#ThisDayInHistory Solomon Northup Gained His Freedom From Slavery
On this day in 1853, Solomon Northrup, a free Black man who had been kidnapped and sold into slavery, legally obtained his freedom.
He later wrote about his experiences in Twelve Years a Slave.
A free-born African American from New York, he was the son of a freed slave and a free woman of color.
Northup was a farmer, a professional violinist, and a landowner in Washington County, New York.
In 1841, he was offered a traveling musician's job and went to Washington, D.C. (where slavery was legal); he was drugged, kidnapped, and sold as a slave.
He was shipped to New Orleans, purchased by a planter, and held as a slave for 12 years in the Red River region of Louisiana, mainly in Avoyelles Parish.
He remained a slave until he met Samuel Bass, a Canadian working on his plantation who helped get word to New York, where state law provided aid to free New York citizens kidnapped and sold into slavery.
The slave trader in Washington, D.C., James H. Birch, was arrested and tried, but acquitted because District of Columbia law at the time prohibited Northup as a black man from testifying against white people.
Later, in New York State, his northern kidnappers were located and charged. But, the case was tied up in court for two years because of jurisdictional challenges and finally dropped when Washington, D.C., was found to have jurisdiction.
The D.C. government did not pursue the case. Those who kidnapped and enslaved Northup received no punishment.
In his first year of freedom, Northup wrote and published a memoir, Twelve Years a Slave (1853). He lectured on behalf of the abolitionist movement, giving more than two dozen speeches throughout the Northeast about his experiences to build momentum against slavery.
#ThisDayInHistory
January 4, 1853