12 Years A Slave Audiobook Free Download

1853 memoir by Solomon Northup

Twelve Years a Slave
Solomon Northup 001.jpg

Analogy from Twelve Years a Slave (1855)
Author Solomon Northup
Country U.s.a.
Language English language
Genre Autobiography, slave narrative
Publisher Derby & Miller, Auburn, New York[1]

Publication date

 1853[2]
Media blazon Impress (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1843914716

Dewey Decimal

 301.45
Text Twelve Years a Slave at Wikisource

Twelve Years a Slave is an 1853 memoir and slave narrative by American Solomon Northup as told to and edited by David Wilson. Northup, a black human being who was born free in New York country, details his being tricked to go to Washington, D.C., where he was kidnapped and sold into slavery in the Deep South. He was in bondage for 12 years in Louisiana before he was able to secretly get information to friends and family in New York, who in plow secured his release with the aid of the country. Northup's account provides extensive details on the slave markets in Washington, D.C. and New Orleans, and describes at length cotton and carbohydrate cultivation and slave treatment on major plantations in Louisiana.

The work was published viii years earlier the Civil War by Derby & Miller of Auburn, New York,[1] before long later Harriet Beecher Stowe's best-selling novel almost slavery, Uncle Tom'southward Motel (1852), to which information technology lent factual back up. Northup'southward book, dedicated to Stowe, sold thirty,000 copies, making it a bestseller in its own right.[3]

Afterward being published in several editions in the 19th century and although later cited by specialist scholarly works on slavery in the Usa, the memoir fell into public obscurity for nearly 100 years. It was re-discovered on separate occasions past two Louisiana historians, Sue Eakin (Louisiana Land University at Alexandria) and Joseph Logsdon (University of New Orleans).[4] In the early 1960s, they researched and retraced Solomon Northup's journeying[5] and co-edited a historically annotated version that was published past Louisiana State Academy Press (1968).[6]

The memoir has been adapted equally ii film versions, produced every bit the 1984 PBS television picture show Solomon Northup'due south Odyssey and the Oscar-winning 2013 film 12 Years a Slave.[7]

Synopsis [edit]

In his home town of Saratoga Springs, New York, Solomon Northup, a free negro and a skilled carpenter and violinist, was approached by two circus promoters, Chocolate-brown and Hamilton. They offered him a brief, high-paying job as a musician with their traveling circus. Without informing his wife, who was away at work in a nearby town, he traveled with the strangers to downstate New York and Washington, D.C. Soon later arriving in the upper-case letter, he awoke to notice himself drugged, bound, and in the cell of a slave pen. When Northup asserted his rights as a costless man, he was beaten and warned never again to mention his free life in New York.

Transported by transport to New Orleans, Northup and other enslaved blackness people contracted smallpox and ane died. In transit, Northup implored a sympathetic crewman to transport a letter to his family unit. The letter arrived safely, but, lacking knowledge of his terminal destination, Northup's family unit was unable to result his rescue.

Northup's first owner was William Prince Ford, who ran a lumber mill on a bayou of the Blood-red River.[8] Northup later had several other owners, less humane than Ford, during his twelve-year bondage. At times, his carpentry and other skills contributed to his existence treated relatively well, only he also suffered extreme cruelty. On 2 occasions, he was attacked past John Tibeats, a white homo he was leased to, and defended himself, for which he suffered severe reprisals. After nigh 2 years of enslavement, Northup was sold to Edwin Epps, a notoriously cruel cotton planter. Epps held Northup enslaved for 10 years, during which time he assigned the New Yorker to various roles from cotton wool picker, to hauler to driver, which required Northup to oversee the work of beau slaves and punish them for undesirable beliefs. While on Epps' plantation, Northup became friends with a slave girl named Patsey, whom he writes almost briefly in the volume.

After being beaten for challenge his free condition in Washington, D.C., Northup in the ensuing 12 years did non reveal his true history over again to a single person, slave or possessor. Finally he confided his story to Samuel Bass, a white carpenter and abolitionist from Canada working at the Epps plantation (to build the Edwin Epps House). Bass, at great take a chance to himself, sent letters to Northup'southward married woman and friends in Saratoga. Parker, a white shopkeeper, received one of the letters and sought assistance from Henry B. Northup, a white attorney and politician whose family had held and freed Solomon Northup'southward father and with whom Solomon had a longtime friendship. Henry contacted New York state officials. As the country had passed a law in 1840 to provide financial resources for the rescue of citizens kidnapped into slavery, the Governor appointed Henry Northup as an agent to travel to Louisiana and work with law enforcement to costless Solomon. In one case in Louisiana, Henry Northup hired local Avoyelles Parish attorney, John P. Waddill, to assist in securing Solomon Northup's freedom.[9] After a multifariousness of bureaucratic measures and searches were undertaken, the attorney succeeded in locating Solomon and freeing him from the plantation. Northup subsequently filed charges against the men who sold him into slavery merely was unsuccessful in his arrange. He returned to New York and reunited with his family there.

