SOURCE: Introduction to Twelve Years a Slave: By Solomon Northup, Louisiana State University Press, 1968, pp. ix-xxiv.

[In the following essay, Eakin and Logsdon consider the significance of Northup's narrative and provide an overview of the primary and secondary sources which preceded their edition.]

The story of Solomon Northup approaches the incredible. “It is a strange history,” wrote Frederick Douglass when the book was first published in 1853; “its truth is stranger than fiction.” The nineteenth-century title itself evokes disbelief: Twelve Years a Slave, Narrative of Solomon Northup, a Citizen of New York, Kidnapped in Washington City in 1841, and Rescued in 1853, from a Cotton Plantation Near the Red River in Louisiana. This—the abduction of a free Negro adult from the North and his enslavement in the South—provides a sensational element which cannot be matched in any of the dozens of narratives written by former slaves. Douglass, who had already detailed his own harrowing experiences under slavery, recognized the compounded tragedy in Northup's account: “Think of it: For thirty years a man, with all a man's hopes, fears and aspirations—with a wife and children to call him by the endearing names of husband and father—with a home, humble it may be, but still a home … then for twelve years a thing, a chattel personal, classed with mules and horses. … Oh! it is horrible. It chills the blood to think that such are.”¹

This sensationalism, which made Northup's narrative a best seller of its genre, might very reasonably call its historical value into question. Although his abduction was certainly not unique,² the seizure and sale of free Negroes was not a normal occurrence in antebellum days. Even Harriet Beecher Stowe acknowledged that the known cases of such crimes were rare and, when discovered by Southern authorities, were “generally tried with great fairness and impartiality.”³

Nevertheless, despite the bizarre and almost unbelievable aspects of Solomon Northup's story, the leading students of American slavery have universally praised its historical value. Kenneth Stampp relied upon it heavily; Stanley Elkins thought it “particularly convincing”; and Ulrich B. Phillips, who questioned the authenticity of slave memoirs as a matter of course, singled out Northup's autobiography as “a vivid account of plantation life from the under side.”⁴

The tragic turn in Northup's life gave him a unique set of qualifications for observation and analysis. He entered slavery educated, curious, and fully aware of his former freedom and dignity. Without that prior experience it is doubtful that he would have been able to present so detailed and accurate a description of slave life and plantation society. His thirty-two years in New York had given him a perspective which he could fruitfully apply to the whole Southern scene. There are many other travel accounts of the Old South, but the visitors who wrote about slavery only observed it; they did not endure its hardships. Neither the veil of color nor the barriers of status obscured Northup's vision. He shared the experiences of Southern slaves both as an outside critic and as a fellow Negro chattel. No other commentator on American slavery has those credentials.

No other slave has left such a detailed picture of life in the Gulf South—the dynamic locale of the “peculiar institution” during the three decades before the Civil War.⁵ Relatively few slaves ever managed to win their freedom from this region, either by manumission or by escape. Almost all of the slave narrators, therefore, came from the border states or the Atlantic seaboard.⁶ Without the legal assistance due him as a citizen of New York, Solomon Northup would surely have died—silent—along the banks of the Red River in Louisiana. Unaided flight, as he himself discovered, was almost beyond possibility, and manumission was quite unlikely. To have freed Northup voluntarily in 1853, his master would have had to win the support of three-fourths of the local police jury and, in addition, post $150 in order to send Northup to Africa—when he could easily have sold him for over $2,000.⁷

Shortly after his rescue from Louisiana, Northup apparently decided to publish his memoirs. Without any fear of recapture, he could tell his full story immediately—unlike other fugitives who either had to use pseudonyms or had to wait until after the Civil War. The appetite of Northerners for such reading had already been amply demonstrated. If Northup was unaware of this readers' market, he soon learned about it. The Washington correspondent for the New York Times, who was the first reporter to broadcast Northup's story, quickly pointed to its striking similarity to Uncle Tom's Cabin, the novel which was sweeping the Western world.⁸ The reporter's long interview with the homeward-bound Northup reappeared in many Northern newspapers, and Harriet Beecher Stowe herself seized upon the article as a “striking parallel” to her novel. Then at work on The Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin, she related the facts of Northup's enslavement and noted “the singular coincidence that this man was carried to a plantation in the Red River country, that same region where the scene of Tom's captivity was laid.”⁹

Northup's return to his family in Glens Falls, New York, on the evening of January 20, 1853, kept the local community buzzing for some time.¹⁰ The morning after his arrival a large reception was held for him at Sandy Hill (now Hudson Falls). During that reception, or shortly thereafter, a local lawyer named David Wilson arranged to help Northup publish his autobiography. Unlike most of the amanuenses of slave narratives, Wilson was not an abolitionist. Although he was a newly elected member of the state legislature, there is no evidence that he ever tried to reap any political advantage from his association with the book. Like other neighbors and friends of Northup, he merely became intrigued with the tragedy and recognized its publishing potential.

