I am more interested in learning the full history from quality books and people.
Have you read "12 Years a Slave"? But, that gets to the issue of what "history" (or his story) is. Northrup was a real person, not a movie character. The movie is just a visualization of his book. Someone had to read his book before anyone could think of making it into a film.
Imo, if someone is really interested in learning "history," it is best to read primary sources. When it comes to the enslavement of Africans in the American south, there were two primary literary sources. The first were the "plantation diaries" that were kept by slave owners or visitors to their plantations. Poor White people didn't write books about their lives, but we can read their letters, especially those from the CW. However, by far, the most prevalent form of non-fiction were the "fugitive slave narratives." All of these were first-person eyewitness accounts of the period. You can't get no better. Whether they were right or wrong, they weren't lying for our benefit. The arguments are sincere whether we agree or not.
When it comes to fiction, otoh, the story is different. In the Southern novels written about slavery after the Civil War, the slaves are almost always faithful and happy. They gladly accept their status and servitude, and they never rebelled. These "plantation stories" became America's preferred interpretation of "history." The most important films of the first half of the 20th century were "Birth of a Nation" and "Gone With the Wind." If you haven't seen them, do so. In fact, Woodrow Wilson (then POTUS) wrote an introduction to "Birth of a Nation" and had the film shown in the White House. After watching, Wilson is said to have remarked; ""It is like writing history with lightning, and my only regret is that it is all so terribly true.""
Well, watch for yourself and make up your mind.
https://archive.org/details/dw_griffith ... f_a_nation
However, remember that the film "is" history; i.e., it reflects what the people who made it were thinking at the time. One can argue whether it is more or less like Gone With the Wind. But, those were --and for many still are-- illustrations of how most Americans were taught history --until relatively recently and people suddenly became fed up with hearing different
Anyway, here's an example of a "plantation diary" that I mentioned. It addresses some of the issues about poor Whites, indentured Irish and their relation to Blacks. Simply put, the author asked how many of them would gladly trade places. But, read for yourself, and there's a link.
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/12422/12422-h/12422-h.htmPREFACE.
The following diary was kept in the winter and spring of 1838-9, on an estate consisting of rice and cotton plantations, in the islands at the entrance of the Altamaha, on the coast of Georgia.
The slaves in whom I then had an unfortunate interest were sold some years ago. The islands themselves are at present in the power of the Northern troops. The record contained in the following pages is a picture of conditions of human existence which I hope and believe have passed away.
LONDON:
January 16, 1863.
JOURNAL.
Philadelphia: December 1838.
My Dear E——. I return you Mr. ——'s letter. I do not think it answers any of the questions debated in our last conversation at all satisfactorily: the right one man has to enslave another, he has not the hardihood to assert; but in the reasons he adduces to defend that act of injustice, the contradictory statements he makes appear to me to refute each other. He says, that to the continental European protesting against the abstract iniquity of slavery, his answer would be, 'the slaves are infinitely better off than half the continental peasantry.' To the Englishman, 'they are happy compared with the miserable Irish.' But supposing that this answered the question of original injustice, which it does not, it is not a true reply. Though the negroes are fed, clothed, and housed, and though the Irish peasant is starved, naked, and roofless, the bare name of freeman—the lordship over his own person, the power to choose and will—are blessings beyond food, raiment, or shelter; possessing which, the want of every comfort of life is yet more tolerable than their fullest enjoyment without them. Ask the thousands of ragged destitutes who yearly land upon these shores to seek the means of existence—ask the friendless, penniless foreign emigrant, if he will give up his present misery, his future uncertainty, his doubtful and difficult struggle for life, at once, for the secure, and as it is called, fortunate dependance of the slave: the indignation with which he would spurn the offer will prove that he possesses one good beyond all others, and that his birthright as a man is more precious to him yet than the mess of pottage for which he is told to exchange it because he is starving.
Or, read Thomas Thistlewood's diary http://uncpress.unc.edu/browse/page/241
Btw, Limbaugh and others don't realize that this subject has been "popular" since the 18th century when the first major slave narratives emerged. He doesn't get that the plot of being captured, carried away, then escaping and succeeding in spite of extreme difficulties is simply an interesting story that captures the human imagination. When you watch a movie like "The Fugitive" or any movie where someone is unjustly imprisoned, it's the same motif. Oh, and the other theme straight out of the narratives of the period is "rags to riches." That has become the "American" motif; but, in the 18th and 19th century, there were no bigger leaps from the bottom to the top than people like Douglass and Washington (Booker T., that is).
Though, it's sad if films are the primary way people learn their history.