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“THE CLIPPING ABOUT MARGARET GARNER STUCK IN MY HEAD”--TONI MORRISON
ON SUNDAY NIGHT, JANUARY 27, 1856, SOMETIME AFTER TEN O’CLOCK, ROBERT GARNER GRABBED HIS MASTER’S LOADED PISTOL, WENT TO THE BARN AND HITCHED TWO OF HIS MASTER’S FINEST HORSES TO A SLEIGH.
He boarded the sleigh along with his parents and drove to the neighboring Gaines plantation to pick up his wife Margaret and her four children.
With the whole Garner family was on the sleigh, Robert Garner drove the horses eighteen miles along the Turnpike road toward the river in the frigid early morning dark. The toll stations were abandoned for the night. Local thermometers read twelve degrees.
It was about three AM when they approached the riverbank. They abandoned the sleigh and left the exhausted horses and walked six blocks to the river. Then, in a light snowstorm, the Garners walked across the Ohio River.
Robert Garner, his wife Margaret and their four children, Tom, 6, Sam, 4, two year old Mary, and baby Priscilla, nine months, along with Robert’s parents, approached the Ohio side of the river and climbed the steep banks to the road. Now they were in Cincinnati.
Although slavery was illegal in Ohio, they were not legally free. The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 declared that as property of their rightful owners, they could be returned at any time.
After a two mile walk, they arrived at Elijah Kite’s cabin where they could warm themselves by the Kite’s wood stove. It was between five and six in the morning.
Soon, after the Garners arrived, Elijah Kite left for Levi Coffin’s house, a mile and a half away. Levi Coffin was a Quaker Abolitionist, deeply involved in the Underground Railroad.
“Kite felt alarmed for the safety of the party that had arrived at his house,” Coffin wrote. “He came to my store, at the corner of Sixth and Elm Streets, to ask counsel regarding them. I told him that they were in a very unsafe place and must be removed at once…I would make arrangements to forward them northward, that night, on the Underground Railroad.”
It was too late. “Kite returned to his house at once, according to my directions,” said Coffin. “A few minutes after his return, the house was surrounded by pursuers—the masters of the fugitives, with officers and a posse of men.”
By ten Monday morning, twelve hours after their daring escape, the Garners looked out the windows of the Kite’s cabin and saw that they were surrounded by eleven armed men.
Soon, the men stormed the house, using firewood and logs to smash the door and windows while Robert began firing his revolver. One deputy staggered back outside, hit in the hand and face. Five pursuers made it into the cabin.
Gaines managed to wrestle “the pistol from his hand before he could shoot the other two barrels off.”
The men subdued Robert Garner quickly. They noticed that he was covered in blood although nobody saw any wound or injury.
Then they realized what had happened. According to a report in the CINCINNATI ENQUIRER, January 28, 1856, they witnessed the aftermath of an unspeakable atrocity.
NEXT: FINDING THE GHOST OF BELOVED Part Four:
“A DEED OF HORROR HAD BEEN CONSUMMATED”
Posted Monday, November 2nd 2009 at 8:07PM
by: Richard Kigel
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