Twelve Years a Slave - Enhanced Edition (34 page)

Perhaps because of these conclusions, New York provided a method for slaves to become free, as Solomon Northup was:

In New York State, the gradual Manumission Act of 1799 stated that the children of slaves born after July 4th of that year were to be freed at the ages of twenty-eight and twenty-five, respectively, depending on whether they were male or female. The Act of 1817 freed all slaves as of July 4, 1827. [See Armstead, et al., 5]

20.
Solomon Northup was twice convicted of assault and battery, once in February 1834 and on May 1, 1834. He was again convicted of assault and battery on May 1, 1839, as shown in the Court of Oyer & Terminer, Ballston Spa, New York [See Ballston Spa vs. Northup].

While Solomon was a slave on Bayou Boeuf in Louisiana, his family was growing up. Alonzo, his son, served honorably as a Union soldier:

Private Alonzo D. Northrup [
sic
] enlisted #1028 as laborer, page 27, on February 15, 1864; Company F, U.S. Colored Infantry; described as black and 5’8” tall; saw action at Beaufort, South Carolina as a teamster on July 7, 1864, transferred to the 20th U.S. troops as per instructions from the War Department, mustered out on August 28, 1865, at Hilton Head, South Carolina. [National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D. C.]

21.
Neighbors seemed not to have been surprised about his sudden absence because he was known to leave home without explanation and return when he chose [See Lewis to Morton, March 29, 1962].

Chapter Two

22.
Northup, in testimony given at the hearing of the case, described his meeting with the strangers in Moon’s Tavern, who later turned out to be his kidnappers:

‘Northup testified that he first saw Merrill and Russell at Mr. Moon’s Tavern at Saratoga Springs; they did not appear to have any particular business; they wished to hire witness to go to New York with them to drive their carriage and play the fiddle in a circus company to which they said they belonged.’ This testimony was given by Solomon Northup at an examination held before Abel Meeker and David W. Maxwell, Esquires, Justices of the Peace, at Ballston Spa, on Tuesday, July 11, 1854. [See “The Northup Kidnapping Case”]

A man named Prindle, a friend of Solomon since 1826 or 1827, added significant details regarding the kidnappers. His testimony was at the same hearing held at Ballston Spa on Tuesday, July 11, 1854, and reported in the
Saratoga Whig
:

Identifies Merrill, and says he saw him on Montgomery Hall stoop at Saratoga Springs, and a day or two after saw him in a carriage there; another man in carriage who had long hair and large whiskers. Saw Solomon Northup drive away; the carriage containing the two men. Had some conversation with Solomon before he started, told him that he had not better go off with those men as they would not know him when they got away south; others told Solomon the same story.

On cross examination, Prindle says, he remembers having prisoners pointed out to him as [being] from the south and about to buy Mr. Seaman’s horse. Solomon told witness that he would risk the prisoners selling him; told him again he had better not go south with them, meant to the slave states. [See “The Northup Kidnapping Case”]

23.
Merrill Brown was the alias of Alexander Merrill, and Abram Hamilton was the alias of Joseph Russell [See “Sol. Northup’s Kidnappers,” 2].

24.
The fact that the neighbors did not consider Solomon’s disappearance in 1841 unusual may have related to the circumstances in which he lived, with irregular employment at different jobs over the years:

The brevity of this summer season left year-round black workers/residents of Saratoga scrambling to make ends meet during the long months of winter unemployment. Several strategies helped them survive these lean times, but chief among them were reliance on summer savings and the use of credit . . . Very few Afro-Americans escaped the economic marginality and financial insecurity brought on by their seasonal and/or low-paying positions at work [See Armstead et al., 29-30].

25.
As recorded by James Goode:

Charles Dickens, who visited Washington in 1842, a year after Northup was abducted, describes his stay at a Washington hotel which almost certainly was Gadsby’s. Created in 1826 out of a row of houses, the hotel was sold and remodeled extensively in 1844 after Gadsby’s death. At that time it was renamed the National Hotel. Dickens describes it as “a long row of small houses fronting on the street and opening at the back upon a common yard . . .” It would therefore have been easy to conduct Northup unseen out into the yard and thence into an alley alongside of the hotel. Dickens also describes buildings across the street from the hotel. One of these may have been the source of the light seen by Northup as he emerged from the alley onto Pennsylvania Avenue [See Goode, 168-169]. (Editor’s note: There are inaccuracies in the Goode piece cited, including an error in the hotel’s location and the year Dickens stayed there.) [See Dickens, 115-116]

26.
The drug slipped into Solomon’s drinks could have been belladonna or laudanum, or a combination of both drugs [Northup, 1968 edition, 19].

