m him, casting it aside also. Tibeats next laid hands on a broad-axe, and Northup jumped on his back, pinning the axe between the carpenter and the workbench on which the axe lay, but was unable to loosen Tibeats' grip on the axe. Again Northup throttled him, almost to unconsciousness. Aware that "if [he] killed [Tibeats], [his] life must pay the forfeit if [Tibeats] lived, [Northup's] life only would satisfy his vengeance," Northup threw him off the workbench, leapt a fence, and headed for the bayou, a runaway. Pursued by Tibeats, his companions, and their dogs, he headed south at first, aided by his ability to swim. But by midnight, long after he had ceased to hear the dogs, he stopped. His prospects for escape were dismal ("it was difficult to know which [he] had most reason to fear dogs, alligators or men"), but he had once before been saved by Ford's intercession and the power of that chattel mortgage. Northup turned around and headed for Ford's main plantation, where he stayed for four days, recruiting his strength after the rigors of his flight. When Ford accompanied him on his return to Tibeats, he was spared the five hundred lashes that were customary punishment for runaways, perhaps through Ford's intercession. A month later, Tibeats sold him to Epps.Though Solomon Northup was clearly not a meek, martyred "Uncle Tom," these experiences and others including a brutal beating for merely wishing he'd be sold to someone else also defined slavery for him, convincing him that the difficulties and penalties of rebellion were too high: he wanted to live to rejoin his family. Though "there was not a day throughout the ten years [he] belonged to Epps that [he] did not consult with [himself] upon the prospect of escape," nowhere in his narrative is there anything approaching David Walker's exhortations to rebellion in Walker's Appeal. Northup's understanding of the position and relative power of slaves, based on actual exp...