A former superintendent of the area's public schools, Wilson had already written some poetry and local history. None of his writings, however, dealt with slavery; he concentrated almost entirely on matters of local concern. The Democratic newspaper in his hometown indicated his reputation in the community by gracefully accepting his election to the state legislature in 1852: “Mr. Wilson is not only one of the most eloquent orators at the bar, but one of the purest and sweetest poets in northern New York. We are sorry he is a Whig.”¹¹

There is no evidence that Wilson ever became a convert to antislavery ranks, even after his encounter with Northup. Wilson wrote two other books, but neither of these were concerned with slavery. The first, The Life of Jane McCrea, recounted a local Indian massacre during Burgoyne's march to disaster at Saratoga in 1777; the second, Henrietta Robinson, detailed the life of an insane murderess whose highly publicized trial took place in Troy, New York, in 1855.¹² Both books, like Northup's narrative, were obvious attempts to capitalize on rather sensational stories of local interest. While they may demonstrate Wilson's interest in quick profits, they do not show any abiding concern in antislavery propaganda. The prose style of the narrative clearly belongs to Wilson. Even a cursory look at his subsequent books of 1853 and 1855 quickly indicates a consistency of phrasing and composition. There is no reason, however, to doubt his statement, in the original preface of the work, that he had dedicated himself to an accurate transcription of Northup's reminiscences.

Wilson and Northup worked rapidly on their joint project. Within three months of Northup's return to New York, they had a revised manuscript ready for publication. By the middle of July, copies of the book were in the hands of the reviewers, who helpfully noted its similarity to Uncle Tom's Cabin. The newspaper of Thurlow Weed, Whig party boss of New York, made the narrative the topic of a lead editorial entitled, “Uncle Tom's Cabin—No. 2.”¹³ When the highly partisan Democratic newspaper in Sandy Hill first heard that the work was in preparation, it sarcastically labeled the project “Uncle Sol.”¹⁴ But Wilson and Northup apparently did not mind the comparison; indeed, in an obvious attempt to capitalize on the phenomenal success of her novel, they dedicated their book to Harriet Beecher Stowe.

The narrative was an immediate success; the first printing of eight thousand copies was sold within a month. In subsequent editions the authors added to their dedication page a portion of Mrs. Stowe's reference to Northup in The Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin, which had just appeared. The printing of the narrative continued through 1856, and over thirty thousand copies were sold. Although never approaching the million mark of Mrs. Stowe's fictional account, Northup's true life story was one of the most profitable of its kind. Its sales induced the publishers, Derby and Miller, to take on other slave narratives, including an expanded edition of Frederick Douglass' 1845 autobiography.

Despite the obvious pressures to duplicate the fictional images in Uncle Tom's Cabin, Northup presents a well-balanced narrative. His recollections include many dreadful episodes, but he presents much more than indiscriminate accusation. He gives a detailed, rather straightforward survey of his life as a slave. At no point does he strain the reader's credulity by relating obvious impossibilities. Reviewers were quick to take note of his apparent lack of bitterness. A more recent critic, John Herbert Nelson, has written: “Northup's performance appears still more remarkable—as nothing short of astounding. … In spite of this horrible ordeal in the South, he still found it possible to recount his misfortunes with fairness and justice—a feat of no small magnitude, and one which few men, certainly few white men, would be capable.”¹⁵

Not that Northup fails to illustrate the cruelties of slavery; he points to them again and again, and he illustrates the psychological impact as well as the physical effects of forced servitude. But he also points out the amenities that made his life endurable. While clearly recognizing the brutalizing effects of slavery on individual men, he insists upon the resilience of the human spirit and the continuing eagerness for freedom among his fellow chattels in one of the worst slave areas in the Deep South. He makes distinctions in the behavior of his various masters and in the outlook of his fellow slaves. He recounts both the sensational and the ordinary aspects of plantation life; his recollections of the brutal detention, transportation, and sale of slaves are as vivid as any that have ever been written. At the same time, his descriptions of cotton and sugar production are recognized classics, and his observations of daily existence constitute one of the most detailed portrayals of the accommodations and routine of slaves in the Gulf South.

