Twelve Years a Slave investigates the legal and rhetorical systems through which White southerners represent Black men, women, and children as products that can be sold, purchased, and owned. As Northup reveals, the success of this rhetoric largely depends on Black captives’ submission to it. Thus, slave traders such as Burch and Freeman cruelly condition their captives to internalize their identity as human commodities whose well-being and worth depends on their service to White people.

In the DC slave pen, Burch attempts to wear down Northup’s self-worth and identity, beating him and insisting that he is a slave and not a free man. When Northup refuses to identify himself as a slave, Burch beats him even more severely and threatens to kill him for speaking of his freedom. Likewise, Freeman attempts to strip Northup of his identity by changing his name to Platt and insisting that Platt is his real given name. For men such as Burch and Freeman who make a living from buying and selling Black captives, these dehumanizing methods of treatment are a necessary part of their process, similar to the breaking of a horse. Northup emphasizes this point by repeatedly comparing his treatment in the slave market to that of a horse: