12 Years A Slave Historical Accuracy

12 Years a Slave Historical Accuracy

The movie, 12 Years a Slave, is based on the book 12 Years a Slave by Solomon Northup. The book is an autobiography written in 1853, on how a man named Solomon Northup was deceived, lured, and kidnapped into slavery in 1841. Solomon was born a free African American in Saratoga, New York. Solomon was a fiddle player, who, one day, was offered an opportunity by two men from an out of town circus company named Hamilton and Brown. They wanted Solomon to play the fiddle in their circus in Washington D.C. for money. Unfortunately, he was betrayed by these two men when he arrived in Washington, D.C., where they sold him into slavery and he was transported to New Orleans as a slave. The movie, 12 Years a Slave, is historically accurate because it is well researched, and not short-sided or biased.

The slave trade was a booming business in the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries in the United States. The capturing of free African Americans was common in the North. Although the North abolished slavery, African American discrimination was still happening. According to The National Archives, “These free African Americans were easy prey for kidnappers, who, under the guise of the 1793 Fugitive

It was well researched, as it was based on the actual autobiography of Solomon Northup's 12 Years a Slave. The website, www.historyextra.com stated, “I have never seen a film represent slavery so accurately. The film starkly and powerfully unveiled the sights and sounds of enslavement – from slaves picking cotton as they sang in the fields, to the crack of the lash down people’s backs.” (“Historian at the Movies: 12 Years a Slave reviewed”). The movie was also very accurate with the representation of the time that Solomon was living in the South as a slave. For example, in New Orleans there were merchants, dirt roads, horses and carriages, and wooden steam boat