# Twelve Years a Slave — Character guide

> Key figures in Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup.

- [Solomon Northup](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/twelve_years_a_slave_se/characters/solomon_northup.md): Solomon Northup was born free, married, and worked as a skilled laborer near Glens Falls until a false promise of employment delivered him into a Washington slave pen. Stripped of his legal identity and renamed 'Platt,' 
- [Master Tibeats](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/twelve_years_a_slave_se/characters/master_tibeats.md): Tibeats is a small-scale slaveholder and carpenter whose meanness is so widely recognized that even fellow whites hold him in 'light estimation.' He resents Solomon's competence and answers it with curses, impossible dem
- [Elizabeth](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/twelve_years_a_slave_se/characters/elizabeth.md): Eliza shares a cabin with Solomon on Ford's plantation, where she mothers the people around her even as her own children are sold away. When Solomon returns from his desperate flight, she tells him plainly that drowning 
- [Bass](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/twelve_years_a_slave_se/characters/bass.md): Bass works in the Bayou Boeuf region and speaks his anti-slavery views openly, a dangerous habit in a parish built on bondage. When Solomon dares to confide his true identity, Bass must decide whether a stranger's word i
- [Master Epps](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/twelve_years_a_slave_se/characters/master_epps.md): Epps owns the Louisiana plantation where Solomon spends his longest years, and he rules through whips, caprice, and a jealousy that poisons everyone near him. His obsession with Patsey turns his wife into an enemy of the
- [Patsey](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/twelve_years_a_slave_se/characters/patsey.md): Patsey picks more cotton than anyone on the Epps place and draws the master's attention in ways that make her mistress hate her. She walks miles to borrow a piece of soap from a neighbor, a small errand that Epps twists 
- [James H. Burch](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/twelve_years_a_slave_se/characters/james_h_burch.md): Burch operates a slave pen in the nation's capital, trafficking in human beings while presenting himself as a legitimate businessman. When Solomon insists on his free status, Burch responds with the lash and a threat of 
- [Wiley](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/twelve_years_a_slave_se/characters/wiley.md): A fellow slave on Epps' plantation; often suffers alongside others.
- [Platt](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/twelve_years_a_slave_se/characters/platt.md): Platt is the identity Solomon must inhabit to survive, a Georgia-born slave with no wife, no children, no freedom waiting in the North. He is sold, inspected, priced, and displayed like livestock, his musical talent maki
- [Henry B. Northup](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/twelve_years_a_slave_se/characters/henry_b_northup.md): Henry B. Northup is a white attorney and relative of the family that held Solomon's ancestors in bondage, a fact that gives him both access and obligation. He takes up Solomon's cause not as a distant philanthropist but 
- [Mistress Epps](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/twelve_years_a_slave_se/characters/mistress_epps.md): Mistress Epps occupies the strange position of a white woman with power over slaves but no power over her husband's desires, and she takes her humiliation out on Patsey's back. She orders Solomon to whip the girl without
- [Theophilus Freeman](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/twelve_years_a_slave_se/characters/theophilus_freeman.md): Freeman runs a slave pen where human beings are stripped, inspected, and priced, and he prides himself on moving inventory quickly. He enlarges on Solomon's musical attainments to close a sale, then turns on Eliza with a
- [Master Ford](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/twelve_years_a_slave_se/characters/master_ford.md): Ford treats Solomon with a decency rare in the book, calling him by his real name and trusting him with carpentry work, yet he is also a slaveholder whose financial embarrassments require him to sell eighteen people, Sol
- [Little Emily](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/twelve_years_a_slave_se/characters/little_emily.md): Eliza's young daughter, sold away from her mother.
- [Uncle Abram](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/twelve_years_a_slave_se/characters/uncle_abram.md): An elderly slave on Epps' plantation.
- [Mintus Northup](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/twelve_years_a_slave_se/characters/mintus_northup.md): Solomon's father, a free black man.
- [Overseer Chapin](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/twelve_years_a_slave_se/characters/overseer_chapin.md): An overseer on Ford's plantation.
- [Anne Hampton](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/twelve_years_a_slave_se/characters/anne_hampton.md): Anne Hampton keeps a free life in New York—long service in the Baird household at Sandy Hill and in Reverend Proudfit's family at Salem has given her standing, counsel, and gratitude rather than hardship. Her three-race 
- [Aunt Phebe](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/twelve_years_a_slave_se/characters/aunt_phebe.md): An elderly slave woman on Epps' plantation.
- [Arthur](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/twelve_years_a_slave_se/characters/arthur.md): A slave on a neighboring plantation.
- [Clem Ray](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/twelve_years_a_slave_se/characters/clem_ray.md): A slave on Epps' plantation.
- [Lawson](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/twelve_years_a_slave_se/characters/lawson.md): A slave on Epps' plantation.
- [Armsby](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/twelve_years_a_slave_se/characters/armsby.md): A white man who betrays Solomon's escape plan.
- [Robert](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/twelve_years_a_slave_se/characters/robert.md): A slave on a neighboring plantation.
- [Mary](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/twelve_years_a_slave_se/characters/mary.md): A young woman on a neighboring plantation.
- [Anne Northup](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/twelve_years_a_slave_se/characters/anne_northup.md): Solomon's daughter.

HTML index: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/twelve_years_a_slave_se/characters