Driven toward Madness. Nikki M. Taylor

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       DRIVEN TOWARD MADNESS

       New Approaches to Midwestern Studies

      SERIES EDITORS: PAUL FINKELMAN AND L. DIANE BARNES

      Nikki M. Taylor, Driven toward Madness: The Fugitive Slave Margaret Garner and Tragedy on the Ohio

      Jenny Bourne, In Essentials, Unity: An Economic History of the Grange Movement

       DRIVEN TOWARD MADNESS

       The Fugitive Slave Margaret Garner and Tragedy on the Ohio

      Nikki M. Taylor

      OHIO UNIVERSITY PRESS

      ATHENS

      Ohio University Press, Athens, Ohio 45701

       ohioswallow.com

      © 2016 by Ohio University Press

      All rights reserved

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      Printed in the United States of America

      Ohio University Press books are printed on acid-free paper ™

      Cover credit: Thomas Satterwhite Noble, The Modern Medea (1867).

      From the Collection of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center.

      27 26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 5 4 3 2 1

       Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Names: Taylor, Nikki Marie, 1972– author.

      Title: Driven toward madness : the fugitive slave Margaret Garner and tragedy on the Ohio / Nikki M. Taylor.

      Description: Athens : Ohio University Press, 2016. | Series: New approaches to midwestern studies | Includes bibliographical references and index.

      Identifiers: LCCN 2016041893| ISBN 9780821421598 (hc : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780821421604 (pb : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780821445860 (pdf)

      Subjects: LCSH: Garner, Margaret, 1834–1858. | Fugitive slaves—Kentucky—Biography. | Fugitive slaves—Legal status, laws, etc.—United States. | Fugitive slaves—Legal status, laws, etc.—Ohio—Cincinnati. | Garner, Margaret, 1834–1858—Trials, litigation, etc. | Infanticide—Ohio—Cincinnati—Case studies.

      Classification: LCC E450.G225 T39 2016 | DDC 306.3/62092 [B]—dc23

      LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016041893

       For Black Women and Their Unconquerable Spirits, Past and Present

       CONTENTS

       List of Illustrations

       Series Editors’ Preface

       Acknowledgments

       Introduction: Bodies and Souls

       1. “Hope Fled”

       2. Before the Blood

       3. After the Blood

       4. “Faded Faces” Tell Secrets—or Do They?

       5. Driven by Madness, Badness, or Sadness?

       6. A Kind of Hero

       Postscript

       Notes

       Selected Bibliography

       Index

       ILLUSTRATIONS

      FIGURES

       1.1. Pencil drawing of the Thomas Satterwhite Noble painting The Modern Medea

       3.1. Lucy Stone, November 1853. Photograph by G. W. Bartlett

      PLATES

       1. Anti-slavery Bugle, 2 February 1856

       2. Murder indictment for the Garners, 8 February 1856

       3a–c. Narrative of the Ohio murder indictment against the Garners, 15 May 1856

       4. Order given to the sheriff to deliver the Garners to the federal marshal, 28 February 1856

       5a–d. Letter from county prosecutor Joseph Cox to Governor Salmon Portland Chase, outlining the state and federal custody battle over the Garners, 29 February 1856

       6. Letter from county prosecutor Joseph Cox to Governor Salmon Portland Chase, 15 May 1856

       SERIES EDITORS’ PREFACE

      For much of American history the term “Midwest” evoked images of endless fields of grain, flat, treeless landscapes, and homogenized populations in small towns. Most Americans hear “Midwest” and think of corn, wheat, soybeans, massive feedlots, huge pig farms, and countless dairy herds. The cinematic Midwest was River City, Iowa, in The Music Man; Dorothy trying to escape Oz and get back to Kansas; the iconic power of small-town basketball portrayed in Hoosiers; or a mythical baseball diamond in rural Iowa in Field of Dreams. In the late twentieth century, images of deindustrialization and decay linked the region to a new identity as the nation’s Rust Belt. For too many Americans, the Midwest has been “flyover country.”

      This book series explores regional identity in the nation’s past through the lens of the American Midwest. Stereotypical images of the region ignore the complexity and vibrancy of the region, as well as the vital role it has played—and continues to play—in the nation’s economy, politics, and social history. In the antebellum and Civil War periods the Midwest was home to virulent racist opponents of black rights and black migration but also to a vibrant antislavery movement, the vigorous and often successful Underground Railroad, and the political and military leadership that brought an end to slavery and reframed the Constitution to provide at least formal racial equality. A midwestern president issued the Emancipation Proclamation, and midwestern generals led the armies that defeated the southern slaveocracy. Midwestern politicians authored the Thirteenth Amendment ending slavery and the Fourteenth Amendment mandating legal equality for all Americans. The political impact of the region is exemplified by the fact that from 1860 to 1932 only two elected presidents (Grover Cleveland and Woodrow Wilson) were not from the Midwest. Significantly, from 1864