Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup. 

4/5 rating. 197 pages.

Book #31 of 2023. Read July 27, 2023.

This is the incredible and harrowing tale of Solomon’s kidnapping and 12 years spent being a slave in the South.

Solomon was a free man born in New York that was (probably?) drugged, kidnapped and illegally sent south to be sold into slavery. This book tells about some of the absolute evils of slavery working for one of the kindest, followed by some absolute evil, slaveowners.

I felt with some of the recent news I’ve seen, this was an appropriate book to read. I honestly haven’t looked into anything that is actually being proposed being taught about slavery, but it simply is one of the most evil institutions ever created by humankind. Solomon does a beautiful job of putting some of this into words:

– “So we passed, hand-cuffed and in silence, through the streets of Washington – through the Capital of the nation, whose theory of government, we were told, rests on the foundation of man’s inalienable right to life, LIBERTY, and the pursuit of happiness!”

“Then the fears and labors of another day begin; and until its close there is no such thing as rest. He fears he will be caught lagging through the day; he fears to approach the gin-house with his basket-load of cotton at night; he fears, when he lies down, that he will oversleep himself in the morning. Such is a true, faithful, unexaggerated picture and description of the slave’s daily life, during the time of cotton-picking, on the shores of Bayou Boeuf.”

– “Daily witnesses of human suffering – listening to the agonizing screeches of the slave – beholding him writhing beneath the merciless lash – bitten and torn by dogs – dying without attention, and buried without shroud or coffin – it cannot otherwise be expected, than that they should become brutified and reckless of human life.”

– “There may be humane masters, as there certainly are inhuman ones – there may be slaves well-clothed, well-fed, and happy, as there are surely those half-clad, half-starved and miserable; nevertheless, the institution that tolerates such wrong and inhumanity as I have witnessed, is a cruel, unjust and barbarous one. Men may write fictions portraying lowly life as it is, or as it is not – may expatiate with owlish gravity upon the bliss of ignorance – discourse flippantly from arm chairs of the pleasures of slave life; but let them toil with him in the field – sleep with him in the cabin – feed with him on husks; let them behold him scourged, hunted, trampled on, and they will come back with another story in their mouths.”

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