I've tried to stick reasonably close to history, though in a few of the later chapters I will deviate somewhat. For sources, I should acknowledge "12 Years a Slave", both the book by Solomon Northup and the fine movie by Steve McQueen. Also, most importantly, "The Half Has Never Been Told" by Edward Baptist, who documents the role of cotton in the origin of industrial capitalism and how intrinsic slave-produced cotton was to wealth produced in the Northern US and Europe and the industrial scale of suffering endured by slaves. Many Northerners like Robert Owens profited from that without ever seeing a slave plantation. And the floggings certainly continued and will in the story.