Solomon Northup walks free after twelve stolen years
On this day · 4 January 1853
A free New York musician, drugged and sold south, finally proved his identity and reclaimed his liberty in a Louisiana courthouse.
In 1841, Solomon Northup, a free Black man from Saratoga Springs, New York, was lured to Washington with the promise of a musician’s job, drugged, and sold into slavery. Shipped to New Orleans on the brig Orleans under the false name Plat Hamilton, he vanished into the cotton plantations along Louisiana’s Red River.
For nearly twelve years he was held captive near Marksville. His chance came when he confided in Samuel Bass, a Canadian carpenter who opposed slavery and secretly mailed letters north on his behalf. Those letters reached his family and triggered a rescue under an 1840 New York statute protecting free citizens kidnapped into bondage.
“the agent and the rescued man started for New-Orleans on the 4th of January instant”
Armed with documents proving Northup’s free birth, attorney Henry B. Northup traveled south. On January 4, 1853, the case was settled and Solomon Northup walked out a free man. Within the year he published his memoir, Twelve Years a Slave, which still indicts the trade that stole his life.
Sources & references
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