Driven toward Madness. Nikki M. Taylor

Justice but one was also a midwesterner.

      Much of the history of the Midwest has been about race. The political or cultural Midwest began with the passage of the Northwest Ordinance in 1787, which provided for a system of government and land distribution for the territories north and west of the Ohio River—present-day Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and part of Minnesota. The Ordinance established the process of turning territories into states, but it is most remembered for Article VI, added at the last minute, banning slavery in the Northwest Territory. The antislavery article of the Ordinance was less effective than its authors anticipated. Perhaps a thousand or so slaves already lived in the Territory, mostly in what is today southern Indiana or southern Illinois. Thanks to proslavery interpretations of the Ordinance and stubborn persistence by the slave owners in the Territory, most of these people were held in bondage until the early nineteenth century, and some remained in servitude until the 1840s.

      Even when they were no longer in bondage, African Americans endured discriminatory laws that made their settlement in the region difficult. In Ohio there was never any slavery or long-term indentured servitude, as there was in Indiana and Illinois. But blacks in the Buckeye State could not vote, serve on juries, or before 1849 even expect to attend a public school. Yet, despite this discrimination, free blacks and fugitive slaves poured into Ohio from the moment of statehood in 1803 until the Civil War. In 1803 there were fewer than 500 blacks in the state. By 1810 there were more than 2,000, and by 1830 the population was almost 10,000. The federal census found more than 25,000 African Americans in 1850 and more than 36,000 on the eve of the Civil War. The real number was certainly larger, because fugitive slaves entering the state did their best not be counted or even noticed by government officials.

      By 1850 Ohio also had a strong and vibrant antislavery community. Opponents of slavery, like Joshua R. Giddings, Benjamin F. Wade, James Ashley, John Bingham, and most important of all, Salmon P. Chase, held state offices and represented the state in the House of Representatives and the Senate. Antislavery lawyers fought to protect fugitive slaves, and some whites pushed for increasing black rights. Racism was still common, and blacks suffered discrimination in many ways, but at the same time, one of the few integrated colleges in the country was in Oberlin, and at least one African American, John Mercer Langston, was elected to public office, even though blacks were prohibited from voting.

      The Ohio River marked the boundary between slavery and freedom for thousands of African Americans who crossed the river to escape bondage. Many successfully made the transition from southern slavery to northern liberty, even if they did not have full equality. Ohio was a beacon for slaves who wanted to own themselves.

      Nikki M. Taylor tells the story of a family of Kentucky slaves who saw Ohio as just such a beacon of freedom. The family managed to escape across the Ohio River, only to be captured in Cincinnati. What happened next was a tragic moment in American history. Rather than let her children be returned to bondage, their mother, Margaret Garner, attacked her offspring, managing to kill one of her children before being stopped. The incident incited sectional controversy. Southerners argued that only a crazy woman would kill her own children. Some northerners agreed, but others realized that the evils of slavery might drive a mother to do what was unspeakable: murder her own child. Was Margaret Garner insane or evil? Or was she rational in thinking that death was better than bondage? Had slavery driven her to madness, or was she reacting logically to the events of the moment, in a small house in Cincinnati, as slave catchers and law enforcement officials from Ohio tried to capture her and her family? This is the story that Nikki Taylor offers us.

      Paul Finkelman

      L. Diane Barnes

       ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

      My life would have little meaning without my spiritual grounding. I thank God for every ounce of support and inner strength that enabled me to finish this—my third—monograph. I also thank Ohio University Press, its board and editorial staff, for this opportunity. I am especially grateful to Director Gillian Berchowitz, as well as Diane Barnes and Paul Finkelman, for being a better publishing team than I could ever have dreamed of. I have nothing but the highest praise for the attention and time they have given to this book—as well as my first one, Frontiers of Freedom. Other presses might not have given either of these projects a chance, but this team believed in me, my vision, and capability. Perhaps that is what allowed them to put up with my countless delays. Gill Berchowitz is—hands-down—one of the most capable, intelligent, supportive, and nurturing editors in the game. I count it as an added bonus to have one of the leading legal scholars in Paul on my team. He responded to every one of my hysterical calls and emails at all hours asking for assistance detangling the legal issues in the case. He and Diane read more drafts of this manuscript than should be legal. I truly feel that this was a collective project.

      I also acknowledge those who eagerly and graciously assisted me in this project. They include Ruth Wade Cox Brunings for early conversations about her perspective on this case. Although I may not agree with her, her insight helped me understand Kentucky culture, race relations, history, and memory. She very generously and graciously shared her research and allowed me to pick her brain about this case. Brunings also made arrangements for me to see the Gaines Maplewood farm, where Margaret Garner lived with her children. In addition, I thank the archivists and librarians at the Ohio and Cincinnati Historical Societies. These two institutions have been indispensable to my scholarship throughout my career, and I am forever indebted. The staff members have been generous with their time and have shared information that saved me countless hours of research time. I have noticed that over the years, the staff and services at these two institutions have been reduced in ways that created unnecessary obstacles to my research. I encourage Ohio legislators to recognize why it is imperative that they continue to fund these important institutions. I also thank Lance at the Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives for searching high and low for that requisition order, the Kentucky Historical Society, and the Dallas Public Library for helping me locate copies of the Gaines family Bible.

      Although many family members, friends, students, and colleagues have provided moral support throughout my entire career, one person made the difference in my finishing this book, my daughter. She embodies what Margaret Garner may have dreamed of for her own daughters: a life pregnant with possibilities, hope, and boundless freedom.

       INTRODUCTION

       Bodies and Souls

      Enslaved women rarely used deadly violence in the long history of American slavery. Those who did, typically killed their owners and not their loved ones—especially not their own living, breathing children. In 1856, Margaret Garner, an enslaved woman from northern Kentucky, murdered her infant daughter and attempted to kill her other children while trying to escape slavery. The question this book answers is why. What concerns or grievances led this enslaved woman to commit deadly violence? Margaret Garner’s story suggests that damage done to them as women—as wives and mothers, in particular—could and did sometimes drive them to murder.

      Margaret Garner’s life history is full of things deemed unspeakable, dishonorable, and ugly in nineteenth-century America, including physical abuse, child murder, possible sexual abuse and mental illness, slavery, and death. Her story is as uncomfortable as it is captivating—so much so, that it has inspired several novels, works of historical fiction, collected essays, a film, and an opera. The story had completely dropped out of the public consciousness and conscience for more than one hundred years until Toni Morrison reintroduced it through her 1987 novel Beloved. The novel and Jonathan Demme’s 1998 film adaptation with the same name, starring Oprah Winfrey, Danny Glover, and Thandie Newton, helped raise the public consciousness about this tragic story. Set after the Civil War just outside Cincinnati, Ohio, Beloved is about a former slave woman named Sethe who beheaded her own two-year-old daughter to prevent her from being sent back to slavery. Sethe is haunted by the angry ghost of her murdered daughter until that spirit is made flesh in a young woman who shows up at her door one day. The arrival of the young woman leads Sethe on a path whereby she is forced to confront the painful memories and traumas of her enslaved past. Morrison’s Beloved is a powerful assertion