This is a historical book that tries to reconstruct the case of Margaret Garner identified as The Modern Medea by the painter Thomas Satterwhite in 1867. She is also evoked in a poem by Mary A. Livermore, The Slave Tragedy of Cincinnati, in the New York Tribune on February 3, 1856, in a long poem, The Night of Freedom, by William Wallace Hebbard recited on March 18, 1856 and in another shorter poem by Frances Harper, The Slave Mother, A tale of the Ohio, published in 1874. These three references do not identify her to Medea. Finally her case is in the background of Toni Morrison's Beloved.
The events took place in the winter 1856 in Kentucky and Ohio, Covington on one bank and Cincinnati on the other bank of the Ohio river. A family, three generations and eight people, of slaves escape from Kentucky to Ohio across the river that is frozen in the night from Sunday January27 to Monday January 28. The Garners go to some acquaintances, the Kites who try to get them to the close-by Underground Railroad Station but for unclear reasons the house is besieged by the police at 10 and they are arrested at 12. During the scuffle the Mother, Margaret kills her 3 year old daughter and tries to kill one of her sons and stuns the other. The only one she does not attack is her 9 month old infant.
The case is taken to court but it will last more than a month, though the US Fugitive Slave Laws (1793 and 1850) specifically states that the only element to check is the property right of the owners or claimant over the fugitive slaves. Kentucky is a slave state whereas Ohio is not, and that complicates things.
Two legal problems are raised by the defense.
The first one is that both Robert and Margaret (the younger generation parents) had been brought when children to Ohio by their masters on visits, but since slavery is not recognized by the Ohio Constitution, as soon as they stepped into Ohio they were freed. But the two concerned slaves were young and they were taken back to Kentucky. The question is to know whether that short sojourn in the past with their safe return to Kentucky could be considered as making the slaves free. It will be ruled that it does not.
The second is that a capital crime was committed by one of the fugitive slaves and the others were accessories. Then there is a contradiction. For the capital crime in Ohio, the people who commit such a crime are supposed to be brought to court according to the habeas corpus procedure. They are thus treated as human beings in Ohio and are de facto freed if this habeas corpus procedure is implemented. On the other hand they are slaves, hence a piece of property was destroyed by another piece of property and hence there is no capital crime, only the destruction of some property. And it is this sole question of property that has to be considered according to the Fugitive Acts. The court will finally only consider this question of property considering that the habeas corpus procedure can only apply to human beings recognized as such, in the words of the court "the slave does not possess equal rights with the free-man". This decision is finally taken on Tuesday February 26, 1856.
The captives are thus remanded to slavery and their owners on February 28. They embark on the Henry Lewis ship on March 7 but the ship Edward Howard rams into the previous one and causes its sinking. In those circumstances Margaret drowns her infant child by throwing her into the water and she tries to drown herself by jumping into the river. She is saved by the black cook of the ship who dives and brings her back. They reach their owner's plantation on March 10, full in the cotton season and are probably sent o work: the older generation of parents, the younger generation of parents and the two surviving sons, in the fields because housework is banned for escapees.
This case was heavily used in the debate leading to the Civil War on both sides.
This mother killing to of her children was shown as a monstrous un-person by slave-owners.
But on the other hand she was shown as inspired by a revolutionary spirit and that she preferred entrusting her children to the angels of God to letting them go back into slavery. She was used equally by male abolitionists and by female abolitionists and feminists to enhance the fight against slavery as well as the fight for women's rights. The feminist and abolitionist Lucy Stone testified in court and brought up three arguments. A religious argument with a quotation from the Bible, Deuteronomy 23:15 that states an escaped slave or servant does not have to be given back to his or her previous owner, escaping meaning freedom. Then the fact that Gaines, the owner of these slaves, would have promised to Lucy Stone to free Margaret when she is back in Kentucky, and Lucy Stone insists on the fact he has to hold his promise that he denies of course. The third argument is that the children have "faded faces", meaning they are mulattos born from a union imposed onto Margaret by her owner. This last element leads to the idea of some kind of vengeance against the rapist owner, though a slave-owner must not give a lot of value to the children he may get from his slaves, except that they can be sold, even if they are his own sons or daughters.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU
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