She had a daughter whom she killed because she would rather it be dead then have the child be returned to slavery. This story is about Margaret Garner who was an enslaved African-American. Margaret Garner was also called “Peggy”. She was born on June 4, 1834, on a slave farm called Maplewood in Boone County. Some think that she may have been the daughter of the slave owner himself, John Pollard Gaines. Eventually, the whole plantation and the slaves were sold to John’s younger brother, Archibald K. Gaines. Margaret married one of her fellow slaves, Robert Garner, in 1849. Margaret had four children, Thomas, Samuel, Mary, and Priscilla. These children were all light-skinned and were thought to be the children of the plantation owner since …show more content…
The other slaves in their party divided and went onto the underground railroad to Canada. Before Margaret and her family could escape to freedom, slave catchers and U.S. Marshals found the Garners’ and surrounded the house in which they were barricaded in and then stormed into it. This is the time where Margaret grabbed a butcher knife and killed her two-year-old daughter then rather see her child returned to slavery. She wounded her other children along with herself and planned to kill them and then herself. Before she could do either of those she was restrained and taken to …show more content…
The court case lasted four weeks and it was a very long and very complicated court case for a slave to go through. A normal slave case for fugitive slaves would have lasted less than a day. They let her go with her slave owner and they couldn’t find her to arrest her. Her owner kept moving her place to place so they couldn’t find her and arrest her. Eventually, her owner put her on, a boat to go where his brother lived in Arkansas. Margaret was now on a boat named Henry Lewis. She was being sailed to go with her new owner in Arkansas. The boat began to sink after colliding with another boat. Margret was thrown overboard with her baby daughter during the collision. The baby ended up drowning and it was reported that Margret was happy that her baby drowned so it didn’t have to face the terrible world of slavery. It was also reported that Margret tried to drown herself once her baby