I wouldn’t have trusted them either

Context: Solomon Northup (July 10, c. 1807/1808 — unknown; after 1857) was an American abolitionist and the primary author of the memoir Twelve Years a Slave. A free-born American of mixed race from New York, he was the son of a freed slave and a free woman of color. Northup was a professional violinist, farmer, and landowner in Washington County, New York. In 1841, he was offered a traveling musician's job and went to Washington, D.C. (where slavery was legal); there, he was drugged and kidnapped into slavery. He was shipped to New Orleans on April 24, 1841 by James H. Birch) aboard the Brig Orleans from Richmond, VA. Northup was purchased by a planter) and held as a slave for nearly twelve years in the Red River region of Louisiana; mostly in Avoyelles Parish. He remained enslaved until he met Samuel Bass), a Canadian working on his plantation who helped get word to New York, where state law provided aid to free New York citizens who had been kidnapped and sold into slavery. His family and friends enlisted the aid of the governor of New York, Washington Hunt, and Northup regained his freedom on January 3, 1853.^\1])

Northup worked again as a carpenter after he moved back to New York. He became active in the abolitionist movement and lectured on slavery in the years before the American Civil War.^\5])^\14])^\85]) In the summer of 1857, he traveled to Canada to deliver a series of lectures; however, in Streetsville, Ontario, a hostile crowd prevented him from speaking.^\86])

After 1857, he was not living with family^\h]) and there was speculation by family, friends, and others that he was reenslaved.^\3])^\87])^\88])^\89]) The 21st-century historians Clifford Brown and Carol Wilson believe it is likely that he died of natural causes,^\3]) because he was too old to be of interest to slave catchers.^\4])