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David Kostroub
History 147
Dr. Terry Scott
10-12-2017
Twelve Years a Slave
How much can one accomplish in a twelve-year span? You would believe one’s life may
completely alter in such a span. Salomon Northup, born on July 10, 1808, was a freeborn
African-American citizen of New York. During the year of 1827, slavery was abolished in New
York. Yet nearly every living African-American citizen in the north, lived in constant distress
with the thought of being kidnapped by slave catchers and forced into slavery rolling through
their mind. In 1840, New York accepted a law that was created to protect the free citizens from
being kidnapped and taken into slavery.
However, not everything goes to plan in life. Salomon Northup, a prosperous hard
working man, was given an opportunity that could have possibly set him up financially for a long
time. He was offered the promise of easy/quick employment, constant money, and the assurance
this would change his life for the positive. In all due respect to what would happen to him after
he accepted this role, it did in fact change his life, for the worst. Salomon was tricked,
kidnapped, drugged, beaten, and sold into slavery, right in the nation’s capital.
1
His entire life
had just taken an enormous downfall. He went from being a free man living in Saratoga, to a
