Kidnapped!
Solomon was wary because he would be traveling to a place where slavery was legal, so he needed to stop and get his ‘free papers’ which outlined his status as a free man. The city had one of the largest slave markets in the nation and slave traders were known to kidnap free black people to meet the intense demand for healthy slaves. After witnessing Brown’s circus act, Solomon retired to his hotel room but felt as if he had been drugged. It is likely that Brown and Merrill used laudanum or belladonna.
When Solomon awoke, he was sitting on a wooden bench in handcuffs with chains on his ankles which were bolted to the floor. He had been the victim of abduction; just another statistic as vile slave traders fulfilled the demand for workers, a task that had been more difficult by the ban on the import of slaves into America in 1808. Solomon was given the name ‘Platt’ after a local slave owner and sold to James H. Birch for $650 in a slave auction in Louisiana.
Captivity – The Early Years
While Brown and Merrill claimed that Solomon was a fugitive slave, it is unlikely that Birch cared one way or another; he may well have known that Solomon was the victim of abduction. In any case, along with Solomon’s jailer, Ebenezer Radburn, Birch beat the unfortunate slave to prevent him from saying he was a free man. Birch then claimed that Solomon was a slave from Georgia and kept him as property.
Solomon was forced to embark on a torturous journey by sea to New Orleans where a slave named Robert died of smallpox. Solomon and a number of other slaves also caught the disease. Solomon persuaded an English sailor named John Manning to send a message to a lawyer named Henry Northup, the son of the man who had released Mintus from slavery; he was also Solomon’s childhood friend. In 1840, the New York State Legislature passed a law that provided financial assistance for the recovery of free people who had been kidnapped and sold into slavery. While Henry wanted to help, he had no idea where Solomon was.
Birch’s partner, Theophilus Freeman, sold Solomon at the New Orleans slave market. Now, Solomon was owned by a man named William Prince Ford who was apparently a kind and caring man who treated his slaves with consideration. Solomon wrote that the influences around Ford “blinded him to the inherent wrong at the bottom of the system of slavery.”
Solomon helped Ford with his dilemma of moving timber from the farm onto the market by using his carpentry skills to build looms. However, Ford was in severe financial difficulties and had to sell 18 of his slaves. While 17 were sold to a man named Compton, Northup could not pick cotton, so he was sold to a tradesman named John M. Tibaut. As hard as it was to be transplanted from his life of freedom into slavery, things were about to get a lot worse for Solomon.