historyThe Public Domain Review1841–1853 · Louisiana, USA
Solomon Northup's 1853 memoir told how a free New Yorker was kidnapped and sold into slavery
Solomon Northup was a free Black man born in New York state who was kidnapped in Washington, D.C., in 1841 and sold into slavery in Louisiana. He spent twelve years on cotton and sugar plantations near the Red River before he was rescued in 1853. His memoir, Twelve Years a Slave, was published that same year and sold around 30,000 copies in its first year, making it a bestseller. It describes slave markets and daily plantation life in detail, which is why historians still value it as a source. The book then fell out of print for nearly a century until Louisiana historians rediscovered it in the 1960s, and an annotated edition appeared in 1968.
Northup's account is one of the few first-person records of slavery written by someone who had lived it, and it gives concrete detail about how the trade in people operated. Its rediscovery shows how a historical source can be lost and then return to change how people understand the past, decades later it became the basis of Steve McQueen's 2013 film.
Image: The Public Domain Review
