Twelve Years A Slave And Other Slave Narratives

Filmatized in 2013 and the official recipient of three Oscars, Solomon Northup's powerful slave narrative 'Twelve Years a Slave' depicts Nortup's life as he is sold into slavery after having spent 32 years of his life living as a free man in New York. Working as a travelling musician, Northup goes to Washington D.C, where he is kidnapped, sent to New Orleans, and sold to a planter to suffer the relentless and brutal life of a slave. After a dozen years, Northup escapes to return to his family and pulls no punches, as he describes his fate and that of so many other black people at the time. It is a harrowing but vitally important book, even today. For further reading on this subject, try 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' by Harriet Beecher Stowe. Solomon Northup (c.1807-c.1875) was an American abolitionist and writer, best remembered for his powerful race memoir 'Twelve Years a Slave'. At the age of 32, when he was a married farmer, father-of-three, violinist and free-born man, he was kidnapped in Washington D.C and shipped to New Orleans, sold to a planter and enslaved for a dozen years. When he gained his freedom, he wrote his famous memoir and spent some years lecturing across the US,on behalf of the abolitionist movement. 'Twelve Years a Slave' was published a year after 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' by Harriet Beecher Stowe and built on the anti-slavery momentum it had developed. Northup's final years are something of a mystery, though it is thought that he struggled to cope with family life after being freed.

Solomon Northup was born a free black man in upstate New York in 1808. By 1841, he had become a husband, a father, a raftsman, and a talented fiddle-player. That year, while his family was away, he agreed to accompany two men to Washington DC, on what he thought would be a brief trip performing for a circus. Instead, these new employers turned out to be con men, and Northup was drugged, kidnapped, and sold into slavery. Northup was transported to New Orleans and remained a slave for the next twelve years, working for a number of masters in Louisiana--some brutal, some kind. Although Northup never stopped longing for home and thinking about how he could escape, it seemed impossible to trust anyone with the facts of his life. He remained a slave for a dozen years, until he finally met a Canadian abolitionist who was able to get a letter to his family and eventually gained his freedom. After his release, Northup told his story to David Wilson, an upstate New York-based white lawyer and legislator. Northup's memoir, edited by Wilson, was published in 1853 as Twelve Years A Slave. Northup's story and his firsthand observations of plantation life and the cruel reality of slavery make this book an important document of the American south and American history.

The year was 1841. That "Peculiar Institution" of slavery was running full bore in the south. Solomon Northup, age 33, a well-educated black man who was born into freedom, resided with his wife and three children in his native state of New York. Solomon was kidnapped and sold into slavery in our nation's capital...Washington, D.C. The perpetrators of this crime, in order to sell Solomon, insisted he was an escaped slave from Georgia. Whenever Solomon protested and declared himself a free man, he was terribly beaten...once near to death. Solomon was sold and transported to Louisiana where he spent twelve long years of suffering, degradation, whippings and hard labor as a slave. For fear of his life, he had to give up the idea of convincing his masters and others that he was actually a free man and a citizen of New York and he resigned himself to the accept the life of a slave. But, through his years of captivity, he never once stopped believing that one day... he would be freed and again become united with his family in New York. The enslavement of the black race was an everyday fact of life from the earliest settlement of this country up to the end of the Civil War, which brought a close to this shameful period of our history. In the 1840's there were many... very many white people who opposed this concept of forced labor and the maltreatment of fellow human beings. The voices of these abolitionists were becoming louder and louder not only in the north where slavery was practically non-existent, but even in the heart of the south also. One of these, Samuel Bass, a Canadian by birth, put his own life in jeopardy to free Solomon. This book gives, in chilling detail, an account of a way of life that hopefully will never, ever, occur again in this great country... the "Land of the Free!" This book is part of the Historical Collection of Badgley Publishing Company and has been re-created from the original. The original contents have been edited and corrections have been made to original printing, spelling and grammatical errors when not in conflict with the author’s intent to portray a particular event or interaction. Annotations have been made and additional content has been added by Badgley Publishing Company in order to clarify certain historical events or interactions and to enhance the author’s content. Photos and illustrations from the original have been touched up, enhanced and sometimes enlarged for better viewing. Additional illustrations and photos have been added by Badgley Publishing Company.

Solomon 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.This book is the story of Solomon Northup, a free man of color, living in the North during slavery. Solomon is tricked, drugged and sold into slavery. His pleas of being wrongfully enslaved are met with a beating so severe that he keeps his true identity a secret from that point on. For the next twelve years, he's sold to several ruthless, vicious and despicable slave owners. He's beaten and mistreated mercilessly, yet he never gives up hope of finally proving who he really is.This story is absolutely heartbreaking and difficult to read, yet it's a story that must be told and should be read by everyone. Few could deny that slavery is among the most shameful acts perpetrated by one culture of people upon another. Reading a first-hand account of the atrocities of slavery details a much more compelling depiction than could ever be found in any history book.Sadly, Solomon's story isn't unique, as there were many free people of color who had been sold into slavery by opportunists looking to make money at that time. Yet, his account of his twelve long and torturous years as a slave is a gripping and dramatic journey, as engaging as any novel. Five Complete WorksFive remarkable accounts of slavery in America. Works included:* Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup* includes original illustrations!* Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe* includes original illustrations by Hammatt Billings!* Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass* Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Ann Jacobs* Up From Slavery by Booker T. WashingtonAdditional Resources:* A comprehensive list of the many film and television adaptations of the slave narratives included, as well as additional list of depictions of slavery in film.* Links to free, full-length audio recordings of the narratives included in this collection, as well as other slave narratives by other authors.

After discerning the social and historical factors surrounding its first appearance in the 1960s, Neo-Slave Narratives explores the complex relationship between nostalgia and critique, while asking how African American intellectuals at different points between 1976 and 1990 remember and use the site of slavery to represent cultural debates that arose during the sixties."--BOOK JACKET.

DIVMore than 2,000 former slaves provide first-person accounts in blunt, simple language about their lives in bondage. Illuminating, often startling information about southern life before, during, and after the Civil War. /div

This carefully crafted ebook: "12 YEARS A SLAVE (Voices From The Past Series)" is formatted for your eReader with a functional and detailed table of contents. Excerpt: "Having been born a freeman, and for more than thirty years enjoyed the blessings of liberty in a free State—and having at the end of that time been kidnapped and sold into Slavery, where I remained, until happily rescued in the month of January, 1853, after a bondage of twelve years—it has been suggested that an account of my life and fortunes would not be uninteresting to the public. Since my return to liberty, I have not failed to perceive the increasing interest throughout the Northern States, in regard to the subject of Slavery." Twelve Years a Slave is a slave narrative of Solomon Northup, a New York State-born free African-American man who was kidnapped in Washington, D.C., in 1841 and sold into slavery. Northup worked on plantations in the state of Louisiana for 12 years before his release. Director Steve McQueen, who adapted this memoir into his critically acclaimed film of the same name, compared Northrup's memoir at par with Anne Frank's diary in terms of national hero status and in giving the first-hand account of brutality of slavery. A MUST READ FOR ALL! Solomon Northup (1807–1863?) was the son of a freed slave and free woman of color and a farmer, professional violin and landowner in New York before his kidnapping by the slave catchers. After his freedom he became an active abolitionist and gave more than two dozen speehes about his experiences as a slave, to build momentum against slavery.