To that conclusion I have never since arrived,' Northup said of the horrifying torture. 'During the whole long day I came not to the conclusion, even once, that the southern slave, fed, clothed, whipped and protected by his master, is happier than the free colored citizen of the North. Tibeats fled the scene, leaving Northup bound under the hot sun for hours. Chapin reminded John Tibeats that he would owe Ford a mortgage if Northup was murdered. As they looked for a tree from which to hang Northup, Chapin, the field overseer, walked up carrying a pistol in each hand.

In retaliation, Tibeats, along with some local enslavers, attempted to lynch Solomon Northup and tied a noose around his neck and bound his limbs. Tibeats, in an altercation about nails at a construction site, tried to whip Northup, but Northup physically restrained him and stepped on his neck, something almost unheard-of for an enslaved person. John Tibeats (who was likely named John Tibaut) was an especially cruel man. However, Northup was only enslaved by Ford for about a year. Northup was describing an institution in which not every enslaver was irrevocably evil: 'It is not the fault of the slaveholder that he is cruel, so much as it is the fault of the system under which he lives,' Northup maintained. It is this particularly generous characterization of Ford that was striking to readers of Northup's memoir. Northup described the intensely Christian Willam Ford as a 'model master' - one who avoided unwarranted beatings, who read scripture to those he enslaved each Sunday, and offered praise for his carpentry. Northup was then purchased by a man named William Ford and taken to the Red River region of Louisiana. 'Never have I seen such an exhibition of intense, unmeasured, and unbounded grief,' Solomon Northup recounted in his book. When the enslaved men and women were cured of their near-fatal illness, Northup witnessed the horrific separation of Eliza and her two children, who had been sold to different enslavers. Before the auction, Northup and many aboard the ship contracted smallpox and were hospitalized, as records confirm.

Northup 12 years a slave