o a planter named Tanner, Northup was ordered to put three young men in the stocks as punishment for stealing watermelons; when the family drove away to church, Northup released them, locking them back in shortly before Tanner's expected return hours later.Northup did not restrict himself to non-violent resistance when his life was endangered, and Epps, his third owner, was not his worst. His first owner, William Ford, he considered kind, but Ford's financial embarrassments forced him to give Northup to a carpenter named Tibeats in payment of a debt. Since Northup's value was greater than the debt, Ford retained a chattel mortgage of several hundred dollars on Northup. Tibeats was a brutal master with an unreasoning and furious dislike of Northup, and on two separate occasions attacked Northup for trivial and imagined offenses, trying to kill him. The first time, Northup wrested Tibeats' whip away and proceeded to beat him. Northup paid for it dearly: after he kicked Tibeats away at the end of the beating, the carpenter fled, returning with two white companions prepared to lynch Northup. The plantation on which they were working also belonged to William Ford, and his overseer, Chapin, interceded and saved Northup's life not with arguments based on humane grounds, but with a reminder (backed up with pistols in each hand) that Ford was technically still a part-owner of Northup, and the men therefore had no right to kill him without Ford's consent. The men left, and Ford was sent for, but Northup remained beneath the tree, tied tightly at wrists, ankles and elbows and with a rope around his neck, without food or water until Ford arrived hours later.Tibeats' second attack, a month later, went further. He seized a hatchet and flew at Northup, and Northup, seeing no recourse, throttled him to a standstill, kicked him in the groin, and threw the hatchet away. Tibeats grabbed a five-foot-long oak stick, which Northup wrested away fro...
