SOLOMON NORTHIIP, TWELVE YEARS d SLAVE..
THIS volume professes to give a narrative of the kidnapping of Solomon Northup, a free man of colour of the State of New York, by inveigling him to Washington, drugging him, and then selling him to a slave-dealer, together with his subsequent sufferings and adventures for twelve years as a slave in Louisiana under various masters. About the main facts of the case there can be no doubt : they are proved by the official documents connected with his rescue from slavery by the State of New York, leaving his unconscious purchaser minus the purchase-money. The particulars connected with his adventures in slavery were taken down by the editor, Mr. David Wilson and are doubtless substantially true in their facts. The style, and possibly the reflections, may be Mr. Wilson's. It is an interesting book. Hitherto pictures of slavery have consisted of fictiens in which the representations were general, and facts, though not perhaps truth, were sacrificed to art ; or they have been written by men who were born slaves, but from circum- stances took the favourable position of house-servants, escaping field-work and knowing it chiefly by hearsay. Accident, or the strength and colour of Northup, threw him into the hands of mas- ters who employed him in the labours of the field, or in such me- chanical businesses as he had some knowledge of. His location also was adapted to bring out the worst features of the institu- tion; for Bayou Bceuf, a district in the neighbourhood of the Red River, though rich, was unwholesome, abandoned apparently to the poorer and less educated planters. So far as Solomon's experience goes, it seems to oonfisin the darker representations of Mrs. Stowe and other writers on the same side. The slave-dealers may of course be given up ; they are con- sidered by the slave-owners themselves as a degraded class. Of Solomon's three masters, only one, a Mr. Ford, was a good man. Tibeats, the second, was a low, needy fellow, cross-grained in tem- per, addicted to drink, spiteful, and revengeful to a degree. The third master, Epps, was a coarse man, who ruled his plantation with great severity when sober, and when drunk, which was often the case, had a sort of ferocious humour that inflicted sufferings on his people in a genuine gaiete de cceur, that heart having no conception that Niggers had any claim to care or consideration. Mr. Epps was married to a woman above him in manners and edu- cation, if not in actual position ; but, though entertaining a great regard for her, not unmixed with awe, he could not resist the at- tractions of a Week slave named Patsey.
"Patsey was slim and straight. She stood erect as the human form is capable of standing. There was an air of loftiness in her movement, that neither labour, nor weariness, nor punishment could destroy. Truly, Patsey was a splendid animal; and were it not that bondage had enshrouded her intellect in utter and everlasting darkness, would have been chief among ten thousand of her people. She could leap the highest fences, and a fleet hound it was indeed that could outstrip her in a race. No horse could fling her from his back. She was a skilful teamster. She turned as true a furrow as the best, and at splitting rails there were none who could excel her. When the order to halt was heard at night, she would have her mules at the crib, unharnessed, fed and curried, before Uncle Abram had found his hat. Not, however, for all or any of these was she chiefly famous. Such lightning- like motion was in her fingers as no other fingers ever possessed, and there- fore it was that in cotton-picking time Patsey was queen of the field.
"She had a genial and pleasant temper, and was faithful and obedient. Naturally she was a joyous creature, a laughing lighthearted girl, rejoicing in the mere sense of existence. Yet Patsey wept oftener and suffered more than any of her companions : she had been literally excoriated ; her back bore the scars of a thousand stripes, not because she was backward in her work, nor because she was of an unmindful and rebellious spirit, but because it had fallen to her lot to be the slave of a licentious master and a jealous mistress. She shrank before the lustful eye of the one and was in danger even of her life at the hands of the other, and between the two she was in- deed accursed. In the great house, for days together, there were high and angry words, poutings and estrangement, whereof she was the innocent cause. Nothing delighted the mistress so much as to see her suffer; and more than once, when Epps had refused to sell her, has she tempted me with bribes to put her secretly to death, and bury her body in some lonely place in the margin of the swamp." On the other hand, there are indications that Northup's bad masters were exceptional cases ; somewhat like the extreme cases which in England come before the Police. It is against a master's interest to flog a slave : a purchaser, it seems, always examines the back, and if it is scarred the value is diminished—sears are "con- sidered evidence of a rebellious or unruly spirit, and hurt the • Twelve Years a Slave. Narrative of Solomon Northnp, a Citizen of New Yolk, kidnapped in Washington City in 1811, and rescued in 18,53. from a Cotton Planta- tion near the Red River in Louisiana. Published by Derby and Miller, Auburn; Low and Company, London. sale." The disposal of slaves, though frequent from death or in- Selveney, is comparatively exceptionaL Public opinion is opposed to It; and a man suffers in social estimation, or which is perhaps a greater check on some, his affairs are supposed to be embarrassed. The earnings of a slave seem to be held sacred. Northup was a musician, and his violin was in frequent request at parties and merry-makings his wages were taken by Epps, but the col- lections made for himself were at his own disposal. A " chattel• mortgage" applied to a human being has an odd sound, but it was a means of saving Northup's life : Tibeats would have murdered him by hanging, for a flogging which the slave bestowed upon the ' master but the White overseer of Mr. Ford interfered with pistols, forbidding Tibeats or his myrmidons to proceed at peril, unless they id off the mortgage. The respectable part of the community in South are described as hostile to the kidnapping of free Negroes, and very willing, when such a thing occurs, to see justice done. In New York, the whole machinery of the State was set in motion as soon as Northup got a White man to post a letter containing a hint of his ease and his whereabouts : the Southern postmasters cannot " mail " a letter from a slave without an order from his master.