Chapter Three

27.
Both names, Burch and Birch, are listed in the U.S. Census 1840 as living in Washington, D.C. Wilson spelled the name as Burch, but the spelling given by the commander of the Auxiliary Guard to Joseph C. Lewis during the trial of the kidnappers was Birch. Thus, the editor is spelling the name with an “i,” believing this to be the spelling used by the trader, James H. Birch. The thirty-nine-year old resident of Washington, D. C., was a major slave trader at the head of what the editor calls a Reverse Underground Railroad. The full extent of the criminal operation is not known, but it involved a number of professional criminals in the business of kidnapping people of dark complexion and selling them in the southern slave market, where there was a need for labor on the plantations. Slave traders at Richmond, Virginia, and New Orleans, with close ties with Birch, are cited in the Northup story, and there may have been others. There is still the question of the connection of the brig,
Orleans
, with the ring. Other men kidnapped en route to New Orleans and placed on the
Orleans
experienced captures closely resembling that of Solomon Northup. Birch owned considerable property in the capital and evidently enjoyed important contacts with powerful political figures. In 1852 he was appointed commander of the Auxiliary Guard, a volunteer group working with the police force in the City of Washington and the District of Columbia [See People vs. Merrill and Russell]. When a deposition from Birch was taken by Joseph C. Lewis in Washington, D.C., during the trial of The People vs. Alexander Merrill and Joseph Russell, the document read:

By virtue of the annexed commission I proceeded to open the Same in the City of Washington and District of Columbia on the 6th day of January, 1855, when James H. Birch, one of the witnesses named in the Said Commission, personally appeared and, after being duly Sworn made the following answer to interrogatories in Said Commission:

I state that my name is James H. Birch—that I was fifty years old in October last—that I was appointed by the Mayor of Washington, D.C. to the Command of the Auxiliary Guard in June, 1853, which said Guard is part of the Police force of the City and District aforesaid and which office I still hold—that I reside in the City of Washington, D.C. [See People vs. Merrill and Russell]

28.
Theophilus Freeman, former partner of James H. Birch, managed Freeman’s Slave Pen in New Orleans and continued a business relationship with Birch. This is clear with the nine slaves belonging to Birch being shipped on the brig
Orleans
, documented by the ship manifest, to Theophilus Freeman at New Orleans. An advantage to selling kidnapped slaves in New Orleans, the way Solomon Northup was sold, was less risk of exposure of the crime, since slaves were sold into remote west central Louisiana. Rural Louisiana was at the edge of the western frontier with sparse population and difficult communication with the urban North. Historian Judith Kelleher Schafer describes Freeman:

A series of cases involving New Orleans slave dealer Theophilus Freeman dealt with simulated sales and donations intended to defraud creditors. Freeman was an unscrupulous businessman who falsified slave ages, sold young children away from their parents, and whipped and kicked bondsmen in the slave pen . . . Freeman lived with his ex-slave and mistress, a mulatto laundress named Sarah Conner, who had purchased her freedom from him in 1841 for $700. Just after her emancipation Freeman’s finances became shaky, and he transferred most of his assets to her to avoid having them seized by creditors. He was arrested several times in 1845 because authorities feared he would flee the state. Litigation concerning Freeman’s fraudulent sales, secret donations, and transactions to Conner’s name continued until 1861, when it was interrupted by the Civil War, during which time Freeman left New Orleans. [See Schafer, 175]

The civil cases against the property of Theophilus Freeman include one, at least, for the value of his mistress, Sarah Conner, which found that Sarah Conner was entitled to her freedom on May 6, 1846 [See Dunbar vs. Conner et al
.
].

However, the Bank of Kentucky and its president and directors, as creditors of Theophilus Freeman, sued both Sarah Conner and Theophilus Freeman on November 9, 1846. The suit was to cancel the ruling allowing Sarah Conner her freedom and return her to status as property of Theophilus Freeman; her value then could be used to offset his debt. The judgment was made by default and then confirmed. Sarah Conner appealed to the Louisiana Supreme Court, but the judgment was sustained [See Bank of Kentucky vs. Conner et al.].