In the last analysis, however, Solomon Northup's narrative deserves to be believed not simply because he “seems” to be talking reasonably, not merely because he adorns his tale with compelling and persuasive details. At every point where materials exist for checking his account, it can be verified. The story, in its essentials, had already been told by Northup in his interview with the New York Times reporter in Washington—weeks before he met Wilson and arranged the publication of his experiences. At the abortive trial of the slave traders in 1853, witnesses had identified Northup and described his treatment at the hands of the traders. The official records in Louisiana, which have fortunately survived war, climate, and human carelessness, also document Northup's tale. These extant manuscript records verify every sale of Northup, as well as other property transactions of his masters.¹⁶ The descriptions of the Bayou Boeuf are unquestionably accurate in their smallest detail; in fact, the recall of time, distance, and people is almost uncanny. The misspelling of individual names is understandable; even though Northup was literate, as a chattel he seldom saw the written word and therefore had to depend on phonetics in preparing his account. Few autobiographers, however, have matched the precision of his recollection.

No one, in any case, came forward to challenge Northup's memory of things past. The only available reaction in Louisiana newspapers occurred shortly after his rescue. The Marksville Villager saw the whole incident as a vindication of Southern legal propriety. In describing the lack of resistance to Northup's rescuers, the editors complained: “What a contrast this presents to the treatment which Southerners receive at the hands of the North, when in pursuit of their fugitive slaves. … Well may the South boast of its justice and loyalty.”¹⁷

For Northup's Northern neighbors, his misfortune in the South remained a matter of concern for several years. Although the Democratic newspapers generally ignored the discussion of the autobiography, Whig editors gave it prominent attention. Northup personally distributed copies among his friends in the community. One of them, the editor of the Salem Press, was so moved by the tale that he urged his readers: “For the sake of humanity and truth, we bespeak for the work an extensive sale.”¹⁸

Of the thousands who eventually read the book, none was so important for Northup as Thaddeus St. John, a county judge from Fonda, New York. The narrative forced St. John to recall certain incidents of his trip to Washington, D.C. in 1841. In Baltimore, on his way to the Capitol, he had encountered two old friends from New York, Alexander Merrill and Joseph Russell, who were traveling with an unknown Negro companion.

The attitude of his friends, the judge remembered, was very strange. Knowing that Merrill went south frequently on gambling excursions, he blurted out to the younger man: “What are you doing here, Joe?” Merrill, however, rushed up and, motioning to the stranger, urged St. John not to use their real names. Later, in Washington, St. John met the same three men at their hotel on the eve of William Henry Harrison's funeral. He left them drinking there about eight o'clock and did not see them again until he arrived in Baltimore on his return trip to New York.

This time the two white men were alone, and their appearance had been drastically improved. Their long hair was cut and their beards were shaved clean; they wore new clothing and sported ivory canes and gold watches. Surprised by their sudden change of fortune, St. John laughingly accused them of selling their Negro friend or robbing some nabob in Washington. When he jokingly suggested that they must have received $500 for their former companion, Merrill told him to raise the price by $150. When questioned more seriously about where they had obtained this windfall, Russell explained that they had won the money from Southern gamblers.¹⁹ St. John returned home and never took any serious interest in the incident.

Northup's description of his kidnapping, however, was too close to what St. John remembered to be merely coincidental. Suspecting the truth, then, the judge arranged a meeting with Northup in Fonda shortly after he finished reading the narrative. They recognized each other instantly, and, after comparing notes, both became convinced that Russell and Merrill were the infamous kidnappers. With this information Solomon contacted his rescuer, Henry B. Northup, who was equally determined to apprehend the kidnappers.