The evils springing directly from the institution—the ignorance, immorality, helplessness and brutality entailed upon the slaves— are not, however, exceptional, but the rule. And the exceptions are very numerous on all the worst features of s]avery,—the forced concubinage, the purchase of children to rear as concubines, the separation of families; and when female vengeance dictates as it sometimes does, the sale of a favoured mistress and her all but White children, the misery is aggravated by a certain degree of re- finement and sentiment. In the same slave-pen which Northup was confined in at Washington, a ease of the kind alluded to occurred. The children were sold from the mother, who accom- panied ,
Northup to Mr. Ford's, and she finally sank under her griefs.
'On my arrival at Bayou Bceuf, I had the pleasure of meeting Eliza, whom I had not seen for several months. She had not pleased Mrs. Ford, being more occupied in broodingi ovir her sorrows than in attendance to her business, and had, in consequence, been sent down to work in the field on the plantation. She had grown feeble and emaciated, and was still mourn- ing for her children. She asked me if I had forgotten them; and a great many times inquired if I still remembered bow handsome little Emily was ---how much Bandon loved her—and wondered if they were living still, and where tlidllarlinga could then be. She had sunk beneath the weight of an excessive grief.'Her drooping form and hollow cheeks too plainly Indicated that she had well nigh reached the end of her weary road.'
The economy and daily life of a plantation are well painted in these memoirs. Two facts certainly say but little for the institu- tion in the Bayou Bceuf district. Negroes are not allowed to learn swimming ; hounds are kept to capture runaway slaves. Northup once fled. for his life from Tibeats; and his pursuit and escape are one of the most sustained incidents in the volume.
"In about three-fourths of an hour several of the slaves shouted and made signs for me to run. Presently, looking up the bayou, I saw Tibeata and two others bn horseback, coming at a fast gait, followed by a troop of dogs. There were as many as eight or ten. Distant as I was, I knew them. They -belonged on the adjoining plantation. The dogs used on Bayou Bosuf for hunting slaves are a kind of blood-hound, but a far more savage breed than is found in the Northern States. They will attack a Negro at their master's bidding, and cling to him as the common bull-dog will cling to a four-footed animal. Frequently their loud bay is heard in the swamps, and then there is speculation as to what point the runaway will be overhauled—the same as a New York hunter stops to listen to the hounds coursing along the hill- sides, and suggests to his companion that the fox will be taken at such a place. I never knew a slave escaping with his life from Bayou Ikea. One reason is, they are not allowed to learn the art of swimming, and are in- capable of crossing the most inconsiderable stream. In their flight they can go in no direction but a little way without coming to a bayou, when the inevitable alternative is presented, of being drowned or overtaken by the dogs. In youth I had practised in the clear streams that flow through my native district, untilI had become an expert swimmer, and felt at home in the watery element. "1 deed upon the fence until the dogs had reached the cotton-press. In an instant more, their long, savage yells announced they were on my track. slierziliritt down from my position I ran towards the swamp. Fear gave me and I exerted it to the utmost. Every few moments I could hear the yelpings of the dogs. They were gaining upon me. Every howl was nearer and nearer. Each moment I expected they would spring upon my back—expected to feel their long teeth sinking into my flesh. There were so many of them, I knew they would tear me to pieces—that they would worry me at once to death. I gasped for breath—gasped forth a half-uttered °halting prayer to the Almighty to save me to give me strength to reach some wide, deep bayou, where I could throw them off the track, or sink into its waters. Presently I reached a thick palmetto bottom. As I fled through them they made a loud rustling noise,—not loud enough, however, to drown the voices of the dogs. "Continuing my course due South, as nearly as I can judge, I came at length to water just over shoe. The hounds at that moment could not have been five rods behind me. I could hear them crashing and plunging