Who saw Solomon Northup?
31 March 2014 | Fourth Sunday in Lent
John 9:1-41 | The Man Born Blind
Seeing shifts things.
This is the last day of March. Tomorrow is April 1. Sometime at the end of March or the beginning of April in 1841 – 173 years ago now – a man named Solomon Northup spent the night in Richmond, at the foot of this hill in Shockoe Bottom, in a slave jail belonging to William Goodwin and Henry Templeman at the corner of 17th and Grace Streets. [right around the pitcher’s mound of what is now proposed to be a baseball stadium.]
I am going to read you some excerpts from Solomon Northup’s autobiographical account, Twelve Years a Slave. The entire text of the book is available on line from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Simply search “Twelve Years a Slave – Chapel Hill” and you’ll find it.
Northup, a free black man from upstate New York, was drugged in Washington and thrown into a slave jail in that city, where he joined other captives in being beaten and abused for two weeks. Then they began the trip to the great slave market at New Orleans, stopping at Richmond overnight to catch the downriver ship on the James River. Here are Solomon’s own words:
About midnight [in Washington]…, the cell door opened, and Burch [a slave trader] entered, with a lanterns in [his] hand. Burch, with an oath, ordered us to roll up our blankets without delay, and get ready to go on board the boat..
It was a dark night. All was quiet. I could see lights, or the reflection of them, over towards Pennsylvania Avenue, but there was no one, not even a straggler, to be seen. … So we passed, hand-cuffed and in silence, through the streets of Washington through the Capital of a nation, whose theory of government, we are told, rests on the foundation of man’s inalienable right to life, LIBERTY, and the pursuit of happiness! Hail! Columbia, happy land, indeed! …
Reaching the steamboat, we were quickly hustled into the hold, among barrels and boxes of freight. A colored servant brought a light, the bell rung, and soon the vessel started down the Potomac, carrying us we knew not where. The bell tolled as we passed the tomb of Washington! …
In the forenoon the steamer reached Aquia Creek. There the passengers took [a stage coach.] Burch … laughed with the children, and at one stopping place went so far as to purchase them a piece of gingerbread. He told me to hold up my head and look smart. That I might, perhaps, get a good master if I behaved myself. …
At Fredericksburgh we were transferred from the stage coach to a [rail]car, and before dark arrived in Richmond, the chief city of Virginia. At this city we were taken from the cars, and driven through the street to a slave pen, between the railroad depot and the river, kept by a Mr. Goodin. …
We were met at the door of Goodin’s yard by that gentleman himself—a short, fat man, with a round, plump face, black hair and whiskers, and a complexion almost as dark as some of his own negroes. He had a hard, stern look, and was perhaps about fifty years of age. Burch and he met with great cordiality. They were evidently old friends. Shaking each other warmly by the hand, Burch remarked he had brought some company, inquired at what time the brig would leave, and was answered that it would probably leave the next day at such an hour. Goodin then turned to me, took hold of my arm, turned me partly round, looked at me sharply with the air of one who considered himself a good judge of property, and as if estimating in his own mind about how much I was worth. …
Under the shed on one side of the yard, there was constructed a rough table, while overhead were sleeping lofts—the same as in the pen at Washington. After partaking at this table of our supper of pork and bread, I was hand-cuffed to a large yellow man, quite stout and fleshy, with a countenance expressive of the utmost melancholy. He was a man of intelligence and information. Chained together, it was not long before we became acquainted with each other’s history. …
In the morning, having swept the yard, and washed ourselves, under Goodin’s superintendence, we were ordered to roll up our blankets, and make ready for the continuance of our journey. …
In the afternoon we were drawn up, two abreast, [and] driven by Burch and Goodin from the yard, through the streets of Richmond to the brig Orleans. She was a vessel of respectable size, full rigged, and freighted principally with tobacco. We were all on board by five o’clock. … There were forty of us in the brig, …
We were all stowed away in the hold at night, and the hatch barred down. We laid on boxes, or wherever there was room enough to stretch our blankets on the floor. …After we were all on board, the brig Orleans proceeded down James River. Passing into Chesapeake Bay, we arrived next day opposite the city of Norfolk. While lying at anchor, a lighter approached us from the town, bringing four more slaves.
