Solomon Northup Punishment

586 Words3 Pages

Slavery in America began when the first African Slaves were brought in 1619 to practice the production of such lucrative crops as tobacco. The book 12 Years a Slave, was a book about one significance slave name Solomon Northup. Through his life, Solomon took very high risk to let people know where he stands through this tough time at the end, it paid off. The risk he took could’ve been life threating which was, he had a brawl with Mr. Tibuat and when they tried to hang him, he stood on his tip toes the whole time. Northup never gave up to get his word across that he is a free man. He was born July 1808 in Minerva, New York and grew up working as a farmer and violinist while having a family. Solomon Northup was kidnapped from his hometown in …show more content…

First off, you were treated like trash; by being either separated from your family or traded off to slave owner after slave owner. A slave would be punished for many things. Any form of resist or attempting to run away would result in some kind of punishment to break the slave’s will. Slaves would get in trouble for talking too much, disobeying, and not working hard enough. Slave owners had many punishments for slave it rarely depends how serious the crimes were. Some of the punishments were being shackled, being chained to the ground, being whipped, and being hung to die. Plantation owners often made the other slaves watch it because it will prevent them from slacking at work or trying to run away. All of this is related to Solomon during his 12 years of hardship work. The things that Northup did was disobeying a white man’s order and then putting his hands on him. By doing that, his consequences were getting hung. What makes Northup a great man is that he did not let being hung get in his way of getting his freedom back. Another incident that Northup had went through was telling the white people that he was a free man. Northup was born a free man and the day he got drugged, he became a slave that ran away from