour comes, to rest in that cemetery where my father sleeps, free in life and free in death.