in Washington, and was "wholly overcome.... [at] leaving the friends and associations of his youth every thing that was dear and precious to his heart in all probability never to return." Later, in a slave pen in Richmond, he met David and Caroline, a married couple whose "greatest source of anxiety was the apprehension of being separated." Perhaps the saddest of all he met were a woman named Eliza and her children, Randall and Emily. Northup first encountered Randall by himself, in the slave pen in Washington, and "his mother's absence seemed to be the great and only grief in his little heart." Though his mother and sister arrived soon after, they were together only for the journey south, and were sold separately; when Northup encountered Eliza later, he described her as "still mourning her children.... sunk beneath the weight of an excessive grief," and still later, informed of her death, ascribed it to her enslaved state and the loss of her children.Northup grieved for his own family, of course. From his first days as a slave, in the slave pen in Washington, "thoughts of [his] family, of [his] wife and children, continually occupied [his] mind." Throughout his twelve years of slavery, his thoughts turned to them, as he wondered if they were still alive, if he would die before he could escape to them, if he would ever see them again. As much as Northup was separated from his family, they were also separated from him. On his return home, he discovered that his younger daughter, only seven when he left, did not recognize him and that in the years he'd lost, she had married and had a child, his first grandchild. The child was named Solomon Northup Staunton Unlike Eliza, Northup had hope of a reunion with his family, a hope which sustained him in his twelve years of bondage. The defining moment of that bondage the moment in which it became clear to him that he was now a slave, with no rights to his own person occurred not ...