In another civil suit against Freeman in 1860, John Valentine, executor for the estate of Whiting Valentine, filed to be paid from assets held by the sheriff as the result of other creditors’ suits [See Theophilus Freeman vs. His Creditors].

Court cases against Theophilus Freeman include: Civil Code, Art. 190, p. 29; Union Bank of Maryland vs. Freeman, #4938, 3 Rob. 485 (1843); Mielkie vs. Freeman, #5238, 5 Rob. 524 (1843); Lambeth and Thompson vs. Freeman (Unreported) Commercial Court of New Orleans #6492 (1845); Freeman vs. Profilet, (Unreported) Parish Court of New Orleans (1845); Romer vs. Woods, #1846, 6 Louisiana Annual 29 (1851), 25; Freeman vs. his creditors, #948, 3 Louisiana Annual 669 (1848); Bank of Kentucky vs. Conner, #1315, 4 Louisiana Annual 365 (1849); Dunbar vs. Conner, Ann. 669 (1848); Dunbar vs. Conner, Unreported Louisiana Supreme Court Case #1700 (1850, 1851); Freeman vs. His Creditors, #6473, 15 Louisiana Annual 397 (1860).

29.
Ebenezer Radburn testified on January 18, 1854, before the magistrate after the arrest in Washington, D.C., of James H. Birch, Benjamin O. Shekels, Benjamin A. Thorn, and Ebenezer Radburn. Radburn testified that he was forty-eight years old and the keeper of Williams Slave Pen. He said that he had known Birch for fourteen years. [See a sketch of Williams Slave Pen and a photo of Birch’s slave trading business in the Extras & More section of our website at
www.TwelveYearsASlave.org
].

30.
A description of Freeman’s slave pen was left by Georgia slave John Brown in his memoirs. The layout of the slave pen suggests something of what a slave’s life might have been like in such a place. In a chapter of his book entitled “The Slave-Pen in New Orleans,” Brown recalled:

I have stated that the slave-pen to which I was taken, stood facing the St. Charles Hotel. It had formerly been an old Bank. It consisted of a block of houses forming a square, and covering perhaps an acre of ground. The centre of this square had been filled up with rubbish and stones, as high as the back of the first floor of the houses, so as to form a solid foundation for the yard of the pen, which, it will be understood, was level with the first floor, and nicely graveled for the slaves to take exercise in. The houses themselves were built upon brick pillars or piers, the spaces between which had been converted into stores. Of these there were a great number, one of them being used as the negro auction-room. The accommodation for the negroes consisted of three tiers of rooms, one above the other, the yard I have spoken of being common to all. There were two entrances to the pen, one for the ‘niggers,’ the other for visiters [
sic
] and buyers. The windows in front, which overlooked the street, were heavily barred, as were those which overlooked the yard. It was an awfully gloomy place, notwithstanding the bustle that was always going on in it.

I may as well describe here the order of the daily proceedings, as during the whole time I remained in the pen, they were, one day with the other, pretty much the same. A mulatto named Bob Freeman, and who was called the Steward, had charge of the arrangements that concerned the slaves. He had a great deal of power of a particular kind, and did very nearly what he liked in the way of making them comfortable or otherwise; shutting them up if he disliked them, or they displeased him: according as they favourites [
sic
] with him or not. The pen would contain about five hundred, and was usually full. The men were separated from the women, and the children from both; but the youngest and handsomest females were set apart as the concubines of the masters, who generally changed mistresses every week. I could relate, in connection with this part of my subject, some terrible things I know of, that happened. [See Brown, 110-111]

31.
In the case of Radburn, his cruelty was apparently not tempered by the financial interests of the slave trading enterprise. Ward states in his book on Richmond that “scars upon a slave’s back were considered evidence of rebelliousness or unruly spirit and hurt his sale” [See Ward, 55].

32.
Clemens Ray may be the man listed as Clem Woodard, #36, a nineteen year-old male, 5’7” tall, and of black complexion, one of the slaves of James H. Burch [
sic
] listed as sailing on the
Orleans
, March, 1841 [See
Orleans
manifest available in our Extras $ More section of our website
www.TwelveYearsASlave.org
].