Twelve Years a Slave

Summary

Solomon Northup, a free Black man living in New York, is kidnapped and sold into slavery in the Deep South, where he endures brutal labor and violence on Louisiana plantations for twelve years before he finds a way to alert friends back home. Northup describes the daily mechanics of plantation life in careful, specific detail, giving readers an unusually precise account of how slavery actually functioned. His narrative stands as one of the most detailed firsthand records of slavery ever published.