Twelve Years a Slave

Northup becomes almost fatally ill, and Epps summons a doctor to care for him. Shortly after, he is forced to work in the cotton fields and is frequently whipped for his sluggish pace. Even after he fully recovers, Northup proves unskilled at cotton picking. Thus, Epps assigns him to other hard labors.

In addition to brutally whipping his slaves whenever the fancy strikes him, Epps terrorizes them with late-night forced gatherings. At these gatherings, he drunkenly makes the exhausted slaves dance to Northup’s violin music. If they don’t dance fast enough to satisfy Epps, he beats them.

Patsey is the most terrorized of Epps’s slaves. Epps frequently rapes her, then “punishes” her to satisfy the wrath of his jealous wife. Northup writes, “Her back bore the scars of a thousand stripes; not because she was backward in her work […] but because it had fallen to her lot to be the slave of a licentious master and a jealous mistress” (123). 

A blight spreads through Epps’s cotton crops, and Epps suffers financially. Thus, he leases out Northup to Judge Turner’s sugar plantation. Northup excels at cane harvesting and quickly rises in ranks among the slaves at Turner’s. As a result, he is given the unpleasant responsibility of serving as overseer.