(Illustration Credits 1.10)

SHORTLY AFTER THE ORLEANS DOCKED IN NEW ORLEANS, slave dealer Theophilus Freeman arrived on board. Freeman, who did extensive business with James Birch, had bought Solomon and several other slaves aboard the ship sight unseen. Before taking this human cargo to his slave pen, he called their names and handcuffed them.

When he called out “Platt!” no one stepped forward. Pointing to Solomon, Freeman asked the captain of the Orleans, “Who shipped that nigger?”

“Birch,” replied the captain.

“Your name is Platt—you answer my description,” said Freeman, studying his list. “Why didn’t you come forward?” Solomon honestly answered that he had never been called Platt before. “Well, I will learn you your name!” said Freeman, threatening to whip Solomon if he ever again forgot that his name was Platt.

Along with the other slaves Freeman had purchased, Solomon was led to his new owner’s slave pen. A portion of the pen was a kind of showroom where people shopping for slaves came to look over the merchandise. Freeman’s number one rule was that his slaves must do their best to look “spry and smart” in order to attract buyers and fetch a good price. He even demanded that they dance for customers to show that they were happy to be slaves.

Solomon had been in Freeman’s slave pen a day or two when an elderly gentleman came in. He lived in New Orleans, the gentleman said, and he needed a coachman. Solomon very much wanted the man to buy him, because he figured that New Orleans would offer opportunities for escape. But when Freeman announced that Solomon was selling for $1,500—equal to $40,000 today—the gentleman said that was too much and backed off.

That night Solomon came down with smallpox—the disease that had claimed Robert’s life at sea. He was sent to Charity Hospital on the outskirts of New Orleans, where his condition worsened. He ran a high temperature, suffered from severe body aches, and for three days was completely blind. The doctors believed that Solomon would die, but the thought that he had to live and return to his family went round and round his feverish brain. After 16 days in the hospital he began to recover and was returned to Freeman’s slave pen.

Finally, after weeks of being offered for sale, Solomon was purchased by William Ford, a planter from central Louisiana. Solomon was in such poor condition from his bout with smallpox that his selling price dropped to $900—$600 less than what he would have sold for before he became so seriously ill. He had now been sold three times: by Brown and Hamilton to Birch, by Birch to Freeman, and then by Freeman to Ford.

Slaves generally had no last names of their own but were called by their owners’ last names. Platt Ford, as Solomon Northup was now known, was taken by boat, train, and on foot to William Ford’s plantation. The Ford property was located in the Great Pine Woods. Escape from this vast wooded wilderness in Louisiana’s Red River Valley was nearly impossible. For one thing, the area’s large swamps were home to alligators and poisonous snakes. For another, the nearest “free state”—or state that had outlawed slavery—was 500 miles away.

This is the bill of sale certifying that Theophilus Freeman sold Solomon Northup (called Platt) to William Ford. (Illustration Credits 1.11)

Solomon was put to work chopping tree trunks into logs and making piles of lumber. A skilled carpenter, he also did construction work on the Ford family’s property.

At the time, William Ford was a wealthy cotton planter who owned a number of slaves. One of them was Walton, a house slave who had lived all his life on the Ford plantation and who spoke of Mr. Ford as a child would of his father. Another was John, the Fords’ 16-year-old cook, who walked around chuckling to himself and laughing at things that no one else found funny. However, Solomon felt the most sympathy for Eliza, the young woman who had been in Birch’s slave pen with her two children. When Freeman sold Eliza to William Ford, he sold her son and daughter to other masters. Knowing that she probably would never see her children again, Eliza cried almost continuously.

Solomon expected that the fact that William Ford owned slaves would be reason enough to despise him. To his surprise he found that, although Ford was blind to the evils of slavery because he had been surrounded by it all his life, he also had some redeeming qualities. Every Sunday Ford gathered his slaves and read a portion of the Bible to them. Ford even broke the law by giving his slaves Bibles, and he was one of the rare masters who believed it was better to treat slaves kindly than to rule them through fear.

Solomon was even tempted to tell Mr. Ford that he had been kidnapped into slavery in the hope that he would free him. Still, Ford was a slave owner. Solomon didn’t have quite enough faith in him to confide in him. Later, when he saw how cruel other masters were, Solomon realized that by not telling Ford his story he had missed a golden opportunity.

Although no photograph of Solomon Northup is known to exist, his portrait appears in the book he wrote, TWELVE YEARS A SLAVE. (Illustration Credits 1.12)

But Ford didn’t remain Solomon’s master for long. Several months after making slave purchases in New Orleans, he suffered financial setbacks. Among other debts, he owed John Tibaut, a traveling carpenter who was doing construction work on the Ford family’s plantation, about $600. Ford and Tibaut made an unusual deal. They agreed that Solomon was worth $1,000. Ford settled his debt to the carpenter by signing over ownership of 60 percent of Solomon—a commodity worth $600—to Tibaut. However, Ford retained ownership of 40 percent of Solomon—a commodity worth $400. The fact that Ford still owned nearly half of him would mean the difference between life and death for Solomon Northup.

