88 pages • 2 hours read
Twelve Years a Slave
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Chapters 6-12Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 6 Summary
Northup describes the inhumane rituals Freeman subjects him and his fellow captives to in the slave market. Before prospective customers, they are forced to walk back and forth and show their teeth. Several men and women are also taken to a back house, where they are stripped naked and inspected. Northup notes, “Scars upon a slave’s back were considered evidence of a rebellious nature or unruly spirit, and hurt his sale” (48). Northup is also obligated to play his violin so customers can watch the slaves dance.
Still recovering from smallpox, Northup is not sold for some time. He becomes hopeful when a slave master from New Orleans shows interest in buying him, believing it will be easier to escape from a major port city than a rural plantation. The price is too high, however, and the man declines.
Chapter 6 also focuses on the plight of Eliza as she is separated from both of her children. Randall is sold first. As he is ushered away from his mother, he tells her not to cry, claiming he will be a good boy. Another man named William Ford offers to purchase both Eliza and Emily together, but Freeman refuses, claiming, “There were heaps of money to be made of her […] when she was a few years older. There were men enough in New Orleans who would give five thousand dollars for such an extra, handsome, fancy piece as Emily would be, rather than not get her” (54-55). Thus, Ford purchases Eliza, and she is taken from her daughter, weeping. Northup reveals that Eliza never reunites with her children and that this separation marks the beginning of her mental and physical deterioration.
Chapter 7 Summary
William Ford purchases both Northup and Eliza and transports them to his plantation on the banks of the Red River in Bayou Boeuf. Unlike Freeman or Burch, Ford is a gentle-spirited man. Northup attests, “here never was a more kind, noble, candid, Christian man than William Ford. The influences and associations that had always surrounded him, blinded him to the inherent wrong at the bottom of the system of Slavery” (57) . Ford insists on hosting sermons every Sunday and providing Bibles to all of his slaves (to the disapproval of other slave masters around him).
At the Ford plantation, Eliza and Northup are treated relatively generously by both wife and master. Eliza is sent to work in the house, and Northup is sent to work in the sawmill. Eager to use his intellect and his skills (from a former job repairing a canal on Lake Champlain), Northup contrives an ingenious, money-saving strategy for Ford to transport lumber through waterways.
Northup is assigned to work with John M. Tibeats, one of Ford’s carpenters. Tibeats is cruel and short-tempered and greatly resents Northup’s intelligence.
Chapter 8 Summary
Due to financial hardship, Ford is forced to sell Northup to work for Tibeats on a plantation 27 miles away. Northup works on building projects with Tibeats and often meets with unearned disapproval and beatings. On one occasion, Northup defends himself and whips Tibeats in return. Tibeats flees, vowing revenge.
Tibeats returns with two men who attempt to hang Northup from a tree. Ford’s overseer, Mr. Chapin, intervenes, claiming, “Ford holds a mortgage on Platt of four hundred dollars. If you hang him he loses his debt. Until that is canceled you have no right to take his life” (74). He threatens to kill Tibeats if he disobeys this order, but he nevertheless leaves Northup bound.
Chapter 9 Summary
For hours, Northup remains bound to the tree, swelling painfully from the tight ropes. Another slave bravely brings him some water, but most bystanders dare not intervene.
Ford eventually arrives and cuts Northup down. Tibeats then hires Northup out to Ford’s brother-in-law, Peter Tanner. Though Tanner is a far less generous slave owner than Ford, his home is relatively safe from Tibeats.
Chapter 10 Summary
After a month of working for Tanner, Northup returns to work for Tibeats. Tibeats is violent and murderous, attacking Northup with a hatchet for a perceived mistake. Northup struggles against him. Initially, he only acts in self-defense. Eventually, his built-up rage toward Tibeats takes over, and he chokes him. In the midst of choking his master, Northup realizes the magnitude of what he’s doing and releases him.
Northup runs away from Tibeats into the treacherous Pacoudrie Swamp. He is terrified of running into a poisonous snake, an alligator, one of the tracking hounds that has been sent out to catch him, or a White man patrolling for runaways. He grimly reflects, “Really, it was difficult to determine which I had most reason to fear—dogs, alligators, or men!” (91). After a long night of wandering, Northup reaches the home of William Ford. Ford offers him shelter from Tibeats, albeit temporary.
