Top 40 Solomon Northup Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “My back is thick with scars for protesting my freedom.”

— Solomon Northup

2. “I could not comprehend the justice of that law, or that religion, which upholds or recognizes the principle of slavery;.”

— Solomon Northup

3. “What difference is there in the color of the soul?”

— Solomon Northup

4. “Suffice it to say, 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. To that conclusion I have never since arrived.”

— Solomon Northup

5. “Life is dear to every living thing; the worm that crawls upon the ground will struggle for it.”

— Solomon Northup

6. “My sufferings I can compare to nothing else than the burning agonies of hell!”

— Solomon Northup

7. “Is everything right because the law allows it?”

— Solomon Northup

8. “There are few sights more pleasant to the eye, than a wide cotton field when it is in the bloom. It presents an appearance of purity, like an immaculate expanse of light, new-fallen snow.”

— Solomon Northup

9. “Credit leads a man into temptation. Cash down is the only thing that will deliver him from evil.”

— Solomon Northup

10. “Really, it was difficult to determine which I had most reason to fear – dogs, alligators or men!”

— Solomon Northup

11. “There may be humane masters, as there certainly are inhuman ones – there may be slaves well-clothed, well-fed, and happy, as there surely are those half-clad, half-starved and miserable; nevertheless, the institution that tolerates such wrong and inhumanity as I have witnessed, is a cruel, unjust, and barbarous one. Men may write fictions portraying lowly life as it is, or as it is not – may expatiate with owlish gravity upon the bliss of ignorance – discourse.”

— Solomon Northup

12. “There have been hours in my unhappy life, many of them, when the contemplation of death as the end of earthly sorrow – of the grave as a resting place for the tired and worn out body – has been pleasant to dwell upon.”

— Solomon Northup

13. “I can speak of slavery only so far as it came under my own observation – only so far as I have known and experienced it in my own person.”

— Solomon Northup

14. “The existence of Slavery in its most cruel form among them has a tendency to brutalize the humane and finer feelings of their nature. Daily witnesses of human suffering – listening to the agonizing screeches of the slave – beholding him writhing beneath the merciless lash – bitten and torn by dogs – dying without attention, and buried without shroud or coffin – it cannot otherwise be expected, than that they should become brutified and reckless of human life.”

— Solomon Northup

15. “Oh! how heavily the weight of slavery pressed upon me then. I must toil day after day, endure abuse and taunts and scoffs, sleep on the hard ground, live on the coarsest fare, and not only this, but live the slave of a blood-seeking wretch, of whom I must stand henceforth in continued fear and dread.”

— Solomon Northup

16. “Let not those who have never been placed in like circumstances, judge me harshly. Until they have been chained and beaten – until they find themselves in the situation I was, borne away from home and family towards a land of bondage – let them refrain from saying what they would not do for liberty. How.”

— Solomon Northup

17. “So we passed, hand-cuffed and in silence, through the streets of Washington through the Capital of a nation, whose theory of government, we are told, rests on the foundation of man’s inalienable right to life, LIBERTY, and the pursuit of happiness! Hail! Columbia, happy land, indeed!”

— Solomon Northup

18. “There may be humane masters, as there certainly are inhuman ones – there may be slaves well-clothed, well-fed, and happy, as there surely are those half-clad, half-starved and miserable; nevertheless, the institution that tolerates such wrong and inhumanity as I have witnessed, is a cruel, unjust, and barbarous one. Men.”

— Solomon Northup

19. “There’s a sin, a fearful sin, resting on this nation, that will not go unpunished forever.”

— Solomon Northup

20. “How often since that time has the recollection of his paternal counsels occured to me, while lying in a slave hut in the distant and sickly regions of Louisiana, smarting with the undeserved wounds which an inhuman master had inflicted, and longing only for the grave which had covered him, to shield me also from the lash of the oppressor.”

— Solomon Northup

21. “Men may write fictions portraying lowly life as it is, or as it is not – may expatiate with owlish gravity upon the bliss of ignorance – discourse flippantly from arm chairs of the pleasures of slave life; but let them toil with him in the field – sleep with him in the cabin – feed with him on husks; let them behold him scourged, hunted, trampled on, and they will come back with another story in their mouths.”

— Solomon Northup

22. “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. He cannot withstand the influence of habit and associations that surround him.”

— Solomon Northup

23. “Brought up with such ideas – in the notion that we stand without the pale of humanity – no wonder the oppressors of my people are a pitiless and unrelenting race.”

— Solomon Northup

24. “The influence of the iniquitous system necessarily fosters an unfeeling and cruel spirit, even in the bosoms of those who, among their equals, are regarded as humane and generous.”

