Twelve Years a Slave

Solomon Northup

Jan 2014 · Open Road Media

About this eBook

The harrowing true story that inspired the critically acclaimed film
The son of a freed slave, Solomon Northup lived the first thirty years of his life as a free man in upstate New York. In the spring of 1841, he was offered a job: a short-term, lucrative engagement as a violinist in a traveling circus. It was a trap. In Washington, DC, Northup was drugged, kidnapped, and sold into slavery. He spent the next twelve years on plantations in Louisiana, enduring backbreaking labor, unimaginable violence, and inhumane treatment at the hands of cruel masters, until a kind stranger helped to win his release. His account of those years is a shocking, unforgettable portrait of America’s most insidious historical institution as told by a man who experienced it firsthand.
Published shortly after Harriet Beecher Stowe’s abolitionist classic Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Northup’s memoir became a bestseller in 1853. With its eloquent depiction of life before and after bondage, Twelve Years a Slave was a unique and effective entry into the national debate over slavery. Rediscovered in the 1960s and now the inspiration for a major motion picture, Northup’s poignant narrative gives readers an invaluable glimpse into a shameful chapter of American history. This ebook has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices. 

Ratings and reviews

A first hand account at the cruelty of slavery. He does not expound laboriously on the atrocities, of which I am sure to tremble at the reality, but recounts his involvement only. I gave this a five star, but the subject itself is not worthy of any rating. Praise God for abolishent mentioned as a whole.

12 seconds is too long! But any educated man will find if there is a way to make one man beholding to another it is through to power of him owing his time and labor to that person. Other wise known as survitude. There is nothing politically correct about it! It is not even political! It is the reign of power one man wants to feel over another, creating a higharchy, an invisible line of power one man wants to feel over another because in his own life he is powerless to do anything tomake himself feelworthful

Don't ya just hate it when reality is so, well, real and brutal and ugly...and real. The only thing terrible about this book and that movie is that it told a real story that so many want to sweep under the rug, as if it never happened. But Solomon's story is but one of many, many, many, all real, all ugly, all necessary to be told so that the past isn't ever forgotten.

About the author

DIVDIVSolomon Northup (1808–1857) was a free-born African American from Saratoga Springs, New York. In 1841, he was kidnapped and forced into slavery for twelve years. With the help of his family and his father’s former master, Northup ultimately won his freedom and took the traders who betrayed him to court. He is best known for his autobiographical account of his enslavement, Twelve Years a Slave. /div/div