Editing Solomon Northup (section)

===Court cases===
[[File:Avoyelles Slave Case.jpg|thumb|"The Avoyelles Slave Case", ''[[The Times-Picayune]]'', February 6, 1853]]

Northup was one of the few kidnapped free black people to regain freedom after being sold into slavery. Represented by attorneys Senator [[Salmon P. Chase]] of Ohio, General [[Orville Clark]], and Henry B. Northup, Solomon Northup sued Birch and other men involved in selling him into slavery in Washington, DC.<ref name="NYT 1853-20-01" /><ref name="Genz" /> The historian Carol Wilson documented 300 kidnapping cases in her 1994 book, and believes that it is likely that thousands more were kidnapped who were never documented.<ref>[https://books.google.com/books/about/Freedom_at_Risk.html?id=ptFqye_hg54C, ''Freedom at Risk: The Kidnapping of Free Blacks in America, 1780–1865'']{{Dead link|date=November 2023|bot=InternetArchiveBot|fix-attempted=yes}}, University of Kentucky Press, 1994. {{Isbn|9780813192970}}</ref>

As Solomon Northup and Henry Northup made their way back to New York, they first stopped in Washington, D.C., to file a legal complaint with the police magistrate against James H. Birch, the man who had first enslaved him. Birch was immediately arrested and tried on criminal charges. However, Northup could not testify at the trial due to laws in Washington, D.C., against black men testifying in court. Birch and several others who were also in the slave trade testified that Northup had approached them, saying he was an enslaved person from Georgia and was for sale. However, Birch's accounting ledger made no note of his purchase. The prosecution consisted of Henry B. Northup and another white man asserting that they had known Northup for many years, and he was born and lived a free man in New York until his abduction. With no one legally able to testify against Birch's tale, Birch was found not guilty. However, the sensational case immediately attracted national attention, and ''[[The New York Times]]'' published an article about the trial on January 20, 1853, just days after its conclusion and only two weeks after Northup's rescue.<ref name="NYT 1853-20-01">{{cite news|url=http://docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/northup/support1.html|title=Narrative of the Seizure and Recovery of Solomon Northrup|newspaper=[[New York Times]]|date=January 20, 1853|series=Documenting the American South}}</ref>

The New York trial opened on October 4, 1854. Both Northup and St. John testified against the two men. The case brought widespread illegal practices in the domestic slave trade to light. Testimony during the court case confirmed various details of Northup's account of his experience.<ref name= Oxford/> The respective counsels argued over whether the crime had been committed in New York (where Northup could testify), or in Washington, DC, outside the jurisdiction of New York courts.<ref name= Oxford/> After more than two years of appeals, a new district attorney in New York failed to continue with the case and dropped it in May 1857.<ref name="Britannica" />