finding an odd job. At the time, Anne was 20 miles away working as a cook at Sherrill’s Coffee House in Sandy Hill, now known as Hudson Falls, for a few weeks. Anne had taken nine-year-old Elizabeth with her. Seven-year-old Margaret and five-year-old Alonzo were being cared for by an aunt in or near Saratoga Springs.
At the corner of Congress and Broadway, Solomon spied an acquaintance of his talking to two white strangers. “Solomon is an expert player on the violin,” his acquaintance explained, while introducing him to the two men. The strangers, who said their names were Merrill Brown and Abram Hamilton, claimed to be in need of a violinist. They were headed to Washington, D.C., to meet the circus they worked for—or so they said—and a violinist would attract customers to the small shows they would present along the way. Brown and Hamilton offered to pay Solomon a dollar a day for driving them in their carriage as far as New York City, plus three dollars for each performance and enough money for his return to Saratoga Springs.
Before he was kidnapped into slavery, Solomon drove a carriage like those waiting in front of the United States Hotel in Saratoga Springs, New York, in this early 20th-century photo. (Illustration Credits 1.6)
Excited by the prospect of a windfall, Solomon hurried home and grabbed a suitcase, a few clothes, and his violin. Since he expected to be back home before Anne’s return, he didn’t even stop to leave his wife a note about where he was going. Solomon climbed into the driver’s seat of Brown and Hamilton’s carriage and drove away from Saratoga Springs as happy as he had ever been in his life.
Thirty miles into their journey, they stopped to present a show in Albany. Hamilton sold the tickets, Solomon provided violin music, and Brown amused the audience by juggling balls, walking on a tightrope, and making invisible pigs squeal. This proved to be their only performance en route to New York City, for Brown and Hamilton said they were worried that they wouldn’t reach Washington in time to join up with the main body of the circus.
Once in New York City Solomon expected to be paid and then return home to Saratoga Springs. However, Brown and Hamilton had another exciting proposal. They promised that if Solomon continued with them to Washington, D.C., the circus would hire him for a more permanent job. Touring with the big show for a few weeks, he would earn more money than he made in an entire year in Saratoga Springs.
Solomon accepted the offer. His family could use the money. Besides, he trusted Brown and Hamilton, who seemed to be concerned for his welfare. For example, before leaving New York City they took Solomon to a government office to obtain free papers for him. That way if someone in Washington claimed he was a slave, Solomon could present written proof that he was free. This was important because slavery was legal in Washington, D.C. Any black person in our nation’s capital risked being mistaken for a slave.
When they reached Baltimore, Maryland, Solomon parked the carriage. He and his two new friends boarded a train. With his free papers securely in his pocket, Solomon arrived in the U.S. capital with Brown and Hamilton on April 6, 1841. They checked in at Gadsby’s, the city’s top hotel, on Pennsylvania Avenue down the street from the White House.
Solomon Northup spent the first 32 years of his life a free man in upstate New York. He was then lured to Washington, D.C., where he was sold into slavery. (Illustration Credits 1.7)
Solomon and his companions arrived in the national capital at a time of mourning. Two days earlier President William Henry Harrison had died in the White House after being in office for only 30 days, making Vice President John Tyler the new President. After supper Brown and Hamilton invited Solomon to their room, where they counted out $43 and handed it to him. That was more than he was due, but the two circus men insisted that he take a few extra dollars because it wasn’t his fault that they had presented fewer performances than expected on the way to Washington. They invited Solomon to attend President Harrison’s funeral procession with them the next day. Afterward, they promised, they would introduce Solomon to the circus company owners.
The next day, April 7, a giant funeral honoring the late President was held in Washington. Bells were tolled, cannons were fired, and thousands of people joined the procession on foot and in carriages. Several times during the ceremony Brown and Hamilton invited Solomon to join them for drinks in a nearby saloon. Unaccustomed to liquor, Solomon was soon drunk. While he wasn’t looking, either Brown or Hamilton placed a drug in his drink to make him even drowsier. More than a century later doctors at Tulane University Medical School in New Orleans concluded that Solomon was drugged with belladonna or laudanum, or with a mixture of both potent drugs.
When Solomon returned to Gadsby’s Hotel, his head began to hurt, and he felt sick to his stomach. He lay down, but his head ached too much for him to sleep. Solomon slipped into a delirium. In the dead of night several people entered his room—he thought Hamilton and Brown were among them—who said they were taking him to a doctor. Staggering through the streets, Solomon was led into a building, where he lost consciousness. Instead of coming to in a doctor’s office, however, he awoke in the slave trader James Birch’s slave pen.
Locked in his cell most of each day, Solomon had plenty of time to think. Looking back, he realized that from the morning he had met Brown and Hamilton in Saratoga Springs, the men had tried to win his confidence. They had lured him farther and farther south by convincing him that the circus offered plenty of easy money. By insisting that he obtain his free papers, they had created the illusion that they cared about his welfare. The truth was, there was no fortune to be made working for the circus. In fact, there was no circus. The whole thing had been a scheme to sell him as a slave to Birch.
What about Birch? Had he known he was buying a free man? Solomon was certain of it. But buying a free man was illegal. If it became known that Solomon was no slave, Birch would have to let him go, losing his entire investment. Birch might even be sent to prison for enslaving a black man he knew to be free. Birch had beaten Solomon savagely for claiming to be free so that he would keep quiet about it in the future.
Solomon had learned something from that beating: If he wanted to survive, he couldn’t talk about being free anymore. His wisest course was to keep his eyes open for a chance to escape and to try to send word home that he had been kidnapped.
Two weeks after Solomon arrived in the slave pen, Birch and his assistant entered his cell late one night, carrying lanterns. They woke him up and ordered him to prepare to depart. Before being led outside, Solomon and four of Birch’s other slaves—Clemens Ray, a young woman named Eliza, and Eliza’s young daughter Emily and son Randall—were handcuffed together. As they were marched through Washington, Solomon thought about calling out for help. But the streets were practically deserted, and in a city where buying and selling slaves was legal, who would pay attention to a black man’s claim that he had been kidnapped? He thought of trying to run away, but how far could he get with his left hand cuffed to Clem Ray’s right hand?
Birch led the five slaves to the Potomac River, where he ordered them into the hold of a steamboat, among boxes and barrels of freight. The vessel was soon steaming down the Potomac. When it passed George Washington’s tomb at Mount Vernon, the steamer tolled its bell in honor of the Father of His Country. Now that he was a slave Solomon saw things differently. It seemed odd to him that the same people who practically worshiped George Washington for winning his country’s freedom thought nothing of denying slaves theirs.
In the morning Birch allowed his slaves onto the steamer’s deck to eat breakfast. Some birds flying along the shore caught Solomon’s eye. “I envied them,” he later recalled. “I wished for wings like them.”
After