You might think that tonight I’ve just decided to read you Twelve Years a Slave rather than preach on the Man Born Blind. But I haven’t. Solomon’s story, which is terribly relevant to us in the City of Richmond today, has just come to our attention here after 173 years. That is how long it has taken for this story to come to the surface in this city, and to break through the layers and generations of blindness and denial which have prevented us from hearing it.
There are four things which Solomon’s story has in common with the Man Born Blind, that I’d like to point out to you this evening. And then, a question. Like the Man Born Blind, Solomon’s story includes:
- An hereditary bondage.
- An honest, unauthorized witness.
- A compelling, but non-religious healing.
- The complete blindness of religious and moral leaders.
1. Solomon Northup and the Man Born Blind both suffered from a bondage which was hereditary.
In the case of the young man whom Jesus met, it was to be born blind. Jesus makes it clear that this has nothing to do with the man’s sin, or his parents’ sin. He was simply born blind. In fact, Jesus suggests that God is going to make something good out of this – “God’s works [will be] revealed in him.”
Solomon was not enslaved because his parents were sinful or because he was a sinner. He was enslaved because he was born black in a nation that decreed that black persons could be enslaved. And – we know now – despite the horror, God was ultimately going to make a powerful prophet out of Solomon.
Solomon Northup and the Man Born Blind both suffered from a bondage which was not of their making, but was hereditary.
2. Like the Man Born Blind, Solomon Northup was an honest, unauthorized witness.
What is most powerful about the man born blind in Jesus’ time is that he tells his story completely naively. He is not a doctor, he is not a theologian, he is not an educated person. He simply was a blind man who now sees and it is clear to him that if there is a God, that God heals people. He has receive the ultimate benefit he sought – he was blind, and now he sees – and he knows that must be from God. He can’t lie about it, no matter how much the Pharisees badger him.
That’s the way it is with Solomon Northup today. This year, Solomon’s direct description of what happened to him has finally broken through the denial of one and one-half centuries. On Thursday night, his great-great-great granddaughter will read his words in Shockoe Bottom, at the corner of 17th and Grace Streets. Solomon simply told the truth. His story is one of 300,000 stories that happened at the foot of this hill between 1820 and 1860 – and it has taken 173 years for it to be told in a compelling fashion. You can read his words. The screenplay in the movie version follows his words unusually accurately.
Like the Man Born Blind, Solomon Northup was an honest, unauthorized witness.
3. Like the Man Born Blind, Solomon received a compelling but non-religious healing.
What in the world is a non-religious healing? It is a healing that represents the clear desire and power of God but doesn’t occur in a church or under religious auspices or even, perhaps, to people who have proper theology or church membership.
In Jesus’ teaching, freedom from bondage and sight for the blind are on an equal level. At the synagogue in Capernaum, for example, where Luke tells the story of Jesus’ initial sermon:
…He came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, [and] went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, …Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” [Luke 4:16-21]
The Man Born Blind received his healing from Jesus in a totally unauthorized fashion – on the Sabbath, from an unordained person, without the approval of the religious authorities. Jesus suggests that it is the religious and political leaders who are blind, not the man who was healed. Solomon was imprisoned by a nation that said it believed in liberty, and here in Richmond, where that liberty was proudly proclaimed. He was not freed by the signers of the Declaration of Independence, or by the religious leaders of Richmond. No wonder it has taken 173 years for his story to come out here!
4. Both the Man Born Blind and Solomon Northup were surrounded by the complete blindness of the religious and moral leaders.
The Pharisees were trying to persecute someone for being healed – saying it could not have been from God because they did not authorize it. Here in Richmond, Solomon Northup was in a slave jail surrounded by six major churches and a synagogue, down the hill from Jefferson’s temple to liberty and from Patrick Henry’s proclamation of liberty rather than death.
Did anyone in this city see the bondage of Solomon Northup that night in April? Did anyone except Jesus see the affliction of the Man Born Blind?
Jesus said, “I came into this world for judgment so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind.” Some of the Pharisees near him heard this and said to him, “Surely we are not blind, are we?” Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains.
We have been blind to Solomon Northup, and to what has happened here because of him and 300,000 other prisoners. But here’s the truth:
God does not accuse us because of our blindness. Our sin remains only if, being given the opportunity to see, we choose not to. We were born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in us. We must work the works of him who sent us while it is day.
AMEN.
The Rev. Ben Campbell
Richmond Hill
