Margaret Garner, called "Peggy" (died 1858), was an enslaved

African-American African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ensl ...

woman in pre-

Civil War A civil war or intrastate war is a war between organized groups within the same state (or country). The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policies ...

America who killed her own daughter rather than allow the child to be returned to

slavery Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...

. Garner and her family had escaped enslavement in January 1856 by traveling across the frozen Ohio River to

Cincinnati Cincinnati ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Hamilton County. Settled in 1788, the city is located at the northern side of the confluence of the Licking and Ohio rivers, the latter of which marks the state line wit ...

, but they were apprehended by

U.S. Marshals The United States Marshals Service (USMS) is a federal law enforcement agency in the United States. The USMS is a bureau within the U.S. Department of Justice, operating under the direction of the Attorney General, but serves as the enforce ...

acting under the

Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 The Fugitive Slave Act or Fugitive Slave Law was passed by the United States Congress on September 18, 1850, as part of the Compromise of 1850 between Southern interests in slavery and Northern Free-Soilers. The Act was one of the most con ...

. Garner's defense attorney, John Jolliffe, moved to have her tried for murder in

Ohio Ohio () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Of the fifty U.S. states, it is the 34th-largest by area, and with a population of nearly 11.8 million, is the seventh-most populous and tenth-most densely populated. The sta ...

, to be able to get a trial in a free state and to challenge the

Fugitive Slave Law The fugitive slave laws were laws passed by the United States Congress in 1793 and 1850 to provide for the return of enslaved people who escaped from one state into another state or territory. The idea of the fugitive slave law was derived from ...

. Garner's story was the inspiration for the novel '' Beloved'' (1987) by Nobel Prize-winning author

Toni Morrison Chloe Anthony Wofford Morrison (born Chloe Ardelia Wofford; February 18, 1931 – August 5, 2019), known as Toni Morrison, was an American novelist. Her first novel, ''The Bluest Eye'', was published in 1970. The critically acclaimed '' So ...

and its subsequent adaptation into a film of the same name starring Oprah Winfrey (1998).

Early life

Garner, described as a mulatto, was born a

house slave A house slave was a slave who worked, and often lived, in the house of the slave-owner, performing domestic labor. House slaves performed largely the same duties as all domestic workers throughout history, such as cooking, cleaning, serving meals, ...

to the Gaines family of Maplewood plantation,

Boone County, Kentucky Boone County is a county located in the northern part of the U.S. state of Kentucky. As of the 2020 census, the population was 135,968, making it the fourth-most populous county in Kentucky. Its county seat is Burlington. The county was formed ...

. She may have been the daughter of the plantation owner John Pollard Gaines. In 1849 she married Robert Garner, an enslaved man. That December, the plantation and all the people enslaved there were sold to John P. Gaines's younger brother, Archibald K. Gaines. The Garners' first child, Thomas, was born early in 1850. Three of Garner's younger children (Samuel, Mary, and Priscilla) were described as mulattoes; each was born five to seven months after a child born to Archibald Gaines and his wife. These light-skinned children were likely the children of Archibald Gaines, the only adult white male at Maplewood. The timing of the pregnancies suggests that the children were each conceived after Gaines's wife had become pregnant and was sexually unavailable to him. In a contemporary account, abolitionist

Levi Coffin Levi Coffin (October 28, 1798 – September 16, 1877) was an American Quaker, Republican, abolitionist, farmer, businessman and humanitarian. An active leader of the Underground Railroad in Indiana and Ohio, some unofficially called Coffin the " ...

described Margaret Garner at her arrest as "a mulatto, about five feet high ... she appeared to be about twenty-one or twenty-three years old." She also had an old scar on the left side of her forehead and cheek, which she said had been caused when a "White man struck me." Her two sons were about four and six years old, and her daughter Mary was two and a half, and baby girl Priscilla, an infant.

Escape and trial

On January 28, 1856, Robert and Margaret Garner, who was pregnant, together with family members, escaped and fled to Storrs Township, a rural area just west of

, along with several other enslaved families. Robert Garner had stolen his enslaver's horses and sleigh along with his gun. Seventeen people were reported to have been in their party. In the coldest winter in 60 years, the Ohio River had frozen. At daybreak, the group crossed the ice in

, just west of Covington, and escaped to Storrs Township before dividing to avoid detection. The Garners and their four children, with Robert's father Simon and his wife Mary, made their way to the home of Margaret's uncle Joe Kite, who had himself been formerly enslaved, and who lived along Mill Creek below Cincinnati. The other nine people in their party reached safe houses in Cincinnati and eventually escaped via the

Underground Railroad The Underground Railroad was a network of clandestine routes and safe houses established in the United States during the early- to mid-19th century. It was used by enslaved African Americans primarily to escape into free states and Canada. ...

