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.
THE HUMANITY OF RESCUERS
For kidnap victims, it was next to impossible for them to regain their liberty under their own steam. Victims were usually taken away from their familiar surroundings quickly, making it difficult for them to escape their captors and return home. They were often given different names, minimizing the chances that friends or relatives might locate them. (For most of his time as a slave, Northup was known as “Platt,” a name given him by slave trader James Burch.) Their testimony about having been kidnapped was disbelieved. Paperwork was necessary in order for them to prove their free status, yet they had no way to gather such information. Consequently, the help of white friends and acquaintances was virtually a necessity to regain their liberty.
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.
The scene where these gentlemen find Northup working in a field, and tell him he will now be free, is one of the great moments in literature, and is lovingly remembered by Northup in the last pages of the book.
OTHER KIDNAPPING CASES
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.
On occasion, officials in the South actually intervened to save victims. In 1858, the mayor of Richmond, Virginia, Joseph Mayo, wrote to the mayor of New York City telling him of a young African American man, George Anderson, who claimed to be free, and whom Mayo believed had been kidnapped. The Southern mayor's information resulted in Anderson's rescue, and the apprehension and conviction of his kidnapper.
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)
NORTHUP'S POPULAR LEGACY
Northup's story cries out for dramatization, and he himself was involved with two projects that brought the story to the stage. These plays were not entirely faithful to his book, and sources indicate that they may not have been particularly successful. Minor productions were presented in Troy, New York, in 1858 (11), and in New York City in 1859 (12). The play in Troy was described as “the moral drama of ‘Sol Northrop [sic], the Slave,’ with lots of singing and dancing.” It was presented at the National Theatre in New York as The Slave: Or, The Kidnapper's Victim, and per an advertisement included four characters: Ichabod Bass, “Platt, the slave,” Sam (“a consequential nigger”), and Eliza (“a Quadroon”). Yankee Leffler and Miss Clara Le Roy appeared in both the Troy and New York productions, assisted by W. M. Ward and W. M. Reeve, who played the additional roles in the New York version.
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,
