Solomon Northup was born in 1808. He was born a free man. He married and lived in Saratoga, New York for a time. He worked in hotels during the day and played the violin at night. Two men from a traveling circus asked Solomon to be a musician he agreed. One night when he woke from his sleep he was in William’s Slave Pen. He believed he was drugged. This was in sight of the Capitol Building in Washington D.C. The two men were really bounty hunters who received money for returning slaves. The "proof" of ownership for Solomon was fake. So the bounty hunter’s were afraid to bring the case to court under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793. The slave owners didn’t care as long as they got a slave back. The bounty hunter’s would watch and wait for the right time to trick their victim. This what had happened to Solomon Northup, in 1830. Solomon had never been a slave, but he was given to a harsh slave owner in the South. His name was Edwin Epps and Solomon became a slave on the laboring plantation. Solomon befriended a northerner that worked on a plantation, he was called Bass. Bass wrote to his friends about Solomon. The letters reached Anne Northup and she petitioned the governor of New York State. He was concerned and sent an agent to find Solomon. New York set a law in 1840 that said kidnapping was against the law. The agent was able to get Solomon back to New York, even though Epps tried to prevent it. In 1853, twenty-three years after he was kidnapped, Solomon Northup was free once again. By Helen