through the palmettoes, their loud eager yells making the whole swamp clamorous with the sound. Hope revived a little as I reached the water. If it were only deeper, they might loose the scent, and thus disconcerted afford me the opportunity of evading them. Luckily, it grew deeper the farther I proceeded—now over my ankles--now half-way to my knees—now sinking a moment to my waist, and then emerging presently into more shallow places. The dogs had not gamed upon me since I struck the water. Evidently they were confused. Now their savage intonations grew more and more distant, assuring me that I was leaving them. Finally I stopped to listen, but the long howl came booming on the air again, telling me I was not yet safe. From bog to bog where I had stepped they could still keep upon the track, though impeded by the water. At length, to my great joy, I came to a wide bayou, and, plunging in, had soon stemmed its sluggish current to the other side. There, certainly, the dogs would be con- founded ; the current carrying down the stream all traces of that slight, mysterious scent, which enables the quick-smelling hound to follow in the track of the fugitive. " After crossing this bayou the water became so deep I could not run. I was now in what I afterwards learned was the 'Great Pacoudrie Swamp.' It was filled withimmense trees, the sycamore, the gum, the cotton-wood, and cypress, and extends, I am informed, to the shore of the Calcasieu river. 1 For thirty or forty miles it is without inhabitants, save wild beasts, the bear, the wild-cat, the tiger, and great slimy reptiles, that are crawling through it everywhere. Long before I reached the bayou, in fact, from the time I ' struck the water until I emerged from the swamp on my return, these rep- , tiles surrounded me. I saw hundreds of moccasin snakes. Every log and ' bog, every trunk of a fallen tree over which I was compelled to step or climb, was alive with them. They crawled away at my approach; but some- times in my haste I almost placed my hand or -foot upon them. They are poisonous serpents, their bite more fatal than the rattlesnake's. Besides, I d lost one shoe, the sole having come entirely off, leaving the upper only dangling to my ankle. "I saw also many alligators, great and small, lying in the water or on pieces of flood-wood. The noise I made usually startled them, when they moved off and plunged into the deepest places. Sometimes, however, I would come directly upon a monster before observing it. In such cases I would start back, run a short way round, and in that manner shun them. Straight forward, they will run a short distance rapidly, but do not possess the power of turning. In a crooked race there is no difficulty in evading them.
"About two o'clock in the afternoon I heard the last of the hounds. Pro- bably they did not cross the bayou. Wet and weary, but relieved from the sense of instant peril, I continued on ; more cautious and afraid, however, of the snakes and alligators than I had been in the earlier portion of my flight. Now' before stepping, into a muddy pool, I would strike the water with a stick. If the waters moved, I would go around it, if not, would venture through.
"At length the sun went down, and gradually night's trailing mantle
shrouded great swamp in darkness. Still I staggered on, fearing every ins ellroufd feel the dreadful sting of the moccasin, or be crushed within t.:!:(I the jaws of some disturbed alligator. The dread of them now almost equa- led the fear of the pursuing hounds. The moon arose after a time ; its mild light creeping through the overspreading branches, loaded with long pendent moss. I kept travelling forwards until after midnight, hoping all the while that I would soon emerge into some leas desolate and dangerous region. But the water grew deeper and the walking more difficult than ever. I perceived it would be impossible to proceed much farther, and knew not, moreover, what hands I might fall into, should I succeed in reaching a human habita- tion. Not provided with a pass, any White man would be at liberty to arrest me and place me in prison, until such time as my master should 'prove property, pay charges, and take me away.' I was an estray, and if so =- fortunate as to meet a law-abiding citizen of Louisiana, he would deem it his duty to his neighbour perhaps to put me forthwith in the pound. Really it was difficult to determine which I had most reason to fear, dogs, alliga- tors, or men."
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