Even back in 1853, the NY Times was rocking it with some great investigative journalism. The paper gave Solomon Northup’s now famous story a good deal of attention not long after he was rescued and released from the cotton plantation down in Louisiana.
The original article from the NY Times goes into a lot of detail on his ordeal, while Smithsonian magazine has a nice little summary of the whole write up.
After reading through the original story in the old NY Times, no doubt that the folks who produced the Oscar winning “12 Years A Slave” did a great job bringing the story to life!
Source: Smithsonian