Northup concludes his narrative with the following statement:

My narrative is at an end. I take no comments to make upon the field of study of Slavery. Those who read this book may grade their own opinions of the "peculiar institution." What it may be in other States, I do not profess to know; what it is in the region of Red River, is truly and faithfully delineated in these pages. This is no fiction, no exaggeration. If I take failed in anything, it has been in presenting to the reader also prominently the bright side of the picture. I doubt non hundreds have been every bit unfortunate as myself; that hundreds of free citizens take been kidnapped and sold into slavery, and are at this moment wearing out their lives on plantations in Texas and Louisiana. But I forbear. Moderated and subdued in spirit past the sufferings I have borne, and thankful to that good Beingness through whose mercy I have been restored to happiness and liberty, I hope henceforward to atomic number 82 an upright though lowly life, and rest at final in the church yard where my father sleeps.

—Solomon Northup[ten]

Reception and historical value [edit]

Questions were ofttimes raised about accuracy or authenticity of books well-nigh slavery, including slave narratives. Similarities between Northup's volume and Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel Uncle Tom's Cabin have been noted by critics. Stowe's volume was published a twelvemonth earlier Northup's memoir but past the time she published her rebuttal to critics about accuracy in her A Key to Uncle Tom'southward Cabin, she referred to his story, which had been publicized in newspaper accounts. Stowe wrote,

It is a singular coincidence that this man was carried to a plantation in the Cherry-red River state, that same region where the scene of Tom'southward captivity was laid; and his account of this plantation, his way of life at that place, and some incidents which he describes, form a striking parallel to that history.[11]

Northup'due south account confirms Stowe's fictional portrayal of weather condition in Louisiana, as the area where Northup was enslaved was close to the fictional setting of Simon Legree's plantation on the Red River. Northup expresses other arguments confronting slavery. For instance, Uncle Tom's Motel focuses on how the legal arrangement prevents even kind owners from treating slaves well and how it releases cruel owners from liabilities for their treatment of slaves.[12]

Such themes appear in Northup's narrative, besides. Writing nigh this work, Eric Herschtal noted that "Slave narratives were never intended to give an unbiased view. They were antislavery polemics meant to bring down the institution."[13] The fact that these works had a purpose was similar to other published works.[thirteen]

Herschtal emphasizes that Northup expressed pity in his account, quoting him: "Information technology is non the fault of the slaveholder that he is cruel," Northup writes, "so much as information technology is the fault of the system under which he lives."[13] Northup's get-go-person account of his twelve years of bondage captured attention in the national political fence over slavery that took identify in the years leading up to the Ceremonious War. It drew endorsements from major Northern newspapers, anti-slavery organizations, and evangelical groups. Information technology "sold three times as many copies as Frederick Douglass's slave narrative in its commencement 2 years."[13]

Northup's business relationship describes the daily life of slaves at Bayou Boeuf in Louisiana, their nutrition and living atmospheric condition, the relationship between main and slave, and the means that slave catchers used to recapture runaways. His business relationship shares some details similar to those of authors who were escaped slaves, such as Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, and William Wells Brown. However, Northup was unique in documenting his being kidnapped as a free human from the N and sold into slavery. His perspective was always to compare what he saw to what he knew before while living as a gratis man in a free state. While in that location were hundreds of such kidnappings, he was amidst the few persons who gained freedom again.[3]

Early and mid-twentieth century historians of slavery, Kenneth Stampp, Stanley Elkins, and Ulrich Bonnell Phillips, endorsed the historical accuracy of the book. Eakin and Logsdon in 1968, wrote: "In the last analysis, [the] narrative deserves to be believed, not simply because [Northup] seems to be talking reasonably, not merely because he adorns his tale with compelling and persuasive details. At every point where materials be for checking his business relationship, information technology tin exist verified." These materials include trial records, correspondence, diary, and slave auction records.[14]

While Twelve Years a Slave is the best-known example of someone who was kidnapped and afterward freed – admitting through extraordinary efforts – historians have begun to research and nowadays other cases. Well-nigh of the known court cases of liberty suits related to kidnapping victims were filed in New Orleans, although some were in border states such every bit Missouri. One such adapt took place in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, where Cornelius Sinclair, a free black homo from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, had been sold after being kidnapped in August 1825 and transported South with some younger free blacks.[15] A total of most xx young blacks disappeared from the Philadelphia surface area that summer, some survivors sold into slavery in Mississippi.[xv] [16] Helped past the intervention of Philadelphia mayor Joseph Watson, most of those kidnapped were returned gratis to Philadelphia by June 1826, but Sinclair'south odyssey was longer. He was freed in 1827 by a unanimous verdict of an all-white jury.[16]

Reissue [edit]

Later additional printings in the 19th century, the book went out of print until 1968,[6] when historians Joseph Logsdon and Sue Eakin restored information technology to prominence. Eakin discovered the story as a kid growing upwardly in Louisiana plantation land – the owner of a first edition showed her the book, afterwards finding it in a former plantation dwelling house.

