The Horrific Tale of Margaret Garner's Attempt to Escape Slavery

Could you imagine being bought like furniture or having your entire family handed down like unwanted heirlooms? Slavery was a horrific life for blacks and one such story was turned into an opera. This story is about Margaret Garner who lived in Kentucky and was trying escape to Cincinnati Ohio.

The cold January air had turned the water on the Ohio River thick with gleaming ice and snow. Margaret had her four children with her in 1856 on a Sunday night. She was escaping Kentucky with her children because in Kentucky not one of her children had a life worth living.

In the 19th century the city of Cincinnati served as a gateway to freedom for the tens of thousands of blacks living in Kentucky. The journey from the slave state of Kentucky to the free state of Ohio was a dangerous journey. The Ohio River was often referred to as the River Jordon for the hope crossing it offered slaves.

Nearly 150 years ago Margaret Garner set inside a crowded courtroom and listened as hundreds of people shouted her name. Some calling her a saint others calling for her life, they were judging her for a sacrifice no Mother should have to make.

Garner was only 22 years old when she ran in record cold temperatures on January 27 1856 trying to get to Cincinnati. Led by her husband Robert, who was enslaved at a neighboring farm and in tow, were there four children aged from 10 months to 6 years old and Roberts, elderly Mother and Father. They climbed into a sleigh and glided over snow covered roads from Richwood to Covington Kentucky.

There plan was to cross the Ohio River into Cincinnati and stay briefly at the home of one of Garner's free black relatives before disappearing into the Underground Railroad system and heading farther North.

But this plan was interrupted with horrific results. By sunrise a team of men led by Archibald Gaines who had been in pursuit of the Garner family reached the relatives home. They surrounded the home demanding Margaret and her family come out. Margaret was painfully aware that surrendering meant returning her children to capture and worse was the thought of her family being sold down river to even harsher conditions in the Deep South.