The Case of Margaret Garner, Part II

Richwood Presbyterian Church, Walton KY
Photo: P. Simcoe

Back from vacation, refreshed and if with many new ideas for the blog. But today let's get back to Margaret's story:

Today, if you go south of Cincinnati on I-75 and take the Richwood Road exit west, you will find yourself far away from the modern grind of traffic and construction even though you are only a few miles from the highway. The road t-bones and on the corner you come face-to-face with history. If you look straight ahead and to the west you will see the land owned by Archibald Gaines, worked by his slaves, and lived on by Margaret Garner -- Maplewood. On the corner immediately to your right you will find the Richwood Presbyterian Church. Founded in 1834, the church was attended by Margaret and other slaves from Maplewood along with the Gaines family. According to church records, Margaret's first-born was even baptized by the Rev. George Bedinger, whose ancesteral estate is immediately across the street.

Hill and road alongside the church which hid Margaret and her companions.
Photo: P. Simcoe

In the middle of the night of January 28, 1856, Margaret, her children, her husband Robert, and his elderly parents met on the road out of Richwood Station, a road which can still be driven alongside the church's southern side. Having stolen a sleigh and horses from the Marshall family, who owned Robert and his parents, they were ready for their escape. Prof. Stephen Weisenburger sets the scene very well: "The next part we have to imagine. The incredible pall of the winter landscape. The hardly audible hiss of falling and drifting snow. The rustle of dried pine oak leaves like someone shuffling newspapers in another room. Plumes of mist rising from the nostrils of Marshall's horses and the rhythmic chunk-chunk-chunk of hooves in hard-packed snow." (Weisenburger, 54)

The band steered their sleigh out of Richwood Station east to the Lexington-Covington Turnpike, the route which is now marked by I-75 and down into Covington, going through the modern day I-75/71 Cut-in-the-Hill. From here "they left the team [of horses] standing outside of the Washington House, where it was found by the landlord, the horses very much blown from the severe manner in which they had been driven. In the meantime the party of of eight crossed the river of ice...." (Cincinnati Daily Enquirer, Jan. 29, 1856, cited in Reinhardt, 51). In the next part of the Margaret Garner series, I will discuss the crossing of the Ohio and where the Garners went once ensconced in what they thought would be the relative safety of Cincinnati.

Works Cited


Mark Weisneburger, Modern Medea: A Family Story of Slavery and Child-Murder from the Old South (Hill & Wang: New York), 1998.

Mark Reinhardt, Who Speaks for Margaret Garner: The True Story that Inspired Toni Morrison's "Beloved" (University of Minnesota Press: Minneapolis), 2010.

Further Afield #1: Ft. Sanders, Knoxville, TN

Monument marking the where the northern earthwork of
Fort Sanders was in 1863.
Photo: P. Simcoe

KNOXVILLE, Tenn.  -- I wanted to take a quick side step from the Margaret Garner series . . . . mainly to post from the field, so to speak. On our way down to the Smoky Mountains for a well-deserved vacation, my fiancee and  I stopped in Knoxville for the day to check out the UTK campus and it's environs. I was looking forward to seeing some sort of large-scale commemoration of the Siege of Knoxville, but was surprised to find that there was only a couple of little markers, just north of campus.

It was big news all across the country then. Why doesn't
anyone care about or know about it now?

For those who don't know much about it, the following is taken from a 1994 lecture at UTK, given by Dr. Anne Bridges:


Knoxville remained in Confederate control until the fall of 1863. The first years of the war in East Tennessee were marked by small raids and internal fighting. One of the most notable events was the burning of several bridges around Knoxville by Union supporters in November of 1861, sparking fears that there would be a general uprising of Unionists in East Tennessee. In September of 1863, Union forces marched into Knoxville as part of a plan to secure East Tennessee and drive the Confederates out of Tennessee completely. Soon after, Confederate President Jefferson Davis suggested to General Bragg that he send General Longstreet from the Chattanooga area to Knoxville to expel the Federal forces under General Burnside.

Photo: P. Simcoe

After some skirmishes west of Knoxville (near Campbell's Station), the Federal troops entrenched themselves on the edge of Knoxville with trenches that ran from Melrose Hall (behind Hodges Library) to the present junction of Laurel and 17th Street. The northwest bastion became known as Fort Sanders, after General Sanders who was killed in a skirmish. There were other fortifications also. Fort Dickerson in South Knoxville was a major Union defense point. There were Confederate batteries on Cherokee bluff on the south side of the river. Longstreet's main forces were stationed near the present site of Knoxville College with headquarters at the Armstrong House on Kingston Pike. 


Longstreet decided to force the Union soldiers out of Knoxville by storming Fort Sanders on November 29. Fort Sanders was surrounded by a ditch 12' wide and 6'11" deep. Behind the ditch rose a steep, muddy embankment which ascended to a parapet about 20' above. But Longstreet made a fatal error in judging the width and depth of the ditch. The morning of the 29th, the attack began with fire from the batteries on Cherokee bluff, at the Armstrong House and from the Knoxville College area. Then the infantry charged the fort with disastrous results. Many soldiers were lost in the ditch and those that did make their way to the wall either could not get up the muddy, steep slope or were killed as they reached the parapets.


For more general information about the Eastern Tennessee Campaign, read this summary by Ernest I. Miller of the Cincinnati Civil War Round Table --> Valley of East Tennessee in the Civil War

The Case of Margaret Garner, Part I

 

Surviving gate-post at Maplewood Estate near Wilder, KY
Photo: P.Simcoe

Welcome. I want kick off this blog by beginning the story of Margaret Garner. Margaret's story was one that could have been written by the Greek tragedians. (In fact, painter T.S. Noble's 1867 work showing Margaret's deed is called The Modern Medea). In begins in 1856 in Richwood Station near today's Wilder, KY. Margaret was a slave owned by John Pollard Gaines, a wealthy landowner, and hero of the Mexican-American War. By all accounts, Gaines was not the cruelest of slave owners.....all things being relative, of course. When she was 7, Margaret was taken by Gaines across the Ohio River to help care for his youngest child, the infant Mary as he took care of business in Cincinnati. Little would John know that years later this trip to free soil would come back to haunt his family.

Photo: P. Simcoe

What was life like for a slave in Boone Co., KY in middle of the 19th century? According to author Steven Weisenburger, author of Modern Medea: "As Southern slavery went, life at Maplewood probably imposed relatively few hardships on young Margaret. Maplewood was Boone County's thirteenth-wealthiest plantation and among its leaders in hog production. The work of Gaines's dozen or so slaves varied seasonally and never required of them the grinding gang labor of Cotton South plantations" (p19). As a child, in all probability her main responsibilities would be to take care of the Gaines' youngest children and day-to-day work in the Maplewood kitchen.

Entrance to Maplewood, site of ongoing archaeological excavations
Photo: P. Simcoe

But as she grew up into her teens and later into her 20's, events would occur at Maplewood that would drive Margaret across the frozen Ohio River in the middle of the night. In this inaugural series of posts, I will visit the sites of Margaret's life, in person and in writing, and tell the story of what made her commit an act which scandalized people on both sides of the river, although for different reason. The act of infanticide.

Works Cited

            Weisenburger, Steven, Modern Medea: A Family Story of Slavery and Child-Murder from the               

                     Old South (Hill & Wang, New York), 1998.