![]() In antebellum America, the slave narrative was a case of life imitating art. Three months later, Northup was back in the Times with news of his impending memoir, “Twelve Years a Slave: Narrative of Solomon Northup, a Citizen of New York, Kidnapped in Washington City in 1841, and Rescued in 1853, From a Cotton Plantation Near the Red River, in Louisiana.” With the searing memories still fresh in his mind, Northup recounted the brutality he experienced and witnessed during his years in bondage. From there, he was transported to Louisiana, where he toiled for a dozen years as a slave on cotton and sugar plantations before proof of his status as a freeman resulted in his emancipation. There, the two men drugged the married father of three, who awoke to find himself bound in chains inside a dark underground cell of the Williams Slave Pen. by a pair of white men who promised him employment as a fiddler in a traveling circus. Shocked New Yorkers read the incredible tale of Solomon Northup, a free black man who had been lured from upstate Saratoga Springs to the slave territory of Washington, D.C. The sensational story blared from the front page of the January 20, 1853, edition of the New York Times. ![]()
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