Solomon Northup's Twelve Years A Slave

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Twelve Years A Slave was edited by David Wilson, a white lawyer and legislator from New York who claimed to have presented "a faithful history of Solomon Northup's life.” It’s dedicated to Harriet Beecher Stowe and introduced as "another Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin," Northup's book was published in 1853, less than a year after his survival of slavery. It sold over thirty thousand copies. It may be one of the longest North American slave narratives, but it’s also one of the best-selling.
The genre of this particular book is autobiography/memoir. A slave narrates it about his story of being kidnapped into slavery. The author, Solomon Northup, writes about his daily life as a slave and how he survived twelve years of it. It also exposes other personal …show more content…

It describes the harsh times that the slaves had and how their masters treated them. It’s during the Pre-Civil War and shows how easy it was to become a slave even though you were a free man. Its an autobiography so it is a very descriptive book and it tells the exact truth on slavery. They were whipped more than five times a day for the littlest things and treated poorly. They worked hard all day with hardly any sleep. Northup provides details (invaluable now to historians) of slave markets and what daily life was like on the major sugar and cotton plantations of Louisiana. This book helps students compare it to life now, and how we should feel safe and equal because back then was tough and …show more content…

Solomon Northup’s Twelve Years A Slave, tells his life story as a free black man from the North who was kidnapped and sold into slavery in the Pre-Civil War. He is a violinist that is tricked to attending a gig at a circus for money. Instead he is drugged and sold into slavery in the South. His master starts to call him Platt even though it’s not his real name. During the next twelve years he survived as human property of several different cruel slave masters. He talks about his life as a slave and how no one should be treated that way. In January 1853, Northup was finally freed by one of his closest Northern friends who came to his rescue. His friends were white themselves and knew that Solomon shouldn’t of been kept a slave. He finally returns home to his family in New York and there, wrote his memoir in Twelve Years A

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