Margaret Garner - the runaway slave who killed her child

The Garner story has captivated thousands of Americans, Toni Morrison in 1987 published a book called Beloved, inspired by this tragedy.

The Garner story was one of the most notorious runaway slave cases in pre-Civil War America. Ms. Garner, her husband, children and other slaves stole a carriage and fled from a Plantation, they ran across the frozen Ohio River to Cincinnati, like thousands of other slaves. They hid overnight in the home of her cousin, a freeman. But the Garners were caught.

Slave catchers, armed with guns and carrying warrants, arrived and demanded their "property" - Ms. Garner, her four children and her husband.

Ms. Garner made an awful, frantic choice as she cowered with her family in a shack near Cincinnati's Mill Creek on Jan. 28, 1856. Gripping a knife, the 23-year-old shouted that she would rather see her children die than be returned to slavery.

As the white men burst in, she killed her 3-year-old daughter before she was subdued.

It is hard to imagine what would make a mother kill her beloved child.

Punishment on the Plantation

Plantation owners believed that severe discipline would make the slaves too scared to rebel. Plantation owners used overseers to keep order, they did this by bullying the slaves into increasing productivity. The punishments used against slaves judged to be under-performing included the use of the whip.

Some slave-owners resorted to:

Smoking: This involved whipping slaves and putting them in a tobacco smoke-house.

Hogshead: Nails were driven into a hogshead so as to leave the point of the nail just protruding in the inside of the cask. Slaves were put into this and rolled down a very long and steep hill.

Branding: Branding with a hot iron was used to mark a slave owners property. People were branded on their face, neck, arms or thighs. This was sometimes used as a form of punishment. A slave was once branded with ‘a slave for life’ on his face.

Creative Methods: Lewis Clarke, a house slave in Kentucky, described in his autobiography the different methods used by his mistress: "instruments of torture were ordinarily the raw hide, or a bunch of hickory-sprouts seasoned in the fire and tied together. But if these were not at hand, nothing came amiss. She could relish a beating with a chair, the broom, tongs, shovel, shears, knife-handle, the heavy heel of her slipper, and an oak club, a foot and a half in length and an inch and a half square. With this delicate weapon she would beat us upon the hands and upon the feet until they were blistered.

Slave Markets: Emotional Destruction

The slave markets add a new spin on the emotion agony slaves were condemned to fresh horrors of the wretchedness of slavery.

A former slave William Wells Brown wrote;

Known to God only is the amount of human agony and suffering which sends its cry from these slave-prisons, unheard or unheeded by man, up to His ear; mothers weeping for their children -- breaking the night-silence with the shrieks of their breaking hearts.

I shall never forget a scene which took place in the city of St. Louis, while I was in slavery. A man and his wife, both slaves, were brought from the country to the city, for sale. They were taken to the rooms of Austin & Savage, auctioneers.

The man was first put up, and sold to the highest bidder. The wife was next ordered to ascend the platform. I was present. She slowly obeyed the order. The auctioneer commenced, and soon several hundred dollars were bid. My eyes were intensely fixed on the face of the woman, whose cheeks were wet with tears. But a conversation between the slave and his new master attracted my attention. I drew near them to listen. The slave was begging his new master to purchase his wife. Said he, "Master, if you will only buy Fanny, I know you will get the worth of your money. She is a good cook, a good washer, and her last mistress liked her very much. If you will only buy her how happy I shall be." The new master replied that he did not want her but if she sold cheap he would purchase her. I watched the countenance of the man while the different persons were bidding on his wife. When his new master bid on his wife you could see the smile upon his countenance, and the tears stop; but as soon as another would bid, you could see the countenance change and the tears start afresh.

From this change of countenance one could see the workings of the inmost soul. But this suspense did not last long; the wife was struck off to the highest bidder, who proved not to be the owner of her husband. As soon as they became aware that they were to be separated, they both burst into tears; and as she descended from the auction-stand, the husband, walking up to her and taking her by the hand, said, "Well, Fanny, we are to part forever, on earth; you have been a good wife to me. I did all that I could to get my new master to buy you; but he did not want you, and all I have to say is, I hope you will try to meet me in heaven. I shall try to meet you there." The wife made no reply, but her sobs and cries told, too well, her own feelings. I saw the countenances of a number of whites who were present, and whose eyes were dim with tears at hearing the man bid his wife farewell. Such are but common occurrences in the slave states.

Slave Markets was where families were destroyed, husbands and wives separated, never to meet again, and little children torn from their parents loving arms, sold into slavery, into the hands of vile strangers from distant parts. slave markets were soaked with tears of sorrow. Think of the pain that wrung the hearts of the slaves and her young ones? What had made Europeans sink so low to ignore the torment of others?

The slave with one breast

A Dutch woman named Susanna owned a plantation in Suriname. She was wealthy and she had the best property in the area, her plantation was named “too bad for you” in Dutch. She took all of the beautiful female enslaved Africans as house slaves because she didn’t want the men to look at them. One enslaved woman had a young child and couldn’t get it to stop crying, so she told the girl to make it stop now or she would stop it. The girlcouldn’t, so Susanna took the child and held it upside down in the water until it drown.

Susanna was a very jealous woman and noticed that her husband’s eyes followed this one enslaved woman. So, while her husband was out, she cut off this woman’s breast and boiled it. When he came home for dinner, she brought the breast out on a plate and told him that she had made his favourite dish. He found out afterwards what he had eaten. The enslaved women died from loss of blood on the way down to the slave quarters.