Читать книгу Twelve Years a Slave - Solomon Northup - Страница 17

For kidnap victims, it was next to impossible for them to regain their liberty under their own steam. Victims were usually taken away from their familiar surroundings quickly, making it difficult for them to escape their captors and return home. They were often given different names, minimizing the chances that friends or relatives might locate them. (For most of his time as a slave, Northup was known as “Platt,” a name given him by slave trader James Burch.) Their testimony about having been kidnapped was disbelieved. Paperwork was necessary in order for them to prove their free status, yet they had no way to gather such information. Consequently, the help of white friends and acquaintances was virtually a necessity to regain their liberty.

In Northup's case, two white men were responsible for his rescue. Samuel Bass, originally from Canada, was a travelling carpenter who befriended Northup while working on the Edwin Epps plantation. After Northup confided in him, Bass wrote and posted letters on his behalf. Being an anti-slavery man in the deep South, Bass took on some peril to himself by becoming involved. After all, if successful, he would be depriving Epps of Northup – a valuable piece of property. When it seemed that the letters were receiving no response, Bass volunteered to go a step further by traveling to Saratoga Springs to get help for Northup.

Help did finally arrive in the form of Henry B. Northup, whose family had once owned Solomon's father as a slave (the 2013 film instead has a storekeeper, a recipient of one of Bass' letters, as Northup's rescuer). Henry Northup had assiduously gathered affidavits from Northup's former neighbors, presented them to the governor of New York State, and been appointed as an agent to seek out and retrieve Solomon Northup. He made the long trip in the winter of 1852, and through the assistance of a local attorney in Louisiana as well as Bass, established that Northup was working on the Epps plantation.

The scene where these gentlemen find Northup working in a field, and tell him he will now be free, is one of the great moments in literature, and is lovingly remembered by Northup in the last pages of the book.

Henry B. Northup, who undertook the mission to rescue Solomon Northup from the Epps plantation near Marksville, Louisiana. Portrait now at Middlebury College Museum of Art, Vermont.