the title Half Slave, Half Free), directed by Gordon Parks.
However, it would take until 2013 for Northup to once again become a household name. British director Steve McQueen had long wanted to bring a story of slavery to the screen, and was struggling with a fictional script based on a free man sold into bondage. Then his partner, cultural historian Bianca Stigter, discovered the then little-known Northup account. She could not put it down, and told her husband, “You do not have to write a script any more, this book is the script.” (13). The subsequent film, 12 Years a Slave, won nine Academy Awards, including Best Picture.
The script, credited to John Ridley and Solomon Northup, is largely true to the 1853 book. A few liberties are taken here and there. The film incorrectly gives the impression that Northup's first owner in Louisiana, William Prince Ford, was aware of Northup's background as a freeman – and didn't care. But Northup writes that, for his entire time in the South (with the exception of Samuel Bass, whom he had come to trust), he kept silent about his Northern heritage and having been kidnapped.
MODERN SLAVERY
It would be wonderful if slavery was an entirely historical phenomenon. This is not the case. Definitions of modern slavery vary, but encompass debt bondage, involuntary servitude, and sexual exploitation. The International Labour Organization puts the number of modern slaves at 40 million people. That includes 25 million in forced labor, 5 million in forced sexual exploitation, 4 million in state-run labor programs (such as in China and North Korea), and 15 million in forced marriages. (14) The U.S. State Department publishes an annual Trafficking in Persons Report, which highlights kidnapping incidents around the globe.
Of course, unlike in Northup's time, slavery is officially illegal everywhere, ironically making it more hidden and harder to identify. “Human Trafficking Is Illegal,” a brochure issued by a New York State agency, observes: “Trafficking victims are often lured with false promises of good jobs and better lives, and then forced to work under brutal and illegal conditions. Men, women, and children of all ages and races are vulnerable to human trafficking – it does not discriminate.” This is remarkably similar to what was experienced by Northup and numerous other victims a century and a half ago.
In Chapter XVIII, Northup describes the 10-year-old son of his master Edwin Epps. The boy, apparently, viewed enslaved blacks as mere work animals “to be whipped and kicked and scourged through life – to address the white man with hat in hand, and eyes bent servilely on the earth …” Northup then notes: “Brought up with such ideas … no wonder the oppressors of my people are a pitiless and unrelenting race.”
Let us keep in mind today's Solomon Northups, and the fact that slavery brutalizes the oppressors as it ruins the lives and chances of the enslaved.
REFERENCES
1 1. Pellet, Elias Porter. History of the 114th Regiment, New York State Volunteers. Norwich, New York: Telegraph & Chronicle Power Press, 1866, p. 77.
2 2. Rome [New York] Citizen, 20 July 1853.
3 3. Green Mountain Freeman, 25 January 1855.
4 4. Frederick Douglass' Paper, 3 March 1854.
5 5. Frederick Douglass' Paper, 27 January, 1854
6 6. Essex County Republican, 13 August 1853.
7 7. L. E. Chittenden (comp.), Abraham Lincoln's Speeches. New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1896, p. 46.
8 8. National Anti-Slavery Standard, 8 October 1840.
9 9. Chicago Tribune, 7 June 1865.
10 10. Samuel T. Pickard, Life and Letters of John Greenleaf Whitter, Vol. 2 [Boston: Houghton, Fifflin, 1894, p. 478.
11 11. Troy [New York] Daly Whig, 3 November, 1858.
12 12. New York Evening Express, 30 August 1859.
13 13. “How film director Steve McQueen's partner found Oscar winning 12 years a slave story”, Evening Standard, 3 March 2014.
14 14. International Labour Organization (19 September 2017). “Global Estimates of Modern Slavery: Forced Labour and Forced Marriage”.
ABOUT DAVID FISKE
David Fiske is an independent researcher and writer specializing in the life of Solomon Northup. He is the co-author of Solomon Northup: The Complete Story of the Author of Twelve Years a Slave (2013), and author of Solomon Northup's Kindred: The Kidnapping of Free Citizens Before the Civil War (2016). He was previously senior librarian at the New York State Library.
ABOUT TOM BUTLER-BOWDON
Tom Butler-Bowdon is the author of the bestselling 50 Classics series, which brings the ideas of important books to a wider audience. Titles include 50 Philosophy Classics, 50 Psychology Classics, 50 Politics Classics, 50 Self-Help Classics and 50 Economics Classics.
As series editor for the Capstone Classics series, Tom has written Introductions to Plato's The Republic, Machiavelli's The Prince, Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations, Sun Tzu's The Art of War, Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching, and Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich.
Tom is a graduate of the London School of Economics and the University of Sydney.
To
Harriet Beecher Stowe:
Whose Name,
Throughout The World, Is Identified With The
Great Reform:
This Narrative, Affording Another
Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin,
Is Respectfully Dedicated
Such dupes are men to custom, and so prone
To reverence what is ancient, and can plead
A course of long observance for its use,
That even servitude, the worst of ills,
Because delivered down from sire to son,
Is kept and guarded as a sacred thing.
But is it fit, or can it bear the shock
Of rational discussion, that a man
Compounded and made up, like other men,
Of elements tumultuous, in whom lust
And folly in as ample measure meet,