Chapter 11 Summary
Northup is kindly welcomed by Ford and his wife. He repays them by working in the garden for four days. Ford accompanies Northup on his return to Tibeats and advocates for his fair treatment. Intimidated by Ford, Tibeats refrains from punishing Northup for running away.
Tibeats hires out Northup to work 38 miles away, clearing trees for Mr. Eldret. After several weeks of hard work, Northup earns a pass to visit the Ford home. There, Northup is reunited with Eliza, finding that her grief has taken away her strength. He hears rumors that Eliza’s last master whipped her mercilessly and reflects, ”But he could not whip back the departed vigor of her youth, nor straighten up that bended body to its full height, such as it was when her children were around her, and the light of freedom was shining on her path” (104).
On the way back to Mr. Eldret, Tibeats runs into Northup. Tibeats informs Northup that he has sold him to Edwin Epps, a slave master who is notorious for his cruelty.
Chapter 12 Summary
Edwin Epps proves to be an even worse master than Tibeats. He is a mean-tempered alcoholic who enjoys taking his bad moods out on his slaves, brutally whipping them for the sheer pleasure of hearing their screams.
Northup explains the system of work and punishment at Epps’s cotton plantation. Whenever a new picker comes to the field, he is beaten perpetually throughout the day, urged to pick cotton as swiftly as possible. That evening, the cotton is weighed. The weight of the cotton picked on that first day serves as a scale by which the slave’s work is measured on all the days following. Thus, if the slave picks less than that weight, “it is considered evidence that he has been laggard” (108), and he is harshly whipped. Northup also meets a female slave named Patsey who is the most accomplished picker on the plantation, bringing in far more cotton than any of the men.
Chapters 6-12 Analysis
With his close attention to Eliza’s separation from her family, Northup begins to develop his ongoing interest in the issues specific to female slaves. He pointedly reveals how Eliza has been abusively used, sold by the family of her former master who sought to provide for her. With Eliza’s story—and the moment when Freeman keeps Emily, hoping to sell her for more money when she grows into a young woman—Northup exposes the long-spanning, multigenerational effects of sexual abuse by slave owners.
Northup also continues his complex examinations of slavery as a social system, beginning with his first master, William Ford. Though Ford is relatively kind and gentle compared to other slave owners in the Deep South, Northup reflects that he has been socialized to view slavery as normal: “The influences and associations that had always surrounded him, blinded him to the inherent wrong at the bottom of the system of Slavery” (57). Thus, Northup builds upon his epigraph from Cowper and the idea of slavery as a “revered” institution passed down through generations. Even for men like Ford, slavery is a naturalized system. He does not appreciate the cruelty of slavery because he experiences it as a tradition practiced by family, friends, and neighbors.
Northup further bolsters his text as a piece of historic evidence by painstakingly detailing the social systems of different plantations, including their methods of production and their modes of enforcing (and repressing) behaviors. He examines the different living and working environments associated with two very different slave owners: Ford and Epps. Whereas Ford uses religion to shape the values of his slaves rather than resorting to violence, Epps uses brutal beatings to instill fear, embodying the kind of cruelty and brutality denounced by slavery apologists).
Chapters 6-12 also develop Northup’s observations on the social conditioning of humans as commodities. When Tibeats attempts to “punish” Northup by hanging him with two other men, he is only stopped when Ford’s overseer accuses Tibeats of violating Ford’s “mortgage.” The overseer’s language is telling; he says, “There is a law for the slave as well as for the white man” (74), implying that slaves are not considered equal to White people and that their “laws” pertain not to their rights, but to the White man’s rights around them as property. In Chapter 12, Northup explains the brutal system through which cotton-picking productivity quotas are met (and the human cost of those quotas). This explanation vividly illustrates the dehumanization of slaves. Their physical and emotional needs, including the need for rest, are not considered; the only concern that matters to the overseer (and—by extension—the slave master) is harvesting as many pounds of cotton as possible.
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