“Having
been born a freeman, and for more than thirty years enjoyed the blessings of liberty in a
free State — and having at the end of that time been kidnapped and sold into slavery,
where I remained, until happily rescued in the month of January, 1853, after a bondage of
twelve years — it has been suggested that an account of my life and fortunes would not be
uninteresting to the public.”
So begins Twelve Years a Slave, Solomon Northup's 1853 autobiographical account
of his kidnapping and rescue from slavery. A bestseller in its time, the book had been
largely forgotten, save for a 1968 reprinting, until a new exhibit in the Nott Memorial
brought the story to life.
The idea for the exhibit began when Rachel Seligman, director and curator of the
Mandeville Gallery in the Nott Memorial, read Northup's autobiography more than a year
ago. She found it “incredibly engaging” and shared the book with Clifford Brown,
professor of political science and a member of the Nott Memorial exhibition committee.
Brown, too, was struck by the book — “it was about so many things — the horrors
of the slave system and the triumph of the human spirit” — and the two agreed on the
idea of sharing Northup's story with the public through an exhibit in the Nott Memorial.
To get the project going, they enlisted the help of four students — Heather Buanno
'98, Heath Fradkoff '99, Khayree Miles '01, and Wendyanne Ramroop '01. Like Brown and
Seligman, none of the students had heard of Northup. Now, however, they take great delight
in sharing his story with others.
Northup's story
Although slave narratives are a well-known component of American literature, Northup's
story is unique because, as Brown says, “he was a northern man with a northern
education thrust into slavery. It is significant because he lived to tell the tale.”
And certainly the details of his experience are extraordinary:
Northup, a free black man whose father had been emancipated in the will of his owner,
lived in Saratoga Springs with his wife and three children in 1841. He made his living as
a craftsman and a musician, playing his violin at local dances.
In the spring of 1841, two men approached Northup on a street in Saratoga Springs and
asked him to accompany them to New York City to perform with a circus there. Then, he
traveled with the men to Washington for another performance. But after going out to a
tavern in Washington with his fellow travelers, Northup found himself drugged, shackled,
severely beaten, and held in the pen of slave dealer James Birch.
“I was seized. And Burch commenced beating me,” Northup wrote. “When his
unrelenting arm grew tired, he stopped and asked if I still insisted I was a free man. I
did insist upon it, and then the blows were renewed. At length the paddle broke — still I
would not yield. All his brutal blows could not force from my lips the foul lie that I was
a slave.”
But Northup's resistance did little good, as he was soon sold and shipped to Louisiana
to begin his twelve years as a slave on various plantations. He describes his first owner
as a “kind master,” but his second owner, he says, was a “crabbed,
quick-tempered spiteful man.”
On an average day, Northup recounts, a slave was required to pick 200 pounds of cotton.
Slaves were in the cotteon field as soon as it was light in the morning and worked until
dark, save for ten or fifteen minutes at noon when they ate their cold bacon.
Northup's opportunity for freedom arose after years of hardship. A sympathetic white
carpenter with whom Northup worked agreed to send a letter to Northup's family. Northup's
wife received the letter and went to Henry B. Northup, district attorney of Washington
County and nephew of the man who gave Solomon Northup's father his freedom — and his
name.
Henry Northup gathered the necessary legal documents and went South. He quickly tracked
down Solomon Northup, who was known by the name Platt, and traveled to the plantation
where he worked. The local sheriff, who had accompanied Henry, asked Solomon if he knew
the stranger before him. After a brief pause, he recognized the district attorney.
“In an instant I comprehended the nature of his business, and felt that the hour
of my deliverance was at hand,” Northup wrote.
Solomon and Henry Northup went to New Orleans, where they obtained a pass so that
Solomon could travel through other slave states. When they arrived in Washington, D.C.,
the saga became an instant sensation, with a three-page story on the front page of the New
York Daily Times.
Later that year, Northup's autobiography (written with the assistance of David Wilson,
Union Class of 1840) was published. It sold nearly 30,000 copies in its first two years.
Putting the pieces together
The main task of the Union researchers was to recreate visually Northup's remarkable
experience. Seligman says she wanted to “construct an exhibit that would let Solomon
tell the story. What we had in hand was a textual narrative, and we wanted to augment that
with a visual narrative. Therefore, we needed to go back and search for the various items
referred to in the book.”
Thus began the treasure hunt to draw a picture of Solomon Northup's life.
The student researchers spent much of the summer and fall in historical societies,
libraries, and graveyards, investigating and corroborating Northup's story. They
photographed graves, interviewed historians, rifled through files, and struggled to
decipher 150-year-old maps.
“This was completely different from any type of research I had ever done,”
says Heather Buanno '98, now a first-year law student at American University. “My
other research involved summarizing journal articles. Here, you didn't have the luxury of
having the materials ready for you, so we all just read the book and began taking field
trips.”
Wendyanne Ramroop '01, a women's studies and sociology interdepartmental major, began
her research with a genealogical search for Northup's relatives.
“I had wanted to do a genealogical study of my own family, and I thought that this
would be a great way to learn,” she says. “We began by searching for the name
Northup on the Internet and then wrote to the relatives we found. We also looked at census
records, cemetery records, and birth certificates. The research was very tedious, but it
was worth it.”