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

. Kite went to

abolitionist Abolitionism, or the abolitionist movement, is the movement to end slavery. In Western Europe and the Americas, abolitionism was a historic movement that sought to end the Atlantic slave trade and liberate the enslaved people. The British ...

for advice on how to get the group to safety. Coffin agreed to help them escape the city, and told Kite to take the Garner group further west of the city, where many free Black people lived, and to wait until night.

Slave catcher In the United States a slave catcher was a person employed to track down and return escaped slaves to their enslavers. The first slave catchers in the Americas were active in European colonies in the West Indies during the sixteenth century. I ...

s and

U.S. Marshal The United States Marshals Service (USMS) is a federal law enforcement agency in the United States. The USMS is a bureau within the U.S. Department of Justice, operating under the direction of the Attorney General, but serves as the enforce ...

s found the Garners barricaded inside Kite's house before he returned. They surrounded the property and then stormed the house. Robert Garner fired several shots and wounded at least one deputy marshal. Margaret killed her two-year-old daughter Mary with a butcher's knife rather than see the child returned to slavery. She had wounded her other children, preparing to kill them and herself, when she was subdued by the posse. The entire group was taken to jail. The subsequent trial lasted for two weeks, after which the judge deliberated another two weeks. It was "the longest and most complicated case of its kind." A typical fugitive slave hearing would have lasted less than a day. The core issue was whether the Garners would be tried as persons, and charged with the murder of their daughter, or tried as property under the Fugitive Slave Law. The defense attorney argued that Ohio's right to protect its citizens should take precedence. The slave catchers and owner argued for the precedence of federal law over the state. The defense attempted to prove that Margaret Garner had been liberated under a former law covering slaves taken into free states for other work. Her attorney proposed that she be charged with murder so that the case would be tried in a free state (understanding that the Governor would later pardon her). The prosecuting attorney argued that the federal Fugitive Slave Law took precedence over state murder charges. Over a thousand people turned out each day to watch the proceedings, lining the streets outside the courthouse. Five hundred men were deputized to maintain order in the town. The presiding judge, Pendery, ruled that Federal fugitive warrants had supervening authority. Defense attorney John Jolliffe then tried a strategy of arguing that the Fugitive Slave Act violated the guarantee of religious freedom, by compelling citizens to participate in evil by returning slaves. Pendery rejected this argument. On the closing day of the trial, the antislavery activist Lucy Stone took the stand to defend her earlier conversations with Margaret (the prosecution had complained.) She spoke about the interracial sexual relationship that underlay part of the case:

Recalling to everyone's memory the faces of Margaret's children, and of A. K. Gaines, Stone told the packed courtroom: "The faded faces of the Negro children tell too plainly to what degradation the female slaves submit. Rather than give her daughter to that life, she killed it. If in her deep maternal love she felt the impulse to send her child back to God, to save it from coming woe, who shall say she had no right not to do so?"

Margaret Garner's actions were driven by her master's abuse and the well known abuse slaves faced nationwide. Women were known to practice infanticide to alleviate the burden of slavery from their children; however, in Garner's case her children faced even more opposition due to their being mulattos. Mulattos were seen as a threat as well as a disgrace among the plantation and white families because the birth of mulatto children highlighted infidelity within the slave-owning families. They reminded the family of a perceived sin, and were often beaten or sold. Garner underwent drastic measures to protect her child not only from the cruelty of the institution of

but from the double threat, due to the child's mulatto status. Margaret Garner was not immediately tried for murder but was forced to return to a slave state along with Robert and their youngest child, a daughter of about nine months old. When Ohio authorities got an extradition warrant for Garner to try her for murder, they were unable to find her for the arrest. Archibald K. Gaines, her owner, kept moving her between cities in Kentucky.

Sent south and death

Ohio officials missed finding Margaret in Covington by a few hours, missed apprehending her again in Frankfort, and finally caught up with her enslaver in

Louisville Louisville ( , , ) is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Kentucky and the 28th most-populous city in the United States. Louisville is the historical seat and, since 2003, the nominal seat of Jefferson County, on the Indiana border. ...

, only to discover that he had put the enslaved people on a boat headed for his brother's plantation in

Arkansas Arkansas ( ) is a landlocked state in the South Central United States. It is bordered by Missouri to the north, Tennessee and Mississippi to the east, Louisiana to the south, and Texas and Oklahoma to the west. Its name is from the O ...

