A prominent example was Solomon Northup, born free around 1808 to Mintus Northup and his wife in Essex County, New York state. (In his memoir, Solomon did not name his mother but described her as of mixed race and a quadroon.) In 1841, Northup was tricked into going to Washington, DC, where slavery was legal. He was drugged, kidnapped, and sold into slavery, and he was held as a slave in Louisiana for 12 years. One of the very few to regain freedom under such circumstances, he later sued the slave traders involved in Washington, DC. Its law prohibited Northrup from testifying against the white men because he was black and so he lost the case. "The New York Times" published an article on the trial on January 20, 1853. Northup published his memoir, "Twelve Years a Slave" (1853), a slave narrative of plantation life on the Red River in Louisiana, and a description of Washington, D.C.'s slave trade.