who was 12 years a slave based on
12 Years a Slave (film) 12 Years a Slave is a 2013 period drama film and an adaptation of the 1853 slave narrative memoir Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup, a New York State-born free African-American man who was kidnapped in Washington, D.C. by two conmen in 1841 and sold into slavery. Northup was put to work on plantations in the state of Louisiana for 12 years before being released. The first scholarly edition of Northup's memoir, co-edited in 1968 by Sue Eakin and Joseph Logsdon, carefully retraced and validated the account and concluded it to be accurate.[4] Other characters in the film were also real people, including Edwin and Mary Epps, and Patsey.
John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry (also known as John Brown's raid or The raid on Harper's Ferry)[2] was an effort by armed abolitionist John Brown to initiate an armed slave revolt in 1859 by taking over a United States arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. Brown's party of 22[1] was defeated by a company of U.S. Marines, led by First Lieutenant Israel Greene.[3] Colonel Robert E. Lee was in overall command of the operation to retake the arsenal. John Brown had originally asked Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass, both of whom he had met in his transformative years as an abolitionist in Springfield, Massachusetts, to join him in his raid, but Tubman was prevented by illness, and Douglass declined, as he believed Brown's plan would fail.[4]