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124 quotes from Solomon Northup: 'What difference is there in the color of the soul?', 'Life is dear to every living thing; the worm that crawls upon the ground will struggle for it.', and 'There may be humane masters, as there certainly are inhuman ones—there may be slaves well-clothed, well-fed, and happy, as there surely are those half ...
Discover Solomon Northup famous and rare quotes. Share Solomon Northup quotations about slaves. "My back is thick with scars for protesting..."
In Chapter 14, Solomon Northup takes a rare moment to offer his own ideas on the origin and perpetuation of slavery. Here Solomon speaks from a conceptual distance and in essence states that many slavers themselves are not directly to blame for their inherited cruelty. He posits that the Southerners are desensitized to the daily violence they ...
- Who Was Solomon Northup?
- Early Life
- Establishes Family and Farm
- Taken Captive
- Horrors of Slavery
- Freed in 1853 and Death
- Legacy and Films
Solomon Northup grew up a free man, working as a farmer and violinist while having a family. He was lured south and kidnapped in 1841 and enslaved for more than a decade, enduring horribly violent conditions. Northup was freed in 1853 with help from colleagues and friends. His experiences are the subject of the book and film 12 Years a Slave.
Northup was born in July 1808 in Minerva, New York. His father Mintus had once been enslaved but was released upon his former master's death, and hence Solomon and his older brother Joseph grew up knowing freedom. Northup worked with his father on a farm growing up, and also took to books and playing the violin.
On Christmas Day in 1829, Northup wed Anne Hampton, a woman of multi-racial descent. The couple went on to have three children — Elizabeth, Margaret and Alonzo. Solomon and Anne established a farm in 1832 in Kingsbury, with Northup also having a reputation in the community as the most excellent of fiddlers. With his wife also able to earn income fo...
While seeking employment in March 1841, Northup met two men who said they were affiliated with a circus. Initially only intending to accompany the men to New York and provide violin accompaniment for their act, Northup was convinced to travel with them further south to Washington, D.C. There he was drugged by the men, held captive, severely beaten ...
Northup was forced to do a variety of tasks while in captivity and never revealed to his peers that he had once lived free for fear of him being sent farther away. He observed and later recounted the plight of others like Eliza, whose young son Randall was sold and taken away from her at an auction in New Orleans. Northup was eventually sold in 184...
Samuel Bass, an anti-slavery Canadian carpenter visiting the Beouf plantation, befriended Northup and reached out to friends of the musician back in Saratoga Springs, looking for verification that he had been a free member of the community. Lawyer Henry B. Northup, who was part of the family from which Mintus and his clan took their name, travelled...
Years later, filmmaker/photographer Gordon Parks released an American Playhouse film on Northup's life, Solomon Northup's Odyssey. And at the end of the millennium, Saratoga Springs resident Renee Moore established the event "Solomon Northup Day: A Celebration of Freedom," which was set up by the city as an annual occurrence in 2002. In 2013, the f...
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Enjoy the best Solomon Northup Quotes at BrainyQuote. Quotations by Solomon Northup, American Businessman, Born July 10, 1808. Share with your friends.
1 Inhumanity. 2 Heaven/Hell. 3 Oppression. 4 FAQs. Inhumanity. Alas! I had not then learned the measure of “man’s inhumanity to man,” nor to what limitless extent of wickedness he will go for the love of gain. This powerful quote from ‘ Twelve Years a Slave ’ encapsulates a profound and distressing truth about human nature.
