StudentShare
Contact Us
Sign In / Sign Up for FREE
Search
Go to advanced search...
Free

A Bondage So Horrible - Essay Example

Cite this document
Summary
The chains of slavery echo loudly through our nation's hallowed halls of history. Well-intentioned leaders nod their head in shallow empathy or cast a downward guilty glance at the mention of its name. …
Download full paper File format: .doc, available for editing
GRAB THE BEST PAPER98.9% of users find it useful
A Bondage So Horrible
Read Text Preview

Extract of sample "A Bondage So Horrible"

A Bondage So Horrible The chains of slavery echo loudly through our nation's hallowed halls of history. Well-intentioned leaders nod their head in shallow empathy or cast a downward guilty glance at the mention of its name. The stories of its horrors are abundant. For every slave there are descendants, and the great-great grandchildren keep the stories fresh and in the main of human consciousness. Yet, when the truth revealed is so horrendous that it is unspeakable, memories beg forgetfulness to spare the pain and agony from being repeated even in verse. Such is the tale of Margaret Garner. Ms. Garner's experience is a story of the depth of despair that was suffered by a mother as she watched her children falling prey to another generation of slavery. The year was 1856 and the issue of slavery had demanded that sides be taken. Abolitionists in the North had sympathized with the goal of emancipation and had established the Underground Railroad. Southern states had traditional and economic concerns to keep slavery alive. Free states in the North welcomed freed slaves, while the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 demanded their return to the rightful owners. Margaret Garner faced this turmoil as she, her husband, and family made the decision to go north and escape slavery via the Underground Railroad. The plan began modestly. The January weather had been cold and had frozen the Ohio River to a solid mass of ice. The Garner family and about a dozen other slaves from Boone County Kentucky had set out on a Sunday night by sled and by daybreak had reached the Ohio River just south of Covington, Kentucky. Here the party split ways, left the horses and sled, and made their way by foot into the Free State of Ohio. The six members of the Garner family and another family of three set out to find the home of a freed slave named Kite. Traveling through the busy morning activities and inquiring about the Kite residence apparently garnered the party undue attention. The party had come under the watch of bounty hunters and shortly after arriving at the Kite residence, the house was surrounded. The men tried to break their way into the house of the holed up slaves but were blocked from entering. The slave party was armed and continued to resist. Margaret's husband, Robert, shot a deputy as he tried to crawl through a broken window (The slave tragedy in Cincinnati, February 2, 1856). Margaret Garner, seeing the chance of freedom fade, grabbed a butcher knife and with one slash slit the throat of her favorite daughter. She attempted to kill the remaining three, as well as herself, rather than see them returned to slavery. She was overtaken, overpowered and all were taken to jail. Margaret Garner was charged with the murder of her young daughter. If this had been the whole story, history would show its distaste for the crime and it may have been forgotten. If this had been the end of the tragedy, there might have been only token attempts at sympathy for the deranged Garner woman. But this haunting tale had yet to be unraveled. The world was soon to see that the death of the child was but one small piece in a story of how bleak life as a slave could be. The little girl's death might have been the best and only hope Margaret Garner had. Margaret Garner had been the product of a rape committed by a slave master on her mother. The Cincinnati Gazette of January 1856 described Ms. Garner as, "a mulatto, showing from one-fourth to one-third white blood" (as cited in Pierson, 2003, p. 136). That her mother had been the victim of rape, and her the product of a violent rape, was not enough torment for her though. She too had become a victim of these same hideous crimes perpetrated by her owner. Her children also showed evidence of the horrible acts and the Gazette also stated that the murdered child, "was almost white-and was a little girl of rare beauty" (as cited in Pierson, 2003, p. 136). Margaret Garner was a young woman of about 21 years old when these tragic events took place. Her oldest child was by now six years old, which indicated that her slaveholder had raped her at the tender age of 15. There should be no question in anyone's mind why she would rather kill her young daughter than see her returned to be owned and raped. Lucy Stone, feminist activist of the period would comment at the trial, "The faded faces of the Negro children tell too plainly to what degradation female slaves submit" (as cited in Pierson, 2003, p. 136). At her trial, a witness testified that as she slit the child's throat Ms. Garner proclaimed, "she would rather kill them all than have them taken back over the river" (The slave tragedy in Cincinnati, February 2, 1856). For Margaret Garner, the cycle of submission had to end. Margaret Garner and her legal representatives asked that she be tried for murder in the state of Ohio. This would have the effect of her being allowed to remain in Ohio in state custody. But this was not to be. The death of an innocent child paled in the light of the owner's rights. On the third day of the trial, the New York Daily Times would write, "Not even a warrant for murder could prevent their being returned to bondage" (The runaway slaves, February 8, 1856). The child was not considered a person. The child was property and the crime was the escape and the destruction of property. By law the child was the property of the slave owner. Garner's desperate act was a proclamation that said, "I own this child, not you. This is my child" (Andrews & McKay, 1999, p.214). By killing her child, Margaret Garner had laid ultimate claim to its young life. Margaret Garner's story would suffer additional tragedy in the coming days. She was promptly taken into federal custody as an escaped slave and "sold down the river" to the slave market in New Orleans (Taylor, 2004, p. 160). In a tragic twist of irony, the steamer they were being transported on, the John Lewis, caught fire on the way. A boat attempting to rescue the passengers rammed the steamer and was capsized. After surviving the ordeal in Cincinnati, Margaret's daughter Priscilla drowned in the Mississippi River. There are conflicting reports about the eventual fate of Margaret Garner. It is generally believed that she perished from disease in New Orleans about two years after these tragic events. Those that were not in bondage cannot know the tragedy of the institution of slavery. When the death of a child can be seen as possibly justifiable and the murderer is viewed as a hero, the horrors of enslavement begin to show. Margaret Garner endured the greatest pain a mother could bear. Yet, the death of her children came as a joyous relief when compared with the future they faced. Margaret Garner sacrificed her family, her children, and her life to thrust the obscenity of the Fugitive Slave Act into the public limelight (Taylor, 2004, p. 160). America could no longer deny the unspeakable horrors of slavery nor the depths that a mother would go to free her children from its gruesome hold. References Andrews, W. L., & McKay, N. Y. (1999). Toni Morrison's Beloved : A casebook. New York: Oxford University Press. Pierson, M. D. (2003). Free hearts and free homes : Gender and American antislavery. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press. The runaway slaves. (1856, February 8). New York Daily Times. Retrieved December 8, 2006, from ProQuest. The slave tragedy in Cincinnati. (1856, February 2). New York Daily Times. Retrieved December 8, 2006, from ProQuest. Taylor, N. M. (2004). Frontiers of freedom: Cincinnati's black community, 1802-1868. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press. Read More
Cite this document
  • APA
  • MLA
  • CHICAGO
(“A Bondage So Horrible Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words”, n.d.)
Retrieved from https://studentshare.org/miscellaneous/1525731-a-bondage-so-horrible
(A Bondage So Horrible Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 Words)
https://studentshare.org/miscellaneous/1525731-a-bondage-so-horrible.
“A Bondage So Horrible Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 Words”, n.d. https://studentshare.org/miscellaneous/1525731-a-bondage-so-horrible.
  • Cited: 0 times

