Twelve Years a Slave. Solomon Northup
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Название: Twelve Years a Slave

Автор: Solomon Northup

Издательство: John Wiley & Sons Limited

Жанр: Историческая литература

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isbn: 9780857089083

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СКАЧАТЬ he was joining a travelling music show), it was not especially hard to do. Though victims were sometimes physically seized, criminals more often lured their victims away with promises of employment. Taking their victims to slave trading cities, kidnappers could readily secure a profit. Slave traders were anxious to purchase slaves – sometimes with no questions asked – and kidnappers could easily find buyers since newspapers carried advertisements crying “Cash for Negroes.” Once they were converted into slaves, there were plenty of ships ready to transport victims to the deep South, where prices were high for healthy men, women and children.

      Adding to the ease with which kidnappers operated were the laws regarding fugitive slaves, especially the notorious Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. Blacks could be seized with minimal evidence that they were runaways, declared to be such at hearings in which they had no rights, and sent to slave states where their insistence that they were free usually fell on deaf ears.

      The slave system was powered by deep, unquestioning racism. Many whites believed those of African descent belonged to an inferior race. Though there were some cases of whites being sold into slavery, it was rare. In many Southern slave states, blacks were generally assumed to be slaves, unless they possessed sufficient paperwork proving otherwise. A white woman named Abby Guy contested her enslavement in court, claiming to have been kidnapped when young. The court sessions, rather than investigating her claim, dwelled instead on whether she was black or white, with testimony from various experts on the matter. It was decided that she was white, and she and her children were set free.

      In Northup's case, two white men were responsible for his rescue. Samuel Bass, originally from Canada, was a travelling carpenter who befriended Northup while working on the Edwin Epps plantation. After Northup confided in him, Bass wrote and posted letters on his behalf. Being an anti-slavery man in the deep South, Bass took on some peril to himself by becoming involved. After all, if successful, he would be depriving Epps of Northup – a valuable piece of property. When it seemed that the letters were receiving no response, Bass volunteered to go a step further by traveling to Saratoga Springs to get help for Northup.

      Help did finally arrive in the form of Henry B. Northup, whose family had once owned Solomon's father as a slave (the 2013 film instead has a storekeeper, a recipient of one of Bass' letters, as Northup's rescuer). Henry Northup had assiduously gathered affidavits from Northup's former neighbors, presented them to the governor of New York State, and been appointed as an agent to seek out and retrieve Solomon Northup. He made the long trip in the winter of 1852, and through the assistance of a local attorney in Louisiana as well as Bass, established that Northup was working on the Epps plantation.

      Photograph of the portrait of Henry B. Northup.Henry B. Northup, who undertook the mission to rescue Solomon Northup from the Epps plantation near Marksville, Louisiana. Portrait now at Middlebury College Museum of Art, Vermont.

      Corrupt Northern officials were sometimes engaged in kidnapping (for example, the so-called “Kidnapping Club” in New York City), but there were other cases where law enforcement officers went to great lengths to rescue victims and bring their abductors to justice.

      In 1819, New York City constable John C. Gillen went undercover pretending to be interested in buying some African Americans to be shipped south and sold as slaves. In doing so, he made contact with the man who was in the process of tricking one Mary Underhill into going away, and whom he planned to sell as a slave. Gillen's efforts averted the kidnapping, and the potential kidnapper was tried and convicted.

      In another case, two policemen from New York City went to Baltimore, Maryland, in 1858 in search of the couple who had received permission from a 14-year-old girl's mother to take her away from home. They had said she would work in a New Jersey household, but instead they took her to Washington, D.C. and tried to sell her. The transaction was averted when the girl raised a ruckus, and she was able to return home. Learning the whereabouts of the perpetrators, the policemen laid a trap: one impersonated a post office worker in order to identify the kidnappers when one of them came to collect his mail. He was hauled back to New York where he was put on trial and convicted.

      Although officials and anti-slavery organizations played roles in rescuing victims, numerous individual citizens undertook arduous trips to bring home the kidnapped and apprehend their kidnappers. The case of Eli Terry is remarkably similar to that of Northup. Terry had accepted a work opportunity, leaving Indiana with a white man. After the job was completed, his employer took him to Texas and sold him as a slave. It was years before friends in Indiana received information as to his whereabouts. But at the end of 1849, three men made the long journey (at one point they passed through Alexandria, Louisiana – putting them, unknowingly, within a few miles of Northup). After going to court, they got a judgment that Terry was a free man, and took him home.

      A final case: Joshua Coffin traveled to Tennessee in 1838, in search of the kidnapped Isaac Wright. Finding Wright at his master's home, with the master away, Coffin got Wright onto a steamship and headed north. Wright was returned to his home in New York. Writing to an acquaintance, Coffin said: “I have in fact kidnapped him into freedom.” (10)

      Despite the fame it won on release, Twelve Years a Slave soon faded from public consciousness, and over a century became obscure. It was not until Louisiana State University Press's publication of the Lodgson/Eakin annotated edition in 1968 that the Northup story became better known again, and not only to scholars of slavery. In 1984, awareness was increased when an American Playhouse production aired on PBS, СКАЧАТЬ