Solomon Northup, a free black man from New York, was stripped of his freedom in 1841 and sold to Louisiana, where he spent the majority of his time working for Edwin Epps on Bayou Boeuf. Epps" main product was cotton. Going into the nineteenth century cotton came to the forefront of the American economy, making the economy a success, and revolutionizing slavery in the United States. Solomon Northup's experiences on Bayou Boeuf are a good representation of how the increasing production of cotton in the United States resulted in the mass movement of slaves, and the emergence of a new kind of slave labor, one in which was even more labor intensive than previous slave labor in North America. .
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As cotton production came to the forefront of the American economy it became essential for the owners of the cotton plantations to obtain labor, which they found in the form of slaves from older slave regions, creating the movement of slaves being sold South, a movement in which Northup represents with his personal experiences. According to Professor Oestreicher in his lectures "Industrialization of Slavery" and "The Changing Slave Community," adventurous young men traveled to what was then the southwest of the United States, areas such as Mississippi and Alabama, or in Northrup's case Louisiana, to partake in the cotton industry. Slave labor was required from older slave regions, such as Virginia and the Carolina's, or, where Northup was sold from, the District of Columbia. While Northup himself was not a slave, he became mixed in with slaves filtering in from older slave regions. These slaves were slaves whom were being sold to the newer, cotton producing slave regions. A man by the name of James H. Burch, a slave dealer in Washington, claimed to be Northup's owner after stripping Northup of his free papers while Northup was traveling with a circus company, playing the violin. From Washington Burch sold Northup south to Louisiana, making Northup representative of the slave movement to the cotton producing regions in the South (Northrup 20).
