(Illustration Credits 1.19)

IN 1845—THE FIRST YEAR EDWIN EPPS HAD HIS OWN plantation on Bayou Boeuf—caterpillars almost totally destroyed the region’s cotton crop. To recoup some of their losses, many cotton planters rented out a number of their slaves to work in the sugarcane fields of far southern Louisiana.

That fall 150 slaves from various Holmesville-area farms walked a hundred miles to the Centerville area near the Gulf of Mexico. There they were put to work harvesting sugarcane. Among the slaves who made the long walk were Old Abram, Bob, and Platt from the Epps plantation. Solomon was put in charge of about 75 cane cutters, as the field hands who harvested the crop were called.

Solomon brought his violin along—and his reputation for playing it. One weekend he was hired to perform at a party in Centerville. The partygoers were so pleased with his playing that at the close of the festivities they took up a collection for Solomon that totaled $17—equal to more than $400 in today’s money.

Solomon had a secret plan for spending the money. Centerville was a stopping place for steamboats traveling along a stream called Bayou Teche. From there they steamed to New Orleans, 75 miles away. If he could make it to the big city of New Orleans, Solomon believed he could find a way to travel north to the free states.

Because of his violin playing, Solomon was provided with passes permitting him to move about Centerville to arrange his performances. Somewhere in town he heard that a certain steamboat captain who stopped there regularly was a Northerner opposed to slavery. One day Solomon went to the docks on Bayou Teche and quietly spoke to this captain.

Cane sugar is a tall, very sweet grass that grows in Louisiana. Like cotton, it is now machine-harvested. Sugarcane can grow as high as 19 feet. (Illustration Credits 1.20)

Solomon got right to the point. Would the captain let him hide among the cargo so that he could escape to New Orleans? To grease the way, Solomon offered some of the money he had earned from fiddling.

The steamboat captain seemed willing to assist Solomon, but he explained why he couldn’t take part in such a plan. In New Orleans vessels were thoroughly searched for stowaway fugitive slaves. If Solomon were discovered hiding on the steamer and it was revealed that the captain had helped hide him, his vessel could be seized and he could be jailed. He was sorry, the captain said, but he couldn’t help Solomon escape.

Another five years passed before Solomon had another genuine opportunity to inform the outside world of his whereabouts. Mrs. Mary Epps liked Solomon and had him run errands for her when her husband was away. In 1850 when Edwin Epps was in New Orleans selling his cotton crop, his wife sent Solomon to a store in Holmesville to buy several items, including a block of paper.

Before he brought Mrs. Epps’s purchases into the big house for her, Solomon took a sheet or two of the paper for himself. He hid it in his cabin beneath the board he slept on. This was the first writing paper Solomon obtained in the nine years he had been a slave.

He made a pen by plucking a large feather out of a duck’s wing. Solomon made ink by boiling white maple bark. Then, when everyone else in his cabin was asleep, Solomon took the paper, pen, and ink from beneath the plank and began writing by the light of the fireplace. Over a period of a few days he wrote a letter chronicling how he’d been kidnapped into slavery and explaining that he was on the Epps plantation in the vicinity of Holmesville and Marksville, Louisiana.

Now came the hard part—mailing the letter. In the South, postmasters would not mail letters given to them by slaves unless they were accompanied by notes from their owners. This meant that Solomon had to find a white person who would mail his letter for him. He found a likely candidate—he believed—months later when a poor, white man named Armsby came into the area seeking a job as an overseer. Epps and other planters turned Armsby down. He became so desperate for a job that for a small salary he went to work alongside the slaves in the fields of a neighbor of Epps named Shaw.

Armsby liked to fall asleep at night out on the porch of Shaw’s home. At 1 a.m. on a warm night, Solomon left the Epps plantation without permission and walked to the Shaw place, where Armsby was sleeping. He awoke Armsby and asked if he would mail a letter for him at Marksville, 20 miles away. As an incentive, he offered Armsby all the money he had earned by playing his violin. Armsby agreed to the deal, promising to mail Solomon’s letter at the Marksville post office.

Something about Armsby made Solomon uneasy. So despite the fact that the letter was in his pocket, Solomon told Armsby he would bring the letter to him along with the money in a few days.

Solomon’s mistrust of Armsby was well founded, for a day or two later he saw Armsby and Epps sitting together on a fence that divided the Shaw and the Epps plantations. The two men were talking—what about Solomon was fairly certain he knew.

That evening Solomon was cooking his bacon in the fireplace when Epps suddenly burst into the cabin carrying a whip. “Well, boy,” he said to Solomon, who was by then 42 years old. “I understand I’ve got a lar-ned nigger, that writes letters, and tries to get white fellows to mail ’em. Wonder if you know who he is?”

“Don’t know nothing about it, Master Epps,” answered Solomon, venturing into dangerous territory. A slave’s word was almost never believed over a white person’s, and if it came out that Solomon was lying—which he was—he would be in for a terrible whipping. Solomon had something else against him. Right after buying him, Epps had grown suspicious that Solomon had been educated somewhere because of the way he spoke. Epps had even warned him: “If I ever catch you with a book, or with pen and ink, I will give you a hundred lashes!”

Epps demanded to know: “Weren’t you over to Shaw’s night before last? Haven’t you asked that fellow Armsby to mail a letter for you at Marksville? What have you got to say to that?”