Years later on, Logsdon had a pupil from an old Louisiana family who brought a re-create of the original 1853 book to class; her family had owned it for more than a century. Together Logsdon and Eakin studied Northup's account, documenting information technology through the slave sales records of Washington, D.C. and New Orleans, by retracing his journey and chains in Bayou Boeuf plantation country in central Louisiana and through its records, and documenting his New York State origins. They found his father's freeman'due south decree, and the case files for the legal work that restored Northup'southward freedom and prosecuted his abductors. In 1968, Eakin and Logsdon's thoroughly annotated edition of the original volume was published by Louisiana State University Press, shedding new light on Northup'south account and establishing its historic significance. That volume has been widely used past scholars and in classrooms for more than forty years, and is still in print.

In 1998, Logsdon was invited by scholars in upstate New York to participate in a search for Solomon's grave. However, bad weather condition prevented the search that year, and Logsdon died the following June 1999. In 2007, soon before her decease at historic period 90, Eakin completed an updated and expanded version of their volume; it includes more than than 150 pages of new background cloth, maps, and photographs. In 2013, eastward-book and audiobook versions of her final definitive edition were released in her honor. With permission, scholars may use Eakin'due south lifetime archives through The Sue Eakin Collection, Louisiana State University at Alexandria, Louisiana. The Joseph Logsdon Archives are available at the University of New Orleans.

Historian Jesse Holland noted in a 2009 interview that he had relied on Northup's memoir and detailed clarification of Washington in 1841 to identify the location of some slave markets in the upper-case letter. Holland has also researched the roles of African-American slaves who, every bit skilled laborers, helped build some of the important public buildings in Washington, including the Capitol and part of the original Executive Mansion.[17]

Editions and adaptations [edit]

Text [edit]

  • Twelve Years a Slave is in the public domain; e-volume versions tin can be downloaded from several sites and many reprints are still in print by multiple publishers (encounter 'External links' department)
  • In 1968, historians Sue Eakin and Joseph Logsdon, both based in Louisiana, published an edited and annotated version of Northup'due south narrative.[18] Updated and illustrated editions of this work take since been published, including an adaptation for younger readers.
  • In 2012, David Fiske self-published the biography Solomon Northup: His Life Before and After Slavery. The book'southward Appendix C provides the publishing history for Twelve Years a Slave during the 19th century. The volume was expanded and re-issued by Praeger in August 2013 as Solomon Northup: The Consummate Story of the Author of Twelve Years a Slave, ISBN 978-1440829741, with co-authors Fiske, Clifford West. Brownish, and Rachel Seligman.
  • Tyehimba Jess refers to Edwin Epps's violence towards his slaves in "What Marked Tom?" in his book, Olio (2016).

Film [edit]

  • Solomon Northup's Odyssey (1984), a PBS television receiver movie directed past Gordon Parks and starring Avery Brooks.[xix] [20]
  • 12 Years a Slave (2013), a feature film directed past Steve McQueen and starring Chiwetel Ejiofor.[21] [22]

Audiobook [edit]

  • Twelve Years a Slave public domain audiobook at LibriVox
  • Twelve Years a Slave, narrated past Louis Gossett, Jr. (Eakin Films & Publishing, 2013)[23]
  • Twelve Years a Slave, narrated by Richard Allen (Dreamscape Media, 2013)
  • Twelve Years a Slave, narrated by Hugh Quarshie (AudioGO, 2013)
  • Twelve Years a Slave, narrated past Sean Crisden (Tantor Sound, 2012)

References [edit]

