Solomon Northup
Author, Musician, Abolitionist
Solomon Northup was born in 1808 in Minerva, New York. His father was a freedman, and his mother was a free woman. As boys, Northup and his brother worked on the family farm and were educated at a level considered high for free black people at that time. Solomon’s parents died in 1829, the same year that he wed Anne Hampton. From 1830 to 1834 the couple lived in Washington County, and bought a small farm in Hebron. They had three children: Elizabeth, Margaret, and Alonzo.
After selling their farm in 1834, the Northups moved to Saratoga Springs for work. Solomon had a fine reputation as a fiddler and was in high demand. He played his violin at several hotels, and worked at an assortment of odd jobs, including construction on the Champlain Canal, the railroad, and as a carpenter. Anne worked as a cook at the United States Hotel and other public houses.
In 1841, at 32 years of age, Solomon was offered a traveling musician’s job by two men he met at the United States Hotel, and went with them to Washington, D.C. There he was kidnapped and sold as a slave, shipped to New Orleans and purchased by a planter. He was held against his will for 12 years in the Red River region of Louisiana, serving three masters.
Solomon remained a slave until he met Samuel Bass, a Canadian working on his plantation who helped get word to New York, where state law provided aid to free New York citizens kidnapped into slavery. Bass wrote several letters; one reached Cephas Parker and William Perry, storekeepers in Saratoga Springs who knew Solomon. They contacted attorney Henry B. Northup, the son of Solomon’s father’s former master. Henry contacted New York Governor Washington Hunt, who took up the case, appointing the attorney general as his legal agent to free Solomon. Solomon Northup regained his freedom on January 3, 1853.
The slave trader in Washington, D.C., James H. Birch, was arrested and tried, but acquitted because District of Columbia law prohibited Northup as a black man from testifying against white people. Later, in New York, his northern kidnappers were located and charged, but the case was tied up in court for two years due to jurisdictional challenges. It was finally dropped when it was decided that Washington, D.C., had jurisdiction, and the case was not pursued. Those who had kidnapped and enslaved Northup received no punishment.
In his first year of freedom in 1853, Northup wrote and published the book Twelve Years a Slave. He lectured on behalf of the abolitionist movement across the New York, New England and Canada. After 1857, he essentially disappears from the historical record, leading many to believe he was once again taken into slavery. However, in 1863 he was said to have been seen visiting someone in Saratoga Springs. While his final fate is shrouded in mystery, we know that he was a survivor. He was taken from Solomon Saratoga Springs, but survived his ordeal to return and be a voice for those still held in bondage.