CHECK THESE SAMPLES OF A Bondage So Horrible

Born in Bondage by Marie Jenkins Schwartz

The slave-owners, and slaves for that matter, lived in such an insulated era and location that they were unable to compare or debate their point of views on slavery – and perhaps that is why it continued on so long.... In the paper “Born in bondage by Marie Jenkins Schwartz” the author makes review of the book, Born in bondage, which is about children born into slavery in the Antebellum South.... The book, Born in bondage, is about children born into slavery in the Antebellum South....
4 Pages (1000 words) Book Report/Review

Boarded and Caged: Ideas of Freedom in Warren Pryor

?? The poet wants us to understand that they have traded one kind of bondage for another.... Supposedly free from the bondage of the land, his life as a banker represents a more confining prison.... Parents have high ideals for their children and specific visions of what it will take for their offspring to achieve success....
4 Pages (1000 words) Essay

Frederick Douglass on the Failure of Religion

Douglass's viewpoint was that never had mankind been so terrible and never had the church been so blinded by sin.... Yet, he uses the opportunity to remind his audience that liberty was a concept that been abandoned by its religious leaders, and for those left in bondage it was not a day to celebrate freedom, but a day to recognize the difficult road that lie ahead of all America....
4 Pages (1000 words) Essay

Selling the War Decision to the Public

Thus, a general American opinion may read an irrevocable ‘NO – to waging war', knowing the horrible ends it would pay off apart from victory or fortunate twist of certainties.... I am aware that, in the same fashion, Americans are not expecting for their country to obtain any involvement with war at the least, more so with the menaces brought about by exploding mines, barbed wire entanglements, and aircraft bombs.... ? Prior to arriving at a personal verdict whether to keep war in chains or set it free, breaking America's bondage to neutral position, I would examine the chief causes behind the You are President Woodrow Wilson and it is 1917....
2 Pages (500 words) Essay

Reflection of Race, Ethnicity, and Gender in Not for Sale

According to Baston todays slaves include (a) men first taken as prisoners of war in ethnic conflicts; (b) girls and women captured in wartime or kidnapped from their neighbourhoods and used as prostitutes or sex slaves; (c) children sold by their parents to become child labourers; and (d) workers paying off debts who are abused and even tortured and too terrified to leave While telling the horrible condition of poor women the writer informs that the young women were brought from India....
5 Pages (1250 words) Essay

Antislavery Work of Fredrick Douglass

The writing of Douglas, especially assertion that divinity and brutality cannot go hand in hand, and that one is either on one hand or the other must have been aimed at the radical abolitionists so well covered by Harris3.... His stand on slavery is understandable because himself was born in bondage, he endured the harsh slave conditions and until he escaped from Looking at the speech “The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro,” he gave on July 5, 1852, one gets a sense that he is very unhappy with the prevailing situations and the apparent lack of progress in the fight against slavery....
4 Pages (1000 words) Essay

Primary Criticisms of American Cinema and Griffith's Montage by Sergei Eisenstein

"Primary Criticisms of American Cinema and Griffith's montage by Sergei Eisenstein" paper states that motivated by Griffith's use of montages in his pioneering movies, Eisenstein had developed his own approach that was also due very much to other Russian theorists like Pudovkin, Dziga Vertov.... hellip; As a very important conflict of cinematic history, those contributions of D....
6 Pages (1500 words) Coursework

Chinese Woman and Foot Binding

Feet of young girls were wrapped in firm bandages so that they cannot grow.... In the essay “Chinese Woman and Foot Binding,” the author analyzes the foot binding practiced by the Chinese women.... China has a deeply rooted culture and the uniqueness of its traditions cannot be denied....
6 Pages (1500 words) Research Paper
sponsored ads
We use cookies to create the best experience for you. Keep on browsing if you are OK with that, or find out how to manage cookies.
Contact Us