While reading Chapter 13 of the textbook, I was struck by a small section that discussed Margaret Garner, an escaped slave who opted to kill her daughter instead of seeing her return to slavery. Upon further research, I learned that the Garners were directly affected by the Fugitive Slave Act, enacted by the Compromise of 1850. This act tightened the already existing slave laws by forcing individual citizens to aid slaveowners in recapturing their escaped slaves. The acts also restricted slaves’ rights to trial by jury.
Garner was born in Kentucky in 1834 as a result of her mother’s rape at the hands of their white master, Archibald K. Gaines. Until she was 22 years old, Garner worked as a house slave. Historians believe that she was subject to cruel treatment by Gaines and some of her children were likely a product of a rape by him. In 1856, Garner, her husband, and their four children successfully escaped to Ohio, where Garner’s cousin was living freely. However, slave-catchers soon located the family and surrounded the safe house. At this moment, Garner made the decision that she would rather die than be forced back into slavery. With a butcher knife, she killed her 2-year-old daughter and wounded the rest of her children. The slave catchers stopped Garner before she could finish the deed and end her own life.
Over the next two weeks, Garner’s fate was decided in the longest fugitive slave case in history. John Jolliffe, an abolitionist lawyer, wanted Garner to be tried for murder because it would lay the foundation for slaves’ legal rights. However, Garner was instead convicted of destruction of property and her entire family was returned to slavery. Two years later, Garner died from typhoid fever.
Margaret Garner’s tragic story serves to highlight the inhumane treatment of slaves and the lengths that people were willing to go to avoid it. Additionally, at the time of the incident, Garner’s actions posed the question to an already divided America: Was death preferable to slavery? This affair intensified the debate over the issue, eventually resulting in the Civil War.
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You tackled the topic very well, and I liked how you took something that you read about that interested you, then went and learned more about the event. Something that I was wondering as I was reading is how common was this? It seems Garner was really just wanting to "save" her children, and so wouldn't other mothers and fathers also want the best for the next generation?
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed how you related an extreme case to an overall issue at the time. This incident brought up some moral and ethical questions in my mind. It is clear that slavery was completely immoral and unethical, but was it ethical of Garner to try to make that decision for her children? Garner definitely could make the decision for herself, and it is understandable that she wanted to do what she thought was best for her kids. However, by doing what she did, she also took away the chance for her kids to perhaps have a good future and be free someday.
ReplyDeleteI really liked how you were able to find a specific story of someone who was affected by such a pressing issue during that period. It was also really interesting to read how the establishment of slaves' legal rights was such an avoided topic at the time that Garner was tried for destruction of property rather than the case being seen as a murder, because the latter would imply that Garner as well as the victims were equal to whites in a court of law. In addition, I feel that this story, although it is an extreme case, very well captures the thoughts of many slaves towards the slavery and how backwards many policies were towards them.
ReplyDeleteThis is a really interesting event since it brings up the question over slavery and whether or not Garner's actions were justified or barbaric. I like how you described the story in detail, from her life as a child slave to her life as she becomes a married adult with children. Overall, her actions in killing her children so that they would not return to lives as slaves was very powerful since it showed the extremity of the situation, you were able to portray that very well near the end of your blog.
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