When Northup was separated, he had no chance to say goodbye to his family. He was kidnapped during an outing to play the violin. He was hoping to see if anyone would like to hire him to play music for them. Before all of this, his wife had gone to this southern state to see if they needed a musician, and so she thought this would be a good place to send her husband not thinking anything bad would happen to him. He set off going to the place where he was supposed to meet these men. However, they moved places and promised they would pay the expected amount and he thought it was a good thing. He didn’t think to tell his wife where he went to but that turned out to be a big mistake because he thought it would be a quick performance, but that’s where he was wrong. The people took him out of New York and kidnapped him to Georgia. There they tried to break his spirit and try to force him to think that he was a run-away slave from Georgia, but he didn’t break. They still sold him anyway. He was distraught because he thought he would never see his children again and just very sad. He thought about how he should have spent more time with them. “My cup of sorrow was full to overflowing. Then I lifted up my hands to God, and in the still watches of the night, surrounded by the sleeping forms of my companions, begged for mercy on the poor, for[1]saken captive. To the Almighty Father of us all—the freeman and the slave—I poured forth the supplications of a broken spirit, imploring strength from on high to bear up against the burden of my troubles, until the morning light aroused the slumbers, ushering in another day of bondage.”
As for Eliza, she was a slave, but she was with a very rich master that provided everything and more. This made being a slave to him more of a luxury in comparison to other slave owners. This was the closest thing to being free and she was basically a maid or a person that cleaned the house for him. Then she had three children and her oldest child, which I think was twelve at the time, was sold to a man, a day’s ride away from her master’s home. She was very sad and wanted to see her child which she felt that she would never see them again. So, she went to her master and begged to see her child before she was gone for good. “Eliza never after saw or heard of Emily or Randall. Day nor night, however, where they ever absent from her memory. In the cotton field, in the cabin, always and everywhere, she was talking of them—often to them, as if they were actually present. Only when absorbed in that illusion, or asleep, did she ever have a moment’s comfort afterwards.”
It seems to me that Eliza was crushed without her children and Thomas was full of regrets of not being with them more.