After additional probing in central New York, the two men tracked down the culprits. They luckily found Merrill visiting his parents for the July Fourth festivities; it was one of his infrequent visits to New York since taking up residence in the South in 1841. A local reporter described the dramatic encounter: “Merrill was arrested this morning at his mother's, at Wood Hollow, and brought here (Gloversville) for examination. Henry B. Northrop [sic.] has spent a great deal of time and money ferreting out the scoundrel, and they have no doubt got the man. Solomon identifies him without a doubt. Merrill has long been regarded as a desperate fellow. They found him asleep, with a heavy bowie knife and a brace of pistols on the floor by his side. The arrest has caused very general excitement.”²⁰

Within a few days, two police officers picked up Russell, who was then working as a canal boat captain on the Erie. Handcuffed, he was brought for arraignment to Ballston Spa, the seat of Saratoga County, where the kidnappers had first made contact with Northup in 1841. Russell and Merrill were given an immediate hearing. Northup, whose testimony was admissible in a New York court, pointed out the two men; Thaddeus St. John followed and stunned the courtroom with his long and incriminating story; and a third witness, Norman Pringle, who claimed that he had warned Solomon not to leave Saratoga with Merrill and Russell on that fateful day in 1841, added the finishing touches to the conclusive identification. The defendants' lawyer could only plead that the New York statute of limitations barred prosecution after the lapse of three years following the commission of a crime. District Attorney William T. Odell, however, insisted that the prisoners had been continuously committing the offense as long as Northup remained in slavery. The court agreed and indicted the defendants; they were released on bail of $5,000 each, pending trial in the fall.²¹

The trial opened on October 4, 1854, before a crowded and excited courtroom in Ballston Spa. Merrill and Russell had hoped to settle the matter with Solomon Northup out of court, but he refused. The defendants' lawyers therefore requested a postponement in order to obtain testimony from the slave traders in Washington, D.C. The court agreed; it put off the trial until February and, in the meantime, dispatched a deputy to obtain depositions from James H. Birch and Benjamin Shekell.²²

Birch, although one of the city's most notorious slave traders, was a man of some prominence in Washington; he served as the commander of the Auxiliary Guard which formed part of the Capital's police force. Having been embarrassed once by the Northup incident, he was no doubt anxious to avoid any further complicity in the crime. In his deposition, he once more claimed (as he had during his own trial in 1853) that he innocently purchased Northup from a Georgia planter named Brown. Elaborating this time on his former story, he also insisted that Northup participated voluntarily in the sale, that he “played, at least, an hour” on a borrowed fiddle to prove his worth and plainly said “that he was the property of this man—calling him master—that he was a slave and raised in his family in Georgia, that he knew the reason he wanted to sell him, that his master had been on a frolic and had got into a gambling house and lost all his money and that was the only way he had money to get home.” Birch continued with his amazing testimony:

I told him that if I bought him I should send him to the South. He replied that he would rather go South as he was raised in a Southern country. I asked him who he knew in Georgia. He mentioned a few names which I do not now recollect. In order to find if all was represented, I told him, if I purchased him, I should send him to the cotton fields where he would be severely punished and that I intended to whip him for a sample of what he would get. In answer to which the negro said, “My master has a right to sell me and I must submit”. … I will further state that after the sale of the negro to me by Brown both appeared to be very much affected at parting—so much so as to shed tears.²³

Even though the other slave trader, Benjamin Shekell, supported his partner's testimony, the lawyers for Merrill and Russell ignored the absurd depositions when the trial reopened on February 13, 1855. Instead, the defense based its case on legal technicalities. The four-part indictment against the kidnappers had been drawn from two laws passed in the early 1840's during the governorship of William H. Seward. The first law made it illegal to kidnap or entice any Negro out of the state with the intent of selling him into slavery. The second made it a criminal offense to sell any Negro into slavery.²⁴ The initial charge of the indictment was drawn up on the basis of the first law; the remaining charges on the basis of the second law. The accused pleaded not guilty to the first charge, and their lawyers maintained that the other parts of the indictment should be dismissed, since these were inapplicable. As the crime of selling Northup was committed in Washington, the courts of New York, they argued, had no jurisdiction over that offense.

