After being kidnapped from New York and sold into slavery, Solomon Northup uses his skills and carefully placed trust to survive and seek a way back to his family.
- Scenes 1–29
Solomon lives freely in Saratoga as a husband, father, worker, and musician.
- Scene 30
Solomon is drugged and abducted in New York, abruptly ending his free life and beginning his captivity.
- Scene 31
After Solomon is drugged and abducted in scene 30, he wakes in chains and discovers that he has been stolen from his free life.
- Just before
- Scene 46
The prisoners are chained among freight and rats in the hold; once Burch and Radburn leave, Clemens and Eliza cry.
- Scene 47
The Orleans casts off and begins its night journey down the Potomac.
- Scene 48
At dawn, the steamboat travels downriver past a green shoreline.
- Scene 49
This scene
