Twelve Years A Slave - Solomon Northup

   2013; 363 pages.  Full Title: Twelve Years A Slave: The Autobiography of Solomon Northup. New Author(s)?  : Yes.  Genres : Biographies & Memoirs; American history; Non-Fiction.  Overall Rating: 9½*/10.

 

    Twelve Years A Slave is a gripping account of the horrors and injustices of the pre-Civil War slave system.  Probably only Harriet Beecher Stowe’s famous work, Uncle Tom’s Cabin had a bigger impact on abolitionist sentiment in the Northern US states during the 1850s.

 

    We follow Solomon Northup as he is kidnapped and shipped to New Orleans, then forced to work on cotton plantations and in the sugar cane fields.  He spent twelve years of his life in servitude, twelve years that he’ll never get back.  Twelve years of being separated from his wife and three kids back in New York who were left wondering what happened to him and whether they’ll ever see him again.

 

    Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Twelve Years A Slave are both acclaimed accounts of slavery in the South.  But there’s one important difference.

 

    Uncle Tom’s Cabin is fictional while Twelve Years a Slave is an autobiography.

 

What’s To Like...

    It may sound like an oxymoron, but the autobiography Twelve Years A Slave is written by three authors.  As a black freeman born in New York in 1808, Solomon Northup had learned to read and write.   But this book was actually ghost-written in the 1850s by David Wilson.  A century later, long after Twelve Years A Slave had faded into complete obscurity, historian Sue Eakin came across a copy of the book, thoroughly researched its contents, and published an “expanded version” of it, which is the format I read it in.

 

    Solomon Northup was kidnapped and enslaved in 1841, and wasn't rescued until 1853.  My history classes didn’t spend too much time on that decade prior to the Civil War, so there were a number of historical surprises waiting for me in Twelve Years A Slave.

 

    One of them was the way Solomon became a slave.  He was drugged while in Washington DC, put into a slave pen there, then put on board a ship sailing to Louisiana.  It was called a Reverse Underground Railroad, and I’d never heard of such a thing.  Sunday Money was also an eye-opener for me, ditto for the rules used for slaves celebrating Christmas in the South (see the second excerpt below).  I marveled at the use of “lumber women”, was revolted by the conditions in the slave pens, and was amazed at the system used to pick cotton efficiently.

 

    Solomon’s even-handed portrayal of plantation life impressed me.  Yes, there were some exceptionally cruel masters, such as the man who owned Solomon for the last ten years of his incarceration.  But he had served under the ownership of a relatively kind-hearted owner for the first two years.

    This variety of descriptions seemed to irritate a number of readers/reviewers.  Some gave low marks because they felt the book painted too gruesome of a picture of slavery.  Others gave low marks because they thought it painted too rosy of a picture.  That’s where Sue Eakin’s research comes into play.  Her exhaustive investigation, detailed in more than a hundred footnotes, confirms Solomon’s observations for the most part, although there were one or two instances where she felt David Wilson may have been “stretching the truth” a bit.

 

    Although this is a non-fiction tale, it has a storybook ending, with Solomon at long last reuniting with his family.  It’s not a spoiler to reveal that; after all, if he never regained his freedom, this book would never have been written.  But it's worth reading this book to see how he managed to win his release.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.4*/5, based on 946 ratings and 519 reviews.

    Goodreads: 4.22*/5, based on 117,665 ratings and 8,076 reviews

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Expatiate (v.) : to speak or write in great detail or length.

Others: Groggery (n.); Cachinations (n., plural); Condign (adj); Latterly (adv.); Betimes (adj.).

 

Excerpts...

    Ten years I toiled for that man without reward.  Ten years of my incessant labor has contributed to increase the bulk of his possessions.  Ten years I was compelled to address him with down-cast eyes and uncovered head—in the attitude and language of a slave.  I am indebted to him for nothing, save undeserved abuse and stripes.  (loc. 2115)

 

    During the remaining holidays succeeding Christmas, they are provided with passes, and permitted to go where they please within a limited distance, or they may remain and labor on the plantation, in which case they are paid for it.  (…)

    They are different beings from what they are in the field; the temporary relaxation, the brief deliverance from fear, and from the lash, producing an entire metamorphosis in their appearance and demeanor.  In visiting, riding, renewing old friendships, or, perchance, reviving some old attachment, or pursuing whatever pleasure may suggest itself, the time is occupied.  Such is “southern life as it is,” three days in the year, as I found it—the other three hundred and sixty-two being days of weariness, and fear, and suffering, and unremitting labor.  (loc. 2529)

 

Kindle Details…

    This version of Twelve Years A Slave presently sells for $0.99 at Amazon.  There are several dozen other versions of it available in e-book format, ranging in price from $0.99 to $10.00.

 

In cotton picking time, Patsey was queen of the field.  (loc. 2180)

    There’s little to quibble about in Twelve Years A Slave.  The standard cusswords are handled in an unusual manner: the underworld is given in the text as “h_l”, and to be condemned to be sent there is rendered as “d_d”.  The racial epithet n-word is the main bit of profanity, but let's face it; this story couldn’t be written without it.  The sum total of epithets-plus-cusswords for the first third of the book was less than a dozen, which both surprised and impressed me.

 

    There was a fair amount of British spellings, such as offence/offense and whisky/whiskey; some cities were hyphenated, such as New-York, and a slew of "separated" compound words, such as heart sick/heartsick and candle light/candlelight.  I’m pretty sure these are not typos.  All languages evolve over time, including Americanized English. As an editor, I found this fascinating, not distracting.

 

    This being the expanded version, means there are oodles of extra sections, both before and after Solomon’s actual account, which ends at 59% Kindle.  I’d tell you the page number, but those aren’t included in this e-book version.  The only “must read” added section is “After Freedom, What Happened?” which is located at Kindle 59%-64%, and provides an eye-opening epilogue to Solomon’s life.  Other than that, feel free to partake of or eschew any of the extras.  Some I read; others I skipped.

 

    For me, Twelve Years A Slave was a great read.  So much of the details of the daily life of slaves gets pushed under the carpet in history classes, and that’s true no matter what part of the US you live in.  It was enlightening to finally read a firsthand account of how it really was.

 

    9½ Stars.  After being freed in 1853, Solomon Northup went on a widely-popular speaking tour throughout the North, railing against the evils of human bondage.  Alas, his stardom was short-lived and he, along with his book, soon fell back into obscurity.  No one knows where and when he died.  Nobody knows where his body is buried.  Solomon Northup simply disappears.  Sic transit gloria mundi.