. '' The Liberator'' reported that, on 6 March 1856, the steamboat ''Henry Lewis'', on which the Garners were being transported, began to sink after colliding with another boat. Margaret Garner and her baby daughter were either thrown overboard during the collision or, according to an alternate account, Garner deliberately jumped overboard after tossing her baby into the river. The baby drowned. It was reported that Margaret expressed "frantic joy" that her baby had died, and that she had tried to drown herself. She and Robert were kept in Arkansas only a short time before being sent to Gaines' family friends in

New Orleans New Orleans ( , ,New Orleans

as a household servant. The Garners then disappeared from sight. In 1870, a reporter from ''The Cincinnati Chronicle'' found Robert Garner and gathered more about his life. Robert and Margaret Garner had worked in New Orleans, and in 1857 were sold to Judge Dewitt Clinton Bonham for plantation labor at Tennessee Landing, Mississippi. Robert said Margaret had died in 1858 of

typhoid fever Typhoid fever, also known as typhoid, is a disease caused by '' Salmonella'' serotype Typhi bacteria. Symptoms vary from mild to severe, and usually begin six to 30 days after exposure. Often there is a gradual onset of a high fever over several ...

, in an epidemic in the valley. He said that before she died, Margaret urged him to "never marry again in slavery, but to live in hope of freedom."

Memorialized

Garner's life story was the basis of

Frances Harper Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (September 24, 1825 – February 22, 1911) was an American abolitionist, suffragist, poet, temperance activist, teacher, public speaker, and writer. Beginning in 1845, she was one of the first African-American women to ...

's 1859 poem "Slave Mother: A Tale of Ohio". She also inspired Kentucky painter Thomas Satterwhite Noble's 1867 painting, ''The Modern Medea'';

Medea In Greek mythology, Medea (; grc, Μήδεια, ''Mēdeia'', perhaps implying "planner / schemer") is the daughter of King Aeëtes of Colchis, a niece of Circe and the granddaughter of the sun god Helios. Medea figures in the myth of Jason an ...

was a woman in Greek mythology who killed her own children. The painting, owned by Cincinnati manufacturer

Procter and Gamble The Procter & Gamble Company (P&G) is an American multinational consumer goods corporation headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio, founded in 1837 by William Procter and James Gamble. It specializes in a wide range of personal health/consumer hea ...

Corporation, was presented as a gift to the

National Underground Railroad Freedom Center The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center is a museum in downtown Cincinnati, Ohio, based on the history of the Underground Railroad. Opened in 2004, the Center also pays tribute to all efforts to "abolish human enslavement and secure fr ...

, where it remains on permanent display.

was inspired to write her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel '' Beloved'' (1987). Morrison also wrote the libretto for the

opera Opera is a form of theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by singers. Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera") is typically a collaboration between a composer and a libr ...

'' Margaret Garner'' (2005), composed by

Richard Danielpour Richard Danielpour (born January 28, 1956) is an American composer. Early life Danielpour was born in New York City of Persian Jewish descent and grew up in New York City and West Palm Beach, Florida. He studied at Oberlin College and the New E ...

. Other fiction writing inspired by Garner's story include, John Jolliffe's ''Belle Scott'' (1856), N. K. Jemisin's '' The Fifth Season'' (2015), and K. A. Simpson's '' A Coven's Lament'' (2017).

Citations

References

*Coffin, Levi. ''Reminiscences of Levi Coffin, the Reputed President of the Underground Railroad'' (Cincinnati: Western Tract Society), 1876. *"Stampede of Slaves: A Tale of Horror" ''

The Cincinnati Enquirer ''The Cincinnati Enquirer'' is a morning daily newspaper published by Gannett in Cincinnati, Ohio, United States. First published in 1841, the ''Enquirer'' is the last remaining daily newspaper in Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky, al ...

'', January 29, 1856. *Weisenburger, Steven. ''Modern Medea: A Family Story of Slavery and Child Murder from the Old South'' (New York:

Hill and Wang Hill & Wang is an American book publishing company focused on American history, world history, and politics. It is a division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Hill & Wang was founded as an independent publishing house in 1956 by Arthur Wang (1917/1 ...

), 1998. *

External links

Information about ''Margaret Garner'' the opera
{{DEFAULTSORT:Garner, Margaret 19th-century American slaves Filicides in the United States 1858 deaths American female murderers American murderers of children American female criminals Year of birth unknown People from Boone County, Kentucky 19th-century African-American women