Who speaks for Margaret Garner?
By: Mark Reinhardt
Publisher: University of Minnesota Press
Published: 2010
Place of publication: Minneapolis
Language: eng
Number of pages: 317
ISBN-13: 9780816642588; 9780816642595
Subjects: Trials, litigation; Fugitive slaves; Trials (Infanticide); Public opinion; Infanticide; Legal status, laws; History
Description: In January 1856, Margaret Garner and her family were at the center of one of the most dramatic and intensely contested fugitive slave cases in the nation's history. Just hours after escaping slavery in Kentucky and taking refuge in a home in Cincinnati, the Garners were cornered by authorities. As the captors sought to enter the house, Garner killed her two-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Mary. Reports suggested that she had tried to kill her three other children, too. These events were instantly sensationalized in the media, stimulating heated debates throughout the country: What did it mean that a mother would rather kill her children than see them returned to a life in slavery? What should happen to Margaret Garner? The conflicting answers to these questions exposed the fault lines over slavery within a nation already drifting toward civil war.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Introduction : an extraordinary case?; title: Documents; title: Escape and capture; title: In the Commissioner's Court; title: Return; title: Requisition?; title: Whose sovereignty? : courts in conflict; title: The Ohio legislature responds : debate on the floor; title: The battle in the press : editorials on the murder; title: The battle in the press : editorials on the trial, return, and requisition; title: Silence in the deep South : the case of Charleston, South Carolina; title: Speeches, sermons, and "interviews"; title: Final developments; title: Literary sources, literary echoes; title: Appendix: Text of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850; title: Chronology of key events, 1856-71.