Solomon denied all of Armsby’s accusations and countered with a plausible explanation. “How could I write a letter without any ink or paper? That Armsby is a lying, drunken fellow. Didn’t he want you to hire him for an overseer?” By making up a lie that one of Epps’s slaves needed close watching, Armsby was still trying to get Epps to hire him as an overseer, Solomon concluded.

Solomon held his breath as Epps thought over what he had said. Finally, Epps answered, “I’m damned, Platt, if I don’t believe you tell the truth.” Still clutching his whip, Epps left the cabin. Solomon waited until the other slaves in the cabin were asleep, then he pulled out his letter and with a heavy heart threw it into the fireplace.

A few days earlier Solomon had been filled with hope. Now after nine years he was no closer to freedom than he had been on the day he awoke in the slave pen in Washington, D.C.

This early 1860s photo of slave quarters on a sugarcane plantation was taken in Houma, Louisiana, not far from where Solomon supervised 75 cane cutters. (Illustration Credits 1.21)

At this time Epps was often drunk, and he was mistreating his slaves more than ever. Hardly any of his slaves escaped punishment—even those who weren’t guilty of breaking his rules.

One day when Mrs. Epps sent Solomon on an errand to a neighboring plantation, he returned to find a horrifying sight. Old Abram was lying on the cabin floor in a pool of his own blood. The old man told Solomon that he had been placing wet cotton on a platform to dry out when Epps came home drunk from Holmesville. Epps began yelling at Abram for no particular reason, and the old man became so confused that he made some small mistake in handling the cotton. Flying into a rage, Epps pulled out his knife and stabbed Old Abram in the back.

Fortunately, the wound was not deep enough to be fatal. As Mrs. Epps sewed it up, she scolded her husband. If he didn’t change his ways, she warned, he would eventually kill all their slaves in his drunken rages.

On several occasions when Phebe angered Epps, he picked up a chair and smashed it over her head. Phebe’s husband Wiley was also the target of their master’s wrath. One night Wiley visited a friend on a neighboring plantation without obtaining a pass. The patrollers who rode about looking for runaway slaves chased him down with their dogs, one of which sank its teeth into his leg. The patrollers whipped Wiley and brought him back to Epps, who gave him a ferocious beating.

Unable to tolerate any more abuse, Wiley ran away. Epps vowed that when Wiley was caught, he would make him sorry he had ever been born. For weeks Wiley evaded capture, but after nearly a month he was caught and locked in jail. Epps paid the fee to have Wiley released and whipped him so brutally that he was crushed in both body and spirit. Wiley never tried to run away again.

But it was Patsey who received the most abuse. Edwin and Mary Epps both tormented her. Epps wanted Patsey to have sex with him, but she refused, which enraged him. Mary Epps was jealous of her husband’s interest in Patsey and tried to spite her whenever she had a chance. Solomon did what little he could to protect Patsey, and that brought their master’s wrath down upon him, too.

One day Patsey and Solomon were hoeing the ground when Epps returned home drunk from a shooting match in Holmesville. Epps stood on the edge of the field motioning to Patsey. “Platt,” said Patsey, “do you see old Hog Jaw beckoning me to come to him?”

With a quick glance, Solomon saw Epps gesturing to Patsey, who began to cry. She should keep working and act as though she hadn’t seen Epps, Solomon advised. But despite being drunk, Epps noticed that Solomon had said something to Patsey. Staggering up to Solomon, he demanded, “What did you say to Pats?”

Solomon didn’t answer the question, which made Epps even angrier. Suddenly he pulled his knife out of his pocket and tried to stab Solomon, as he had Old Abram. Solomon jumped out of the way. Shouting “I’ll cut your black throat!” Epps chased him around the field for the next hour. Only when Mrs. Epps came out of the house and told her husband to stop did he put his knife away.

Patsey was at the center of an even more disturbing incident involving Solomon. On Sundays the slaves took their dirty laundry down to Bayou Boeuf to wash it. One Sunday Mary Epps gave all the slaves except Patsey pieces of soap for the clothes washing.

Rather than make a big issue about a piece of soap, Patsey walked a short way to the Shaw plantation. She borrowed some soap from a friend, then began to wash her dirty laundry in the stream with the other slaves. What Patsey didn’t know was that Epps had been spying on his slaves from a distance and had seen her leave without permission. For going off on her own, Epps ordered that she be whipped—and that Solomon inflict the punishment. If Solomon refused, said Epps, he would personally give both Patsey and Solomon the beating of their lives.

Realizing that he was left with no choice, Solomon took the whip from Epps as Patsey was tied to stakes in the ground. Then he began lashing Patsey—trying to inflict as little suffering upon her as he could.

“Strike harder!” Epps warned Solomon. “Strike harder, or your turn will come next, you scoundrel!” Meanwhile, Mary Epps watched from her porch with a look of satisfaction.

After lashing Patsey until her back was covered with blood, Solomon felt sick about what he had done. He threw the whip down and announced that he would beat Patsey no more, whatever the consequences. Epps grabbed the whip and lashed Patsey with it until she lost consciousness. Then he ordered Solomon to take Patsey to her cabin.

After that, Patsey was never the same. Often in her sleep she would sit up and plead for mercy, as she relived the terrible beating in her nightmares. Although she never blamed Solomon for what had happened, she lost her zest for life and began to brood most of the time. The other slaves said that Patsey was suffering from a broken heart.

Another heart was broken because of Patsey’s whipping: Solomon Northup’s.