Twelve Years A Slave

Twelve Years a Slave is an account of events that took place in the life of Solomon Northup during the pre-Civil War era of the 1840s.  

Northup was an educated African American, a free man and a native of Saratoga, New York, married with three children. One day he was lured to Washington D.C. to perform at a musical gig. Those few days turned into 12 long years, in which Northup was placed back into slavery in the isolated plantation country of Louisiana's Bayou Boeuf. This memoir was used in the struggle to abolish slavery in the United States.