— Solomon Northup

25. “It is the literal, unvarnished truth, that the crack of the lash, and the shrieking of the slaves, can be heard from dark till bed time, on Epps’ plantation, any day almost during the entire period of the cotton-picking season.”

— Solomon Northup

26. “He, however, lost nothing by his kindness.”

— Solomon Northup

27. “They are deceived who flatter themselves that the ignorant and debased slave has no conception of the magnitude of his wrongs. They are deceived who imagine that he arises from his knees, with back lacerated and bleeding, cherishing only a spirit of meekness and forgiveness. A day may come – it will come, if his prayer is heard – a terrible day of vengeance when the master in his turn will cry in vain for mercy.”

— Solomon Northup

28. “Death was far less terrible than the living prospect that was before us.”

— Solomon Northup

29. “Let not those who have never been placed in like circumstances judge me harshly.”

— Solomon Northup

30. “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. He cannot withstand the influence of habit and associations that surround him. Taught from earliest childhood, by all that he sees and hears that the rod is for the slave’s back, he will not be apt to change his opinions in maturer years.”

— Solomon Northup

31. “He thought that all men, great and small, bond and free, were sinners in the sight of God; that they were, by nature, rebels against His government; and that they must repent of their sins, and be reconciled to God, through Christ. I cannot say that I had a very distinct notion of what was required of me; but one thing I knew very well – I was wretched, and had no means of making myself otherwise. Moreover, I knew that I could pray for light.”

— Solomon Northup

32. “12 Years a Slave.”

— Solomon Northup

33. “The child is father to the man,” and with such training, whatever may be his natural disposition, it cannot well be otherwise than that, on arriving at maturity, the sufferings and miseries of the slave will be looked upon with entire indifference.”

— Solomon Northup

34. “To ask the master for a knife, or skillet, or any small convenience of the kind, would be answered with a kick, or laughed at as a joke. Whatever necessary article of this nature is found in a cabin has been purchased with Sunday money.”

— Solomon Northup

35. “The flesh of the coon is palatable, but verily there is nothing in all butcherdom so delicious as a roasted ’possum.”

— Solomon Northup

36. “Still he plied the lash without stint upon my poor body, until it seemed that the lacerated flesh was stripped from my bones at every stroke. A man with a particle of mercy in his soul would not have beaten even a dog so cruelly.”

— Solomon Northup

37. “At such times, the heart of man turns instictively towards his Maker. In prosperity, and whenever there is nothing to injure or make him afraid, he remembers Him not, and is ready to defy Him; but place him in the midst of dangers, cut him off from human aid, let the grave open before him, then it is, in the time of his tribulation, that the scoffer and unbelieving man turns to God for help, feeling there is no other hope, or refuge, or safety, save in his protecting arm.”

— Solomon Northup

38. “The best dancer appeared to be considered the one who could whoop the loudest, jump the farthest, and utter the most excruciating noise.”

— Solomon Northup

39. “Strange as it may seem, within plain sight of this same house, looking down from its commanding height upon it, was the Capitol. The voices of patriotic representatives boasting of freedom and equality, and the rattling of the poor slave’s chains, almost commingled. A slave pen within the very shadow of the Capitol!”

— Solomon Northup

40. “A man with a particle of mercy in his soul would not have beaten even a dog so cruelly.”

— Solomon Northup

41. “Jenny’s business was to prepare the coffee, which consisted of corn meal scorched in a kettle, boiled and sweetened with molasses.”

— Solomon Northup

42. “There have been hours in my unhappy life, many of them, when the contemplation of death as the end of earthly sorrow – of the grave as a resting place for the tired and worn out body – has been pleasant to dwell upon. But such contemplations vanish in the hour of peril. No man, in his full strength, can stand undismayed, in the presence of the “king of terrors.” Life is dear to every living thing; the worm that crawls upon the ground will struggle for it.”

— Solomon Northup

43. “The sun shone out warmly; the birds were singing in the trees. The happy birds – I envied them. I wished for wings like them, that I might cleave the air to where my birdlings waited vainly for their father’s coming, in the cooler region of the North.”

— Solomon Northup

44. “Life is dear to every living thing; the worm that crawls upon the ground will struggle for it. At that moment it was dear to me, enslaved and treated as I was.”

— Solomon Northup

45. “It could not be that a free citizen of New-York, who had wronged no man, nor violated any law, should be dealt with thus inhumanly. The more I contemplated my situation, however, the more I became confirmed in my suspicions. It was a desolate thought, indeed. I felt there was no trust or mercy in unfeeling man; and commending myself to the God of the oppressed, bowed my head upon my fettered hands, and wept most bitterly.”

— Solomon Northup