In 1841, Solomon Northup is a free African-American man working as a violinist, living with his wife and two children in Saratoga Springs, New York. Two white men, Brown and Hamilton, offer him short-term employment as a musician if he will travel with them to Washington, D.C. However, once they arrive, the duo drug Northup and conspire to deliver him to a slave pen. Northup is later shipped to New Orleans along with others who have been detained against their will. A slave trader named Freeman gives Northup the identity of "Platt", a runaway slave from Georgia, and sells him and another slave Eliza to plantation owner William Ford. Due to tension between Northup and another plantation worker, Ford sells him to another slave owner named Edwin Epps. In the process, Northup attempts to explain that he is actually a free man, but to no avail.