  1. ^ a b J.C. Derby (1884), "William H. Seward", Fifty Years Among Authors, Books and Publishers, New York: Thou.W. Carleton & Co., pp. 62–63
  2. ^ The Petty, 6 February 1853, p. 6
  3. ^ a b Northup, Solomon. Twelve Years a Slave: Summary, online text at Documenting the American South, University of North Carolina, accessed 19 July 2012
  4. ^ "'12 Years a Slave' prompts effort to recognize work of UNO historian in reviving tale". Nola.com. Retrieved 2013-09-27 .
  5. ^ "An Escape From Slavery, Now a Movie, Has Long Intrigued Historians". The New York Times . Retrieved 2013-09-26 .
  6. ^ a b "Twelve Years A Slave by Solomon Northup". Lsupress.org. Retrieved 2013-09-26 .
  7. ^ Cieply, Michael; Barnesmarch, Brooks (March 2, 2014). "'12 Years a Slave' Claims Best Flick Oscar". The New York Times.
  8. ^ Ford became a leader of the Restoration Movement in Louisiana as he and his Baptist congregation were influenced by the writings of Alexander Campbell.
  9. ^ Melancon, Meredith. "Avoyelles Parish Courthouse, Marksville". Acadiana Historical. Robert Carriker. Archived from the original on 28 Feb 2014. Retrieved February 28, 2014.
  10. ^ Northup, Solomon. Twelve Years a Slave (First ed.). p. 321.
  11. ^ Stowe, H. B. A Key to Uncle Tom's Motel, Clue Books, 2005 (reprint), p. 245
  12. ^ Alfred L. Brophy (1995–1996). "Over and in a higher place ... At that place Broods a Portentous Shadow, – The Shadow of Law: Harriet Beecher Stowe'due south Critique of Slave Law in Uncle Tom's Cabin" (PDF). Journal of Law and Religion. 12 (2): 457–506. doi:x.2307/1051590. JSTOR 1051590.
  13. ^ a b c d Eric Herschtal, "The Passion of Solomon Northup" The New York Times
  14. ^ Northup, Solomon (1968). Eakin, Sue & Logsdon, Joseph (eds.). Twelve Years a Slave. Billy Rouge: Louisiana Country University Press. pp.x and xvi. ISBN0807101508.
  15. ^ a b Judson E. Crump and Alfred Fifty. Brophy, "Cornelius Sinclair'south Odyssey: Freedom, Slavery, and Freedom Over again in the Old South", Social Scientific discipline Research Network, July 2014, UNC Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2469529, accessed 16 April 2015.
  16. ^ a b John Henderson, Joseph Watson, Job Dark-brown, Thomas Bradford Junr., R. L. Kennon, Joshua Boucher, H. V. Somerville and Eric Ledell Smith, Notes and Documents: "Rescuing African American Kidnapping Victims in Philadelphia as Documented in the Joseph Watson Papers", Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 129 (2008), pp. 317, 330–332
  17. ^ "Jesse Kingdom of the netherlands on How Slaves Built the White Firm and the U.s.a. Capitol". Democracynow.org. Retrieved 2012-04-09 .
  18. ^ Sharkey, Richard P. "Noted Louisiana historian Sue Eakin of Bunkie expressionless at ninety". The Town Talk . Retrieved September 21, 2009. [ dead link ]
  19. ^ Ebiri, Bilge (November 11, 2013). "A Tale Twice Told: Comparing 12 Years a Slave to 1984'southward TV Movie Solomon Northup'due south Odyssey". Vulture.com . Retrieved January 2, 2018.
  20. ^ Maltin, Martin (Oct 17, 2013). "12 Years A Slave – The Second Fourth dimension Effectually". Indie Wire . Retrieved January 2, 2018.
  21. ^ Hannaford, Alex (June 4, 2016). "12 Years A Slave: the true story of Solomon Northup". The Daily Telegraph . Retrieved January 2, 2018.
  22. ^ Sergio (Jan 13, 2013). "What About That OTHER '12 Years A Slave' Moving-picture show?". Indie Wire . Retrieved January 2, 2018.
  23. ^ Morgan, Jennifer Wilde (2016). Come to the Garden: A Novel. Simon and Schuster. p. 200. ISBN978-1501131332.

External links [edit]

Digital editions
  • Twelve Years a Slave at Standard Ebooks
  • Twelve Years a Slave at Projection Gutenberg
  • Twelve Years a Slave public domain audiobook at LibriVox
  • Twelve Years a Slave at the Internet Archive (scanned original editions with some colour illustrated)
Original sources
  • Messages by John R. Smith, "Wilbur H. Siebert Drove", Houghton Library, Harvard University. Available as online images, detailing Northup'due south involvement in the Hugger-mugger Railroad after January 1863.
Other
  • Twelve Years a Slave website, with audio excerpts by Lou Gossett, Jr.; history, art and images
  • Kneller, Michael. "Solomon Northup: From Liberty to Slavery to Freedom Again", Slavery in America
  • "Snatched Up and Sold Into Slavery: The Story of Solomon Northup", US Trek, Odyssey (complements history curriculum for junior high and loftier school students)
  • "New York: Solomon Northup Solar day – A Celebration of Freedom (Local Legacies: Celebrating Community Roots)". Library of Congress. Retrieved 2012-04-09 .
  • "Solomon Northup", eBlack Studies
  • EDSITEment lesson Twelve Years a Slave: Analyzing Slave Narratives
  • EDSITEment lesson Twelve Years a Slave: Was the Example of Solomon Northup Exceptional?

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