Analyzing 'Twelve Years a Slave': A Free Black Man's Experience, Exams of Christianity

Download Analyzing 'Twelve Years a Slave': A Free Black Man's Experience and more Exams Christianity in PDF only on Docsity! How To Analyze Slave Narratives* Solomon Northup and Twelve Years a Slave *All images used in this classroom resource are from the digitized 1856 New York and Auburn edition of Twelve Years a Slave at the University of Toronto Libraries and made freely available at Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/twelveyearsslave00nortuoft Who Was Solomon Northup?  1808: Born in Minerva, New York  Son of former slave, Mintus Northup; Northup's mother is unknown.  1829: Married Anne Hampton, a free black woman.  They had three children.  Solomon was a farmer, a rafter on the Lake Champlain Canal, and a popular local fiddler. Life on the Plantation  Edwin Epps was Northup’s master for eight of his 12 years a slave.  Epps had a small cotton plantation in the Red River area of Louisiana.  Epps was a brutal master; used physical and sexual violence.  Like Ford, Epps valued Northup's abilities; promoted Northup to "slave driver”.  The slave driver had the highest status position on the plantation; his job was to get maximum productivity from other slaves, principally through whipping.  Northup had privileges, such as being protected from whippings.  Northup disliked his role and describes resisting Epps’s orders by “faking whippings” and trying to prevent them.  When Epps was in close proximity, Northup was compelled to carry out his orders to whip. Northup’s Rescue  1852: Northup meets a sympathetic Canadian carpenter in the summer.  With his aid, Northup put into motion a series of events that enabled him to be rescued.  Recognizing an ally, Northup enlisted the carpenter's help writing letters to two white friends in Saratoga, New York.  Ann Northup, his wife, spearheaded gathering the proper legal documentation to rescue her husband.  1853: Rescue on January 3 Efforts Failed to Bring the Washington, D.C. Slave Trader Who Illegally Purchased Northup to Justice.  This failure was in part due the fact that Northup was a black man who could not testify against a white man in Washington, D.C. courts.  Northup's later efforts to bring his kidnappers to justice also failed. Slave Narrative Types  Northup's narrative was a rarity because it had a ghostwriter. It falls into the category of an "As told to" narrative. Most slave narratives were of two types: (Note: It is a learning outcome that students understand these two types.)  “Written by himself/herself,” in which the former slave authored the narrative with little or no input from white editors.  “Narrated by himself/herself,” in which the former slave recited his experiences and views to an editor, who transcribed the oral narration and shaped it into a publishable text. Credibility, i.e. Truthfulness, of Narrative  Because Wilson was ghostwriter, the credibility of the narrative has been questioned.  Wilson, in the editor's preface, goes to lengths to convince the reader of the narrative's credibility. (In Activity 2 students analyze this text.)  Scholars today believe Twelve Years a Slave to be historically accurate and verifiable.  Credibility of slave narratives has always been an issue because:  They were propaganda for the antislavery movement;  The inhumanity they report can seem too depraved to be real;and  The involvement of white editors calls into question who is actually doing the writing. Bestseller in the 1850s; a 2013 Hollywood Movie  Whenever research has been done to authenticate the experiences and events reported in slave narratives, they have been verified.  By 1856, Twelve Years a Slave had sold 30,000 copies; this rivaled Frederick Douglass’ 1845 Narrative in its first five years of publication.  In 2013, 12 Years a Slave, a major commercial movie, was released. The book made The New York Times Bestseller List. How Did Slave Narratives Aim To Achieve Their Purpose?  Basic Civil Rights: Freedoms of worship, to vote, to contract one’s labor, and to marry—were, for enslaved black Americans, unavailable or severely constricted before 1865.  Vocabulary:  "undermine": to erode or destroy the foundation. As in "undermining the foundation" of representative democracy.  "pervert:” to distort or alter something from what it was originally intended to be. As in "perverting" the institution of marriage so that it is so compromised and mutated that it no longer has traits that define a "marriage“. Representative Democracy: How Did Slavery Undermine and Pervert It?  It did not/could not exist in half of the United States before 1865.  The Three-fifths Clause, guaranteed the slave states that every slave, though denied the right to vote, would count as three-fifths of a person for legislative apportionment in the Congress.  The power of the South in the Congress grew with the increase in numbers of slaves, even though representative democracy weakened (and was made a mockery of).  The legacy of slavery – segregation and racial discrimination – continued in the U.S. for most of the 20th century and continued to undermine democracy.  Many argue this legacy continues in more subtle forms today to undermine representative democracy.  It challenged a Protestant Reformation fundamental tenet: the equality of every soul before God. According to the "chattel principal“, a slave was property and could therefore not have a soul.  The institution of slavery held that blacks were inferior spiritually and needed white people to minister to and teach them how to believe and to be Christians. Protestant Christianity: How Did Slavery Undermine and Pervert It? Wrap-Up and Transition to Activities  To reiterate: the institution of slavery undermined and perverted the principal institutions upon which the nation was built.  Northup's narrative especially reveals how slavery undermined and perverted the institution of marriage and family.  The challenge in Activity 1 is to identify examples of slavery's corrosive effects on the institution of marriage and the family. Re-emphasize what these are, (see: F. 1.– 4.)  In Activity 2, the challenge is to analyze the Editor's Preface written by David Wilson, the ghostwriter. Identify and analyze how and why he aims in the preface to convince the reader of the narrative's truth.  When analyzing the text excerpts, students will have to "read between the lines" or make inferences about what the text implies. Bibliography and Image Citations All images are from Twelve Years a Slave: Narrative of Solomon Northup, a Citizen of New-York, Kidnapped in Washington City in 1841, and Rescued in 1853. New York and Auburn [N.Y.]: Miller, Orton, and Mulligan, 1856. At: Internet Archive https://archive.org/details/twelveyearsslave00nortuoft. Images are listed below. SOLOMON IN HIS PLANTATION SUIT [Title Page Image]; SCENE IN THE SLAVE PEN AT WASHINGTON; SEPERATION [sic] OF ELIZA AND HER LAST CHILD; CHAPIN RESCUES SOLOMON FROM HANGING; THE STAKING OUT AND FLOGGING OF THE GIRL PATSEY; SCENE IN THE COTTON FIELD, SOLOMON DELIVERED UP; ARRIVAL HOME, AND FIRST MEETING WITH HIS WIFE AND CHILDREN.