Bass: The law says you have the right to hold a n****r, but begging the law's pardon... It lies. Is everything right because the law allows it? Suppose they'd pass a law taking away your liberty and making you a slave?
Edwin Epps: Ha!
Bass: Suppose!
Edwin Epps: That ain't a supposable case.
Bass: Because the law states that your liberties are undeniable? Because society deems it so? Laws change. Social systems crumble. Universal truths are constant. It is a fact, it is a plain fact that what is true and right is true and right for all. White and black alike.
Solomon Northup: I don't want to survive. I want to live.
Mistress Epps: You will remove that black bitch from this property, or I'll take myself back to Cheneyville.
Edwin Epps: Back to the hogs's trough where I found you? Do not set yourself against Patsy, my dear. Cos I will rid myself of you well before I do away with her.
Solomon Northup: I will not fall into despair till freedom is opportune!
Solomon Northup: [Finally reunited with his family.] I apologize for my appearance. But I have had a difficult time these past several years.
Answer: Here's why, according to Northup in Twelve Years a Slave: "My great object always was to invent means of getting a letter secretly into the post-office, directed to some of my friends or family at the North. The difficulty of such an achievement cannot be comprehended by one unacquainted with the severe restrictions imposed upon me. In the first place, I was deprived of pen, ink, and paper. In the second place, a slave cannot leave his plantation without a pass, nor will a post-master mail a letter for one without written instructions from his owner."