12 Years a Slave: Chapter 14 Summary & Analysis

One year, caterpillars destroy the cotton crop, so Solomon and several others are hired out to a man named Judge Turner to harvest sugar cane. Solomon immediately excels at harvesting sugar cane. Sugar-cane harvesting, like cotton picking, is a time-sensitive process, often requiring the slaves to also work on the Sabbath. However, it is customary in Louisiana for slaves to be allowed to keep whatever they make on Sundays. With this extra money, slaves are able to buy necessities and small luxuries. Solomon makes ten dollars in total by working on Sundays.

During this time, Solomon is also hired out to play the fiddle at a “grand party of whites,” which earns him seventeen dollars. Solomon writes that during this point in his twelve-year enslavement, his violin was his “constant companion,” “source of profit,” and “soother of […] sorrows.” Solomon’s fiddle-playing money makes him rich in the eyes of the other slaves. He finds great joy in planning what he’ll spend his money on, be it shoes, a water pail, or a coat.

Traveling through a small village on the way back to Epps’ plantation, Solomon catches a glimpse of Tibeats and notices that he looks “seedy” and “out of repair.” Solomon knows that “passion and poor whiskey…have ere laid him on the shelf.”

When Solomon returns to Epps’ plantation, he hears that Patsey has been subjected to crueler-than-usual punishment. Phebe tells Solomon that now, when Epps comes home drunk, he will whip Patsey severely, to Mistress Epps’ delight, “for an offence of which he himself was the sole and irresistible cause.” When sober, Epps usually doesn’t agree to his wife’s requests to beat Patsey.

Solomon tells the reader that Mistress Epps is “possessed of the devil, jealousy,” when it comes to Patsey, but that she has several good qualities. She is kind to all of the other slaves and feeds them well when Epps is out of town. She is also well educated and dignified.

That summer, the slaves’ bacon supply is infested with worms, making it nearly inedible. The slaves’ allowance of bacon is already barely enough to sustain life, so the slaves hunt for racoons and opossum in the swamps. Solomon also manages to construct a fish trap, which he describes in detail. The trap is a great success, allowing Solomon and his fellow slaves to always have fresh fish to eat.

One day, a messenger comes running to the Epps plantation, exclaiming that someone was murdered at a nearby plantation belonging to a man named Marshall. Marshall had been negotiating with a man, but “difficulty had arisen” and “high words ensued,” and Marshall killed the man. Marshall was never arrested, and his reputation didn’t suffer—instead, he was more respected “from the fact that the blood of a fellow being was on his soul.”

Although Epps befriends Marshall to get on his good side, Marshall eventually turns on him too, challenging him to what would be a deadly duel. At the request of Mistress Epps, Epps declines. Solomon notes that, today, Epps and Marshall are intimate friends again. Reflecting on this situation, Solomon writes that the institution of slavery “has a tendency to brutalize the humane and finer feelings” of a white man. He notes that there are exceptions, like the gentle and empathetic Ford, but that most slave owners become “brutified and reckless of human life.” Solomon asserts that a slaveholder’s cruelty isn’t his own fault as much as it is “the fault of the system under which he lives.” Slaveholders are cruel because of the “influence of habit[s] and associations” in their environments and upbringings.

Solomon points out that although there are kind masters, the institution of slavery is still undoubtedly “cruel, unjust, and barbarous.” He says that many men “discourse flippantly from arm chairs of the pleasures of slave life.” These men must experience firsthand the misery, brutality, fear, and bondage of a slave.