The research highlight was a trip that followed Solomon Northup's trail to Washington
and New Orleans. Brown; Heath Fradkoff, a senior visual arts and English interdepartmental
major; and Khayree Miles '01, an Africana studies and English interdepartmental major,
visited the plantations on which Northup was a slave, the store to which he traveled for
goods, and the swamp in which he attempted to flee.
Fradkoff, who describes his work on the exhibit as an attempt to “recapture lost
history,” says that the project truly came together when they arrived in New Orleans
and started finding the actual records.
It was in New Orleans that Fradkoff and Miles discovered the centerpiece item in the
exhibit — Northup's actual bill of sale.
“We were in a small, crowded area surrounded by books from the 1800s when we found
the original bill of sale,” Miles says. “I turned the page with anticipation and
anxiety. It wasn't fiction anymore; it was real. The whole time I wished that my family
was there to see it with me. There was something very spiritual about reading and seeing
and touching the bill of sale.”
Fradkoff adds, “It was amazing to go back and see the evidence that it was all
true.”
Brown says that the accuracy of Northup's recall is extraordinary. “The degree to
which historical events can be verified by documents, photographs, maps, and contemporary
artifacts is remarkable. Once the research verifies that this story is real, it adds
tremendously dramatic emotion to the facts of the story.”
Bitter justice
It is ironic that Solomon Northup fared better under the justice system of Louisiana
than he did under the systems of Washington, D.C., and New York State.
When Solomon Northup arrived in Washington, he filed a suit against Birch, the owner of
the slave pen where he was held and beaten. But the case was dismissed because Northup,
although a citizen of the United States, was not allowed to testify because he was black.
About a year after Northup's book was published, Thaddeus St. John, a resident of
Fonda, N.Y., read the book and recalled seeing two acquaintances in the company of a black
man riding on a train to Washington. He also recalled that he met the men again on the
return trip to New York, but they were without their black companion. Noting their much
more affluent condition, he asked them in a light vein if they had sold their companion
for $500, and one of them had responded that the figure was $150 too low.
St. John immediately contacted Solomon Northup and identified Alexander Merrill and
Joseph Russell, who were soon arrested and indicted on four counts of kidnapping and
selling a free man. The defendants' lawyers objected to three of the four counts on the
grounds that the actual kidnapping and selling took place outside of New York, and the New
York Supreme Court agreed in 1855. On appeal, the New York Court of Appeals dodged the
issue, insisting on a trial in the first court before they would rule on the other three
counts.
But the case was never brought to trial.
“Here is where we enter the realm of surmise and conjecture,” says Brown.
“One hypothesis is that the prosecution lost interest, but that doesn't seem logical.
Another is that the new district attorney was not interested in pursing the case. The
third hypothesis is that witnesses might have disappeared.”
What happened to Solomon?
From the beginning of the project, one question plagued the researchers — what
happened to Solomon Northup after his rescue?
Northup's last reported sighting was in an 1855 book engagement in Montpelier, Vt. Five
years later, the census listed his wife as the head of household. Union's researchers had
hoped to solve the mystery, but so far they have not found the answer.
Brown cites sources that suggest Solomon Northup died shortly after his return home.
There was speculation at the time that Northup might have been killed by his kidnappers
before the trial, which is supported by two different sources — the author of The
Bench and Bar of Saratoga, published in 1876, and John Henry Northup, Henry B.
Northup's nephew.
“I might also add that no known burial site for Solomon Northup exists,”
Brown says.
There is some consolation in the fact that, at last, the story of Solomon Northup is
being told. “Even though justice wasn't served, I think that Solomon is smiling down
on us today,” says Ramroop.
The Northup exhibit
The dual exhibit at the Nott Memorial this winter combined the retelling of Solomon
Northup's story with sculptor Terry Adkin's reflections on Northup's experience, slavery
in general, and the powerful architecture of the Nott Memorial.
A number of events exploring issues of the American slave experience also accompanied
the exhibit, including:
— a panel discussion on the issue of kidnapping free blacks prior to the Civil War;
— a panel discussion on the role of history in contemporary art;
— a lecture on the art of liberation lost and found;
— a lecture on African-American life in antebellum Saratoga Springs;
— a reading by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Yusef Komunyakaa of a work written
specifically for the exhibition;
— a lecture on the literature of slavery;
— a showing of Daughters of the Dust, a film;
— a performance/concert with Adkins and students and faculty who used four
eighteen-foot-long brass horn sculptures;
— a dramatic reading by members of the African and Latino Alliance of Students.
Rachel Seligman, director and curator of the Mandeville Gallery, says the exhibit is
significant because it touches on so many different areas of interest. “We have had
faculty and students involved from Africana studies, English, history, music, political
science, visual arts, and women's studies.
“It is important for Union to offer both history and art exhibitions, as well as
exhibitions that combine other disciplines such as art and science, because life is
interconnected,” she says. “At an institution of higher learning, it is
important to emphasize the interconnectedness of the disciplines, and this exhibit did
that beautifully.”