Once Northup was in the nation's capital, the men drugged him, marketed him as a slave, and earned several hundred dollars for their crime.

In 1841 two visitors tricked him into traveling to Washington, DC, to earn money in a circus. At least two historians, Sue Eakin and Joseph Logsdon, have confirmed that Northup presented a remarkably accurate picture of antebellum slavery and plantation society near the Red River in Louisiana.Īs indicated in both the book and movie, Solomon Northup lived as a free man with his wife and children in Saratoga Springs, New York. Director Steve McQueen succeeded in connecting emotions to history, making viewers care about Solomon Northup's sudden descent into slavery.Īpologists may dismiss the gut-wrenching picture of human bondage drawn in 12 Years a Slave as over-the-top, Hollywood melodrama-arguing that master-slave relations were never as bad as the movie suggests-but McQueen has a convenient response: this is a movie based substantially on Solomon Northup's 1853 narrative, Twelve Years a Slave.

The movie felt believable, they reported, due not only to the caption indicating its basis in fact, but because the settings and characters looked authentic. When asked about their intense reaction to the film, some described feeling as though they had just experienced slavery. The audience leaving the theater after a recent screening of 12 Years a Slave looked deeply shaken.

Edwin epps death