For many years there were many slave narratives coming from slaves that were born into slavery and found their freedom either through emancipation or escaping. These narratives personified the harsh and cruel reality of slavery while also justifying their escape. Never was it know the true unbiased good and bad of slavery until 1853 with the publication of 12 Years A Slave by Solomon Northrup a free born man of Saratoga, NY that was kidnapped, sold into slavery, and escaped to his freedom and how he viewed and survived slavery based on what he experienced as a slave and what he knew as a free man. Once Northrop regains his freedom he begins to travel and lecture about his time of bondage and writes this novel with the purpose of gaining the attention of people in the north more specifically white people in the north that have no true understanding of the south, the institution is slavery in the south, and the treatment of slaves in that area. Due to his appeal to those with little to no prior knowledge of the south and slavery in the south he has to write and speak in a way that everyone can understand. He must give explicit details of his life before slavery living as a free man in New York making wages by playing the Violin and doing other skilled work, and his life as a slave such as picking cotton and being a victim of whippings and abuse at the hands on an angry master. Northrup is also speaking to anti- slavery groups and abolitionists to prompt them to work more in their effort to bring slavery to an end. While it is know he is speaking to northern and abolitionist I believe he is also speaking to religious groups and leaders to express and exemplify how slave masters were using the bible to try and justify the treatment of slaves and the conditions in which they were living. When reading this novel you understand that Northrup was writing in a way that he