A Bondage So Horrible - Essay Example

A Bondage So Horrible The chains of slavery echo loudly through our nation's hallowed halls of history. Well-intentioned leaders nod their head in shallow empathy or cast a downward guilty glance at the mention of its name. The stories of its horrors are abundant. For every slave there are descendants, and the great-great grandchildren keep the stories fresh and in the main of human consciousness. Yet, when the truth revealed is so horrendous that it is unspeakable, memories beg forgetfulness to spare the pain and agony from being repeated even in verse. Such is the tale of Margaret Garner. Ms. Garner's experience is a story of the depth of despair that was suffered by a mother as she watched her children falling prey to another generation of slavery. The year was 1856 and the issue of slavery had demanded that sides be taken. Abolitionists in the North had sympathized with the goal of emancipation and had established the Underground Railroad. Southern states had traditional and economic concerns to keep slavery alive. Free states in the North welcomed freed slaves, while the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 demanded their return to the rightful owners. Margaret Garner faced this turmoil as she, her husband, and family made the decision to go north and escape slavery via the Underground Railroad. The plan began modestly. The January weather had been cold and had frozen the Ohio River to a solid mass of ice. The Garner family and about a dozen other slaves from Boone County Kentucky had set out on a Sunday night by sled and by daybreak had reached the Ohio River just south of Covington, Kentucky. Here the party split ways, left the horses and sled, and made their way by foot into the Free State of Ohio. The six members of the Garner family and another family of three set out to find the home of a freed slave named Kite. Traveling through the busy morning activities and inquiring about the Kite residence apparently garnered the party undue attention. The party had come under the watch of bounty hunters and shortly after arriving at the Kite residence, the house was surrounded. The men tried to break their way into the house of the holed up slaves but were blocked from entering. The slave party was armed and continued to resist. Margaret's husband, Robert, shot a deputy as he tried to crawl through a broken window (The slave tragedy in Cincinnati, February 2, 1856). Margaret Garner, seeing the chance of freedom fade, grabbed a butcher knife and with one slash slit the throat of her favorite daughter. She attempted to kill the remaining three, as well as herself, rather than see them returned to slavery. She was overtaken, overpowered and all were taken to jail. Margaret Garner was charged with the murder of her young daughter. If this had been the whole story, history would show its distaste for the crime and it may have been forgotten. If this had been the end of the tragedy, there might have been only token attempts at sympathy for the deranged Garner woman. But this haunting tale had yet to be unraveled. The world was soon to see that the death of the child was but one small piece in a story of how bleak life as a slave could be. The little girl's death might have been the best and only hope Margaret Garner had. Margaret Garner had been the product of a rape committed by a slave master on her mother. The Cincinnati Gazette of January 1856 described Ms. Garner as, "a mulatto, showing from one-fourth to one-third white blood" (as cited in Pierson, 2003, p. 136). That her mother had been the victim of rape, and her the product of a violent rape, was not enough torment for her though. She too had become a victim of these same hideous crimes perpetrated by her owner. Her children also showed evidence of the horrible acts and the Gazette also stated that the murdered child, "was almost white-and was a little girl of rare beauty" (as cited in Pierson, 2003, p. 136). Margaret Garner was a young woman of about 21 years old when these tragic events took place. Her oldest child was by now six years old, which indicated that her slaveholder had raped her at the tender age of 15. There should be no question in anyone's mind why she would rather kill her young daughter than see her returned to be owned and raped. Lucy Stone, feminist activist of the period would comment at the trial, "The faded faces of the Negro children tell too plainly to what degradation female slaves submit" (as cited in Pierson, 2003, p. 136). At her trial, a witness testified that as she slit the child's throat Ms. Garner proclaimed, "she would rather kill them all than have them taken back over the river" (The slave tragedy in Cincinnati, February 2, 1856). For Margaret Garner, the cycle of submission had to end. Margaret Garner and her legal representatives asked that she be tried for murder in the state of Ohio. This would have the effect of her being allowed to remain in Ohio in state custody. But this was not to be. The death of an innocent child paled in the light of the owner's rights. On the third day of the trial, the New York Daily Times would write, "Not even a warrant for murder could prevent their being returned to bondage" (The runaway slaves, February 8, 1856). The child was not considered a person. The child was property and the crime was the escape and the destruction of property. By law the child was the property of the slave owner. Garner's desperate act was a proclamation that said, "I own this child, not you. This is my child" (Andrews & McKay, 1999, p.214). By killing her child, Margaret Garner had laid ultimate claim to its young life. Margaret Garner's story would suffer additional tragedy in the coming days. She was promptly taken into federal custody as an escaped slave and "sold down the river" to the slave market in New Orleans (Taylor, 2004, p. 160). In a tragic twist of irony, the steamer they were being transported on, the John Lewis, caught fire on the way. A boat attempting to rescue the passengers rammed the steamer and was capsized. After surviving the ordeal in Cincinnati, Margaret's daughter Priscilla drowned in the Mississippi River. There are conflicting reports about the eventual fate of Margaret Garner. It is generally believed that she perished from disease in New Orleans about two years after these tragic events. Those that were not in bondage cannot know the tragedy of the institution of slavery. When the death of a child can be seen as possibly justifiable and the murderer is viewed as a hero, the horrors of enslavement begin to show. Margaret Garner endured the greatest pain a mother could bear. Yet, the death of her children came as a joyous relief when compared with the future they faced. Margaret Garner sacrificed her family, her children, and her life to thrust the obscenity of the Fugitive Slave Act into the public limelight (Taylor, 2004, p. 160). America could no longer deny the unspeakable horrors of slavery nor the depths that a mother would go to free her children from its gruesome hold. References Andrews, W. L., & McKay, N. Y. (1999). Toni Morrison's Beloved : A casebook. New York: Oxford University Press. Pierson, M. D. (2003). Free hearts and free homes : Gender and American antislavery. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press. The runaway slaves. (1856, February 8). New York Daily Times. Retrieved December 8, 2006, from ProQuest. The slave tragedy in Cincinnati. (1856, February 2). New York Daily Times. Retrieved December 8, 2006, from ProQuest. Taylor, N. M. (2004). Frontiers of freedom: Cincinnati's black community, 1802-1868. 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