College Celebrates Museum's Connection to '12 Years a Slave'

The 2013 Steve McQueen film “12 Years a Slave” won three Oscars at the 86th Annual Academy Awards earlier this week, including the coveted Best Picture prize, after taking in an impressive $128 million at the box office worldwide. This critical and financial success has dramatically revived interest in the source material for the film — the captivating 1853 memoir of the same name dictated by Solomon Northup to writer David Wilson.

Solomon Northup was born a free man in 1808 due to a New York state law dictating the freedom of any child born after July 1, 1799. His haunting narrative begins in 1841 Saratoga Springs, New York, when two men from Charlotte, North Carolina convinced Solomon to play his fiddle in a circus with them in Washington, D.C. Upon arriving, the men drugged Solomon and illegally sold him into slavery, starting a brutal twelve year nightmare.

“He thought he was going to be away for just a few weeks in D.C., and his wife, who was cooking in Sandy Hills, New York for the summer, didn’t get a note, and he didn’t send her a letter,” said Associate Professor of History William B. Hart. “He probably thought he was going to be back before she got back to Saratoga. It didn’t take twelve years for her to hear from him, but it took twelve years for him to return.”

Wilson and Northup drafted a copy of the memoir in three months, and in 1853, the text sold 8,000 copies in its first month of publication. When the publisher discontinued publishing in 1856, it had sold 30,000 copies.

The text was re-discovered by two Louisiana historians in the early 1960’s, and the memoir is now used by the College in courses in History, American Studies and other departments.

Despite this familiarity with the text, a recent acquisition by the Middlebury College Museum of Art has revealed a surprising real-life connection between the College and Solomon Northup. Though the movie depicts an upstate New York shopkeeper as the man who rescues Northup from his living nightmare, the memoir reveals the rescuer to be Henry Bliss Northup, a prominent upstate attorney and member of the Middlebury College Class of 1829.

Late in the summer of 2013, the museum received notification that two direct descendants of Henry Bliss Northup, Elizabeth Marsland Hay Haas and Jennifer W. Smith, were interested in donating two portraits, one of Henry and the other of his wife Electra Taylor Northup, to the College. The paintings had been in the Northup family’s possession for nearly two centuries.

In honor of “12 Years a Slave”’s nine Oscar nominations, the museum held a reception for interested faculty, staff and students on Feb. 25 to unveil the two portraits and hear Hart discuss the film, the book and the lives of both Henry Bliss Northup and Solomon Northup.

The portraits were last professionally conserved in 1946, and Director of the Museum Richard Saunders initially hesitated to bring more alumni portraits into the College’s collection.

“They [the portraits] were going to be costly to conserve and I knew nothing about the story of Solomon Northup and “12 Years a Slave,” Saunders said. “Then a few weeks went by and someone was interviewing Steve McQueen, the director of the film, on television, and he was standing next to Brad Pitt, and I thought ‘Oh, my goodness, what?” So, instantly, it went from knowing nothing to really being interested in the story and the whole idea. I got a copy of the book from the library and it became clear to me that Middlebury had to have these pictures.”
The portraits arrived at the College late in the week prior to the unveiling, and they rested facing the wall as Saunders told the group of gathered attendees the history of the acquisition.

“Normally we wouldn’t show the public pictures in this condition,” Saunders said. “We would have them conserved.”
The museum is a member of the Williamstown Art Conservation Center in Williamstown, MA, where the paintings are currently undergoing the process of cleaning and restoration. Upon revealing the portraits, Saunders pointed to some discoloration and darkness, explaining that they will be much brighter.

The paintings are, however, incredibly detailed portraits, and when the restored acquisitions return to the museum, Saunders will pursue his hypothesis that the artist is early-19th century Albany, New York portrait painter Ezra Ames.

Born in 1805 in Hepburn, New York, Henry Bliss Northup enrolled at Middlebury College in 1825, studying a typical course load of Greek, Latin, theology, law, mathematics, philosophy, history, chemistry, mineralogy and geology. In 1829, the year Henry Northup graduated from the College, Solomon Northup married Anne Hampton, and they later went on to have three children, who are depicted in the memoir and the film. Henry Bliss Northup married Electra Taylor, the subject of one of the portraits, in 1830. They raised seven children, though none survived their father.
Henry Bliss Northup pursued a career in politics, holding positions as District Attorney of Washington County, NY and as a  member of the New York Assembly. He eventually ran for the U.S. Senate in 1852, though he lost that campaign.

It was in 1852 that Solomon Northup convinced a carpenter in Louisiana to write three letters for him, and they eventually made their way to Saratoga and into the hands of Henry Bliss Northup. Although Henry initially delayed in responding to the letter because of his run for Senate, he traveled to the south in December of that year with documentation of Solomon’s freedom. After conferring with state legislators and one senator, they all agreed that Solomon had been wrongfully enslaved, and Henry and Solomon began their journey back to New York.

In the memoir, Solomon constantly refers to Henry Bliss Northup’s role in regaining his freedom. He describes seeing Henry Bliss Northup at his moment of rescue in detail.

“As my eyes rested on his countenance…the perfect memory of the man recurred to me, and throwing up my hands towards Heaven, I exclaimed, in a voice louder than I could utter in a less exciting moment, ‘Henry B. Northup! Thank God — thank God!’”

It is supposed that Solomon Northup passed away around 1857, and Henry Bliss Northup died in 1877.

Hart hypothesized that the film changed the identity of Solomon Northup’s rescuer so as not to confuse the men’s last names. In the late 18th century, Henry Bliss Northup’s great uncle owned Solomon Northup’s father, linking the two men in a way that prompts historical misunderstanding.

“Many master descendants and slave descendants, if they lived in the same area, might stay in touch and recognize and honor each other,” Hart said. “In this case, the Northup’s were a rather well-to-do family, and I think there was an ongoing paternalistic relationship between Solomon and his family and Henry Bliss and his family. I think the director [McQueen] was probably afraid that it might confuse the audience. If the rescuer had the same last name as Solomon did, then viewers might think that Solomon’s master had come to secure him, which we know was not the case.”

Hart is hopeful that more can be discovered about Henry Bliss Northup, especially about his time at the College.

“We don’t know if he read Solomon Northup’s memoir, but I’d like to think that he did,” Hart said.

The restored portraits will be on display at the museum sometime next fall.