Since the first law carried a maximum sentence of only ten years imprisonment, the prosecuting attorneys, William Odell and Henry B. Northup, refused to accept the challenge to the indictment. As a result, they were drawn into a legal thicket over the matter of jurisdiction. To settle the difficult question, the presiding judge ruled against the contested parts of the indictment, in order to have the point of law clarified before the state supreme court.²⁵

The supreme court considered the matter a few days later but withheld judgment until the next session. In the meantime, local Democratic newspapers opened their first racist attack on Northup, calling for the acquittal of Merrill and Russell. Whig newspapers, in turn, came to Northup's defense.²⁶ When the supreme court reassembled on July 13—almost a year after the opening of the trial—the justices in a 2 to 1 decision sustained the dismissal of the contested portions of the indictment.²⁷

Determined not to back down, the district attorney brought the case on a writ of error before the state court of appeals, the final arbiter of such matters in New York. In June, 1856—almost two years after the apprehension of the kidnappers—this court refused to rule on the indictment. Under New York law, the court of appeals could not rule on any part of an indictment while other parts remained unquestioned. Before deciding on the contested charges, therefore, the lower courts had to try Merrill and Russell on the first part of the indictment, that is, kidnapping or enticing Northup out of the state with the intention of selling him as a slave.²⁸

The litigation had dragged on for so long that New York newspapers apparently were tired of it; they ignored this last decision. Even the papers in Northup's own community failed to note the action of the court of appeals. Fully absorbed in the politics of “Bloody Kansas,” the citizens of the area seemed to lose interest in their once famous neighbor. The state, for one reason or another, never retried Merrill and Russell; the two apparently went unpunished for the crime.

Justice, therefore, never came to Solomon Northup, either in the South or in the North. He had no choice but to try and pick up his life where he had left it in 1841. He had received only a pathetic recompense for the stolen years—three thousand dollars for selling the copyright of his memoirs. With part of the money, he purchased some property in Glens Falls next to the home of his married daughter, Margaret.²⁹ With his wife and only son, Alonzo, he lived in the home of his son-in-law for the next several years. Two other Negro families, the Vanpelts and the Vanrankins, were Northup's immediate neighbors; together these households (a total of twenty-two persons) formed a small segregated island in Glens Falls. Solomon took up his old trade of carpentry; his son and son-in-law remained unemployed.³⁰

What finally became of Solomon Northup can only be conjectured. Property records of 1863 show that his wife and son-in-law sold their adjoining property that year.³¹ Solomon evidently had died, and his family now moved from the area, perhaps to Oswego, where his brother and son once lived. His simple, moving wish at the conclusion of the narrative was never honored; he does not rest in the churchyard where his father sleeps.

Shortly after the Civil War, Northup's narrative was republished by a Philadelphia firm. The editors made no attempt to ascertain the fate of its author. They felt that such an attempt was unnecessary since Northup's story had blended into the larger panorama of the nation's past.

To take in or to understand the exact status of such a people in all its bearings, we can pursue no better course than to live among them, to become one of them, to fall from a condition of freedom to one of bondage, to feel the scourge, to bear the marks of the brands, and the outrage of manacles. … It can be taken for what it is worth—a personal narrative of personal sufferings and keenly felt and strongly resented wrongs; but in our opinion, the individual will be lost or merged in the general interest and the work will be regarded as a history of an institution which our political economy has now happily superseded, but which, however much its existence may be regretted, should be studied—indeed, must be studied—by everyone whose interest in our country incites him to obtain a correct knowledge of her past existence.³²

One hundred years later, this still constitutes a valid judgment on the significance of Solomon Northup's life and the importance of his narrative.

Notes

1. Liberator, August 26, 1853, quoted from Frederick Douglass's Newspaper.

2. For a similar kidnapping case, see Kate E. R. Pickard, The Kidnapped and the Ransomed, Being the Personal Recollections of Peter Still and His Wife, Vina, After Forty Years of Slavery (Syracuse, 1856). Still was seized as a child in Philadelphia and sold as a slave in Kentucky. William Houston, a British seaman, was kidnapped in New Orleans; his experiences were recounted in the New Orleans Daily Delta, June 1, 1850. Depositions and records of Houston's suit for freedom are available in New Orleans, Fourth District Court, No. 3729.

3. Harriet Beecher Stowe, The Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin (London, 1853), 345.

4. Kenneth Stampp, The Peculiar Institution (New York, 1956), 60, 74, 90, 162, 287, 323, 359, 380; Stanley Elkins, Slavery (Chicago, 1959), 4; Ulrich B. Phillips, Life and Labor in the Old South (Boston, 1929), 219. Phillips made a similar judgment of the narrative in his earlier work, American Negro Slavery (New York, 1918), 445: “Though the books of this class are generally of dubious value this one has a tone which engages confidence.”

