When talking about slavery pre-Civil War, we talk about complete racism towards black people from the white people. Often in school, in addition to this topic teachers mention a novel by Toni Morrison called Beloved. The book brings the topic of the struggle of Blacks after the Civil war, although many would argue not because of its fictional part. But then in the Foreword readers find out the book is based on a character that lived before the Civil War, Margaret Garner.
She died a couple of days before that interview with her husband because of sickness.
Margaret Garner was born on June 4th 1834, as a mixed African and European at that time, was a slave and lived on a plantation called Maplewood in Boone country, Kentucky, where she spent most of her life. She died in 1858 because of typhoid fever on a plantation in Mississippi. Her death location isn’t certain while some sources claim to say her husband Robert found her in Louisiana. As a slave of John Pollard Gaines, who took her on a lot of trips to free territories in Cincinnati, Ohio. When he sold the plantation to his brother in December 1849, Margaret married her husband Robert Garner and had four children with him. Unfortunately for them, the only one was actually theirs. His name was Thomas. The other three: Samuel, Mary, and Priscilla were called Mullatoes as their mother. Each one was born five to seven months after the slaveholder Archibald Gaines’s wife got pregnant and was sexually unavailable for him. It could have been anybody right, well no because Archibald was the only white male on the entire plantation.
On 27 January 1856, which was a Sunday, Margaret and Robert with their family members had enough and escaped the plantation through the Underground Railroad. Unfortunately, they didn’t escape to Canada but to Joseph’s Kite House. Joseph was a relative of Margaret. The other escape mates made it safely to Canada and weren’t captured again. Whereas Garners within hours got caught, with a storm by Gaines and federal marshals due to the Fugitive Slave Act. Robert tried to defend his family with a pistol and in the process, Margaret was determined not to let her children go back to slavery nor let them live with what she had to live with. She grabbed a butcher’s knife and slit her youngest daughter, Mary, throat and then proceeded to stab her other children who were only wounded. The entire family was taken into custody and imprisoned. Their trial became the longest trial of all the “fugitive slave act” cases. Their lawyer was defending them that the trips done with her first slaveholder John justified their freedom in Cincinnati. Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough and the judge denied the plea. It was already a lost cause, which resulted in their lawyer John Joliffe deciding to convince the marshals to arrest her under the crime of murder but it would also result in her family freedom, at least it was supposed to. The judge disagreed again and insisted that the case was a fugitive slave act case and not a murder case.
Gaines sold them to his brother. On the way there when traveling on a steamboat Henry Lewis to the plantation, the ship collided with another one, and Margaret’s daughter Cilla, who she was pregnant with when escaping, drowned. Instead of sadness, she expressed joy. After what happened in Ohio she never hurt another child her husband said but he also said Margaret always mentioned that the kids would ‘better for them to be put out of the world than live in slavery.’ She died a couple of days before that interview with her husband because of sickness.
Work Cited
Nichols, C. (2007, December 05). Margaret Garner Incident (1856). BlackPast.org. https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/margaret-garner-incident-1856/
Because this was a presentation I like this essay, but yet I wish I concluded it when I was writing it because now that I read it it feels empty