It had been used to house slaves being shipped from Northern Virginia to Louisiana.
EDWIN EPPS FREE
My sufferings I can compare to nothing else than the burning agonies of hell!" Following the lashings, Birch told Solomon that he would kill him if he told anyone else that he was a free man.īelow is a picture of Birch's slave pen in Alexandria, Virginia, circa 1865. Solomon addresses the lashings in his memoir, "Even now the flesh crawls upon my bones, as I recall the scene. To suppress Solomon's claims of being a free man, Birch whipped him with a paddle until it broke and then with a cat-o'-nine tails, delivering a severe number of lashes. The slave dealer refused and instead called upon another man, Ebenezer Rodbury, to help hold Solomon down by his wrists. Like in the movie, he also told Birch where he was from and asked Birch to remove the irons that were shackling him. Birch (spelled "Burch" in the book and movie) that he was a free man. Shortly after his kidnapping, Solomon did try to tell the slave dealer James H. Shortly after leaving his room and heading into the streets, his memory escapes him and the next thing he remembers is waking up handcuffed and chained to the floor of the Williams Slave Pen in Washington, D.C. They told him that he needed to come with them to see a physician. He recalls several people entering the room where he had been staying. He was unable to sleep and was stricken with severe thirst. His sickness progressed until he was insensible by evening. As he states in his memoir, he did not become intoxicated.īy late afternoon, he fell ill with a severe headache and nausea. At the saloons, the two men would serve themselves, and they would then pour a glass and hand it to Solomon.
They were observing the festivities that were part of the great funeral procession of General Harrison. He had spent the day with Alexander Merrill and Joseph Russell making stops at a number of saloons in Washington, D.C.
with them, reasoning that the circus would pay him high wages, and since it was the summer season, the troupe would be traveling back north anyway.ĭid Solomon's kidnappers really drug him?Īs he indicated in his autobiography, the real Solomon Northup is not positive that he was in fact drugged, however, he remembers various clues that led him to that conclusion. Once in New York City, Russell and Merrill encouraged Solomon to go to Washington, D.C. They only delivered one performance to a sparse crowd, and it consisted of Russell and Merrill performing somewhat elementary feats like tossing balls, frying pancakes in a hat, ventriloquism and causing invisible pigs to squeal. The two men, later identified as Joseph Russell and Alexander Merrill, asked Solomon to accompany them on a short journey to New York City and to participate with them in performances along the way. They identified themselves using fake names and told him that they were part of a circus company that was looking for someone with his precise musical talent. The men had heard that Solomon was an "expert player of the violin". Solomon met the two men in the village of Saratoga Springs, New York. In his memoir, he calls the violin "the ruling passion of my youth," going on to say, "It has also been the source of consolation since, affording pleasure to the simple beings with whom my lot was cast, and beguiling my own thoughts, for many hours, from the painful contemplation of my fate."ĭid two men really trick Solomon into going to Washington, D.C. During our investigation into the 12 Years a Slave true story, we learned that Solomon began playing the violin during the leisure hours of his youth, after he finished his main duty of helping his father on the farm. In May 1863, during the American Civil War, the Union Army's 110th New York Infantry Regiment freed Patsey from slavery, and her life and fate thereafter was unknown.Did Solomon Northup really play the violin?
In 1853, Northup regained his freedom, but Patsey was doomed to another ten years of slavery. On one occassion, she was stripped naked and severely lashed by Epps after she briefly left the plantation to retrieve soap from a neighbor's house, causing her to wish death upon herself.
Epps' wife Mary Elvira Robert frequently abused Patsey out of jealousy, but Epps said that he would sooner have his wife return to Cheneyville than sell Patsey. She was frequently raped by Epps, starting in her teenage years, and she was whipped if she resisted. In 1843, she was sold to Edwin Epps in Bunkie, Avoyelles Parish, Louisiana, and she was nicknamed the "queen of the fields" for her cotton-picking skills she befriended fellow slave Solomon Northup during his ten years on Epps' plantation. Patsey was born into slavery in South Carolina in 1830, the daughter of an enslaved Guinean woman who came to America via Cuba. Patsey (1830-1863) was an African-American woman who was enslaved by Louisiana slave owner Edwin Epps during the mid-19th century.
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