Now known as Platt Tibaut, Solomon had to take orders from the man who owned more than half of him. The carpenter ordered Solomon to help him complete his work on the Ford plantation. Unfortunately, Tibaut was a coldhearted taskmaster who made Solomon work from the first light of dawn until late into the night. He also continually found fault with Solomon’s work and frequently cursed him out, never offering a word of encouragement. An ignorant, uneducated man, Tibaut was probably jealous of Solomon’s large vocabulary and confident manner—as if he didn’t think of himself as a slave.

The first serious trouble occurred when Ford was away at his summer home. Tibaut and Solomon were building a structure called a weaving house on the Ford plantation. Ford’s overseer, a man named Anderson Chafin, had been left in charge of all of Ford’s property, including his 40 percent ownership of Solomon. A native of the free state of Pennsylvania, Chafin disliked the way Tibaut treated Solomon.

One night Tibaut ordered him to awaken very early in the morning, ask Overseer Chafin for a keg of nails, and then use them to hammer in siding on the weaving house. Solomon did precisely as ordered. Before daylight he spoke to Chafin, who brought him a keg of nails from the plantation storeroom. “If Tibaut prefers a different size, I will furnish them,” Chafin said. He then mounted his horse and went out to supervise the field slaves, while Solomon broke open the keg and began installing the siding.

A couple of hours later, Tibaut awoke and emerged from William Ford’s house to inspect Solomon’s work. He was in an especially foul mood and let loose a barrage of curses between complaints that the nails were the wrong size. “Goddamn you!” he yelled at Solomon. “I thought you knowed something!”

“I tried to do as you told me, master,” said Solomon, doing his best to calm Tibaut. But the carpenter had worked himself into a fury. He dashed to the plantation house, grabbed a whip, then ran back and ordered Solomon to take off his shirt.

Besides feeling that he had done nothing blameworthy, Solomon had had his fill of being mistreated. “I will not!” he said, defying his master. The next moment Tibaut grabbed him by the throat and raised the whip. Solomon’s pent-up rage now exploded. Before Tibaut could strike, Solomon threw him to the ground, wrestled the whip away, and began lashing him with it. Tibaut’s pleas for mercy only increased Solomon’s anger. Finally, Overseer Chafin heard the commotion and rode up on horseback to investigate.

The penalty for a slave striking his master was death, but Chafin blamed Tibaut for the fight. Aside from possessing a sense of justice, Chafin had to protect William Ford’s 40 percent interest in Solomon.

“What is the matter with the nails?” Chafin demanded of Tibaut, after learning what had happened. When Tibaut explained that they were the wrong size, Chafin said, “I told Platt to take them and use them, and if they were not the proper size I would get others. It is not his fault.”

“This is not half over yet!” said Tibaut, shaking his fist and vowing that he would have his revenge on Platt. Tibaut then saddled his horse and departed on the road to nearby Cheneyville.

Tibaut was a rascal and was up to no good, Chafin confided to Solomon. He ordered Solomon to remain on the plantation no matter what happened. Chafin then went back to supervise the field slaves.

Solomon was not proud of the fact that he had whipped his master, for he knew that he had let his temper place his life in jeopardy. He stood for some time pondering what had happened, and then he saw what he had dreaded. Coming up the road was Tibaut, accompanied by two other horsemen. The three men rode onto the Ford property, jumped off their horses, then approached Solomon holding large whips. One of the men also carried a length of rope.

The three men overpowered Solomon. They tied the rope around his wrists, ankles, and back until he couldn’t move at all. With the loose end of the rope, Tibaut fashioned a noose and looped it around Solomon’s neck.

“Now, then,” one of Tibaut’s friends said, “where shall we hang the nigger?”

Solomon frantically looked around for Chafin, who was nervously pacing back and forth on the porch of the Ford house. Was this how his life would end—hanging from a tree fifteen hundred miles from home? Tears flowed down his cheeks, but they only drew laughter from the three men who intended to murder him.

Tibaut and his friends were dragging Solomon to a tree when Anderson Chafin suddenly approached with a pistol in each hand. “Whoever moves that slave another foot is a dead man,” Chafin warned. “First, he does not deserve this treatment. You, Tibaut, are a scoundrel, and you richly deserved the flogging you received. In the next place, in the absence of William Ford, I am master here. My duty is to protect his interests, and that duty I shall perform. As for you,” he told Tibaut’s two companions, who were overseers from nearby plantations, “begone! If you have any regard for your safety, I say, begone!”

Without saying a word, Tibaut’s two friends mounted their horses and galloped away. Tibaut cursed and made a few threats before climbing on his horse and departing. Then Chafin wrote out a pass for a slave named Lawson to go by mule and notify Mr. Ford that he was needed at his plantation.

Solomon knew he had come very close to dying on that hot summer morning. He also was familiar enough with John Tibaut to know that the dispute between the two of them was far from over.