In 1856 Fugitive Slave Margaret Garner Arrested While Trying to Escape Attempted the Unthinkable

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Volume 13 Number 006

Margaret Garner – Fugitive Slave Part II

Lead: In 1856 fugitive slave Margaret Garner arrested while trying to escape attempted the unthinkable. To prevent her children from being returned to slavery, she killed one and tried to kill the others.

Intro.: A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts.

Content: After crossing the frozen Ohio River near Cincinnati Garner’s family were in hiding when the posse led by her owner, Archibald Grimes closed in. Margaret killed her two and one half year old daughter, Mary, and attempted to kill the others. Margaret herself was mulatto and her murdered daughter was described as “almost white.” It is probable that the father of at least some of Margaret’s children was actually Grimes, her owner. Garner’s husband worked on a neighboring plantation.

The Garner trial riveted a city, state and nation bitterly split over slavery. Throngs of demonstrators on both sides packed the streets in front of the Cincinnati federal courthouse. Garner’s legal situation was very complicated. It was the first time a fugitive slave was also charged with a capital crime. The federal commissioner ruled that Margaret was first arrested as a fugitive slave. Therefore, she had to abide that charge before facing the Ohio indicted for murder.

The Garners’ abolitionist attorney argued tirelessly and eloquently against the constitutionality and morality of the Fugitive Slave Law. He tried to prove that Margaret Garner was free because of a previous trip to Ohio. The strategy was to keep the Garners from returning to Kentucky, and then have Margaret tried on a lesser charge. She would have to go to prison, but not face execution or a return to slavery.

In the end the Fugitive Slave Law was upheld, and the Garners escorted back to Kentucky. To prevent Margaret from being pursued by Ohio authorities, Grimes moved Margaret around on different family properties. She died of typhoid in 1858. The tragedy of Margaret Garner was the inspiration for Toni Morrison’s Beloved as well as the opera Margaret Garner.

At the University of Richmond, this is Dan Roberts.

Resources

Margaret Garner Educational Resources. Detroit Opera House. 10 January 2007< >.

Wiesenberger, Steven. Modern Medea: A Family’s Story of Slavery and Child-Murder from the Old South. New York, NY: Hill and Wang, 1998.

Yanuc, Julius. The Fugitive Slave Case.” Mississippi Valley Historical Review (Now Journal of American Historians) 40: 1 (June 1953). www.authors.aalbc.com/margaret.htm