Solomon Northup on New York's Canals

Solomon Northup on New York's Canals

   Earlier this year, a traveling statue titled "Hope Out of Darkness" went on view at Saratoga Spa State Park. Designed by artist Wesley Wofford, the statue honors Solomon Northup, the author of Twelve Years a Slave. You may already be familiar with this notable New Yorker and his memoir, which was adapted to film in 1984 and in 2013. Northup’s story, which recounts his time enslaved in the swamps of Louisiana, has some interesting connections to New York’s canals.

The "Hope Out of Darkness" Statue on
on view at Saratoga Spa State Park
earlier in 2025

   Solomon Northup was born in Minerva, NY, in 1808, the son of a free Black couple. He married Anne Hampton in 1829. As the young couple worked to build a life for themselves and their growing family, they, like many others of the time, found opportunity along the state's newly established canals. "During the winter I was employed with others repairing the Champlain Canal," Northup wrote. "By the time the canal opened in the spring, I was enabled, from the savings of my wages, to purchase a pair of horses, and other things necessarily required in the business of navigation." This investment allowed Northup to take contracts transporting rafts of timber along the Champlain canal.

   Canal work was seasonal, and between seasons Northup found other ways to make ends meet. A man of many skills, he variously labored at farming, cutting lumber, driving carriages, and playing the fiddle. In 1841, he was living in Saratoga Springs when he met two white men who promised him a job opportunity to perform as a musician. He was thus convinced to travel with them to Washington, DC.

   When he got to Washington, he was drugged, and awoke in the custody of a slave trader. When he tried to assert his status as a free Northerner, he was tortured by his captors. They assigned him a new name and identity, and promptly transported him to a slave market in New Orleans where he was sold. Over the next twelve years, Northup was enslaved by a series of men, enduring various levels of abuse from each and bearing witness to the lives of other enslaved Blacks throughout Northern Louisiana.

   Northup's canal expertise proved useful when one of his enslavers, William Prince Ford, needed to find an efficient way of transporting lumber from his own bayou to another. "It had hitherto been transported by land, and was an important item of expense." Northup observed that the two places were connected by a small creek, and that the distance by water was significantly shorter than the overland route.  "Provided the creek could be made navigable for rafts, it occurred to me that the expense of transportation could be materially diminished."

   Though his idea was met with skepticism, he was given a chance to try it. "At this business I think I was quite skillful, not having forgotten my experience years before on the Champlain canal." Northup's plan worked, and it earned him considerable status amongst those enslaved by Ford and his neighbors. “From this time the entire control of bringing the lumber to Lamourie was placed in my hands until the contract was fulfilled."

   For twelve years, Northup remained in bondage, knowing that trying to convince anyone of his status as a free Northerner would carry an incredible amount of risk. Eventually he befriended a Canadian carpenter named Samuel Bass. Discovering that Bass was an abolitionist, Northup told him his story. Interestingly, his knowledge of New York and Canadian geography was a key part of convincing Bass of his true identity. "I have been in Montreal and Kingston, and Queenston, and a great many places in Canada," he told Bass, "and I have been in York State, too—in Buffalo, and Rochester, and Albany, and can tell you the names of the villages on the Erie canal and the Champlain canal."

   Bass was thus persuaded of the truth of Solomon's story, and agreed to write to Northup's friends in New York about his plight. Henry B. Northup, a lawyer as well as a member of the family that had once enslaved Solomon's father, traveled to Louisiana to find him and secure his freedom in 1853.

   Solomon Northup returned to New York where he was reunited with his wife and children. Though he had regained his freedom, lawsuits against the men who had abused him proved fruitless because of laws which prevented him from testifying against white men in Southern courts. Still, Northup was determined that the truth of his story should be known. He worked with a lawyer named David Wilson to write and publish his memoir of the events within a year. Twelve Years a Slave bore witness to the harsh realities of slavery, and quickly became a best seller.

The New York Times, Friday, April 15, 1853

     Over the next several years, Northup delivered a series of abolitionist lectures throughout New York and Canada. His circuit included canal cities like Syracuse, Rochester, & Buffalo, where abolitionist sentiment was rapidly growing. Frederick Douglass wrote of a lecture he delivered in Buffalo in 1854, “Northup tells his story in plain and candid language, and intermingles it with flashes of genuine wit. It is a sure treat to hear him give some hazardous adventure, with so much sang  froid, that the audience is completely enraptured and the ‘house brought down’.”