The Life & Times of Twelve Years A Slave

Mary Niall Mitchell is Joseph Tregle Professor in Early American History and Ethel & Herman Midlo Chair in New Orleans Studies at the University of New Orleans.  She has published this solidly researched, interesting article on the background of Solomon Northup's book:

All Things Were Working Together for My Deliverance: The Life & Times of Twelve Years a Slave, by Mary Niall Mitchell, in the journal,  Common-place The Interactive Journal of Early American Life.

Mitchell goes into detail, in particular, of the Union soldiers who were stationed in the area of Bayou Boeuf, where was the plantation of the cruel slave owner, Edwin Epps.  Soldiers went looking deliberately for the location and for people who might have -- and did -- know "Platt," the name by which the his captors called him, forbidding him to ever use his own given name.

All the details of the book are verified.

Then, the war was over, and the book disappeared.  It took  the Civil Rights Movement and a married, middle-aged female historian, Sue Eakins, to put it all back together.

At the last minute, a male Ph.D. was poised to take over the entire project, because, well, female and not as good, of course. Dr. Eakins wasn't able to get her Ph.D. until some years later.

A fascinating story in all its aspects, and such an "American" one.