5. Neither James B. Sellers in his Slavery in Alabama (University, Ala., 1950) nor Charles S. Sydnor in his Slavery in Mississippi (New York, 1933) used any slave testimony. Joe Gray Taylor, however, was able to humanize his study with Northup's account. See his Negro Slavery in Louisiana (Baton Rouge, 1963), 49, 65, 66, 77, 108, 129, 130, 131, 149, 188, 189, 220.

6. There are more than eighty extant slave narratives; most, unfortunately, can only be found in a few specialized collections in the United States. For the best analysis of these accounts, see Charles H. Nichols, Many Thousand Gone (Leiden, Netherlands, 1963). This work is a revision of Nichols' more detailed dissertation, “A Study of the Slave Narrative” (Brown University, 1948). Two other dissertations have been written on the subject: Margaret Y. Jackson, “An Investigation of Biographies and Autobiographies of American Slaves. …” (Cornell University, 1954) and Marion W. Starling, “The Slave Narrative: Its Place in American Literary History” (New York University, 1946).

7. Taylor, Negro Slavery in Louisiana, 155-57. In St. Mary Parish, where Epps rented Northup during sugar cane harvests, slave prices in 1853 “were considered exceptionally high and at one judicial sale in the parish a Negro ‘in no way remarkable’ was sold for $2300.” Lynn Delaune (de Grummond), “A Social History of St. Mary Parish, 1845-1860,” Louisiana Historical Quarterly, XXXII (1949), 36.

8. New York Times, January 19, 20, 1853.

9. Stowe, The Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin, 342.

10. Saratoga Whig, January 21, February 4, 1953; Sandy Hill Herald, January 25, 1853; Salem Press, January 25, 1853.

11. Whitehall Democrat, February n. d., 1852. Quoted in Clarence E. Holden, “Local History Sketches,” (MS in the possession of Mrs. John T. Morton, town historian of Whitehall, N.Y.). The editors are indebted to Mrs. Morton for the information which she has collected about David Wilson.

12. David Wilson, Henrietta Robinson (Auburn, N.Y., 1855) and The Life of Jane McCrea, with an Account of Burgoyne's Expedition in 1777 (New York, 1853). The body of Jane McCrea, who was killed by Indians, was exhumed and reburied in 1852. The rekindling of local interest in the event probably led Wilson to write his account of the massacre.

13. Albany Evening Journal, July 18, 1853. A collection of reactions to the narrative appeared in the New York Tribune, August 19, 1853.

14. Sandy Hill Herald, March 8, 1853.

15. John Herbert Nelson, The Negro Character in American Literature (Lawrence, Kan., 1926), 62. Nelson unfortunately explained the magnanimity as one of the “virtues peculiar to the race.”

16. Property records have survived in two of the parishes in which Northup was sold, Avoyelles and Orleans. The records in Rapides Parish were destroyed by fire.

17. Marksville Villager, January 13, 1953, as quoted in the New Orleans Bee, January 22, 1853.

18. Salem Press, August 16, 1853.

19. The recollection of St. John is taken from his courtroom testimony which was reported in great detail by the Saratoga Whig, July 14, 1854.

20. Albany Evening Journal, July 9, 1854.

21. Saratoga Whig, July 14, 1854.

22. Ibid., October 6, 1854.

23. These depositions, along with other manuscript records of the trial, are in the files of the Clerk of Saratoga County, Box A83.

24. Ironically these laws were passed along with others in 1841—the year of Northup's kidnapping—in order to erase “the last vestiges of slavery from the state.” Edgar J. McManus, A History of Negro Slavery in New York (Syracuse, 1966), 179.

25. Saratoga Whig, February 16, 1855.

26. Ibid., February 23, 1855. An editorial from the Ballston Democrat appeared in the issue criticizing the position taken by the Saratoga Republican in regard to the trial.

27. Saratoga Whig, July 13, 1855. The court's decision and the minority dissent are in the office of the Clerk of Saratoga County, Box A83.

28. New York. Decisions of the Court of Appeals, Vol. 414, pp. 5-26.

29. Warren County Deed Records, Liber U, 297, Liber S, 379.

30. New York. Census Records (MS) Second Election District, Town of Queensbury, Warren County, June 9, 1855, House No. 110, 111, 112.

31. Warren County Deed Records, Liber 9, 527, 528.

32. Solomon Northup, Twelve Years a Slave (Philadelphia, 1869), xv-xvi.