Book Review

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Book Review | The Journal of American History, 86.3 | The History Cooperative

Modern Medea: A Family Story of Slavery and Child-Murder from the Old South. By Steven Weisenburger. (New York: Hill and Wang, 1998. xvi, 352 pp. $25.00, isbn 0-8090-6953-9.)

Long before Oprah Winfrey, long before Toni Morrison, there was Margaret Garner. On the evening of January 27, 1856, the twenty-two-year-old Kentucky slave rounded up her four children and joined her husband Robert and his parents, who lived on a neighboring plantation, in a daring escape across the Ohio River. Taking refuge in the home of Margaret's free black cousin in Cincinnati, the eight slaves prepared, in the parlance of the time, to punch their tickets on the Underground Railroad for Canada. 1

But just as freedom seemed within reach, disaster struck. Margaret's owner, Archibald Gaines, discovered the escape, and he led a posse straight to the Ohio cabin in which her family sought shelter. Surrounded, with no hope of breaking out, Margaret grabbed a large carving knife and slit the throat of her two-year-old daughter Mary. As the slave catchers crashed through the door, they found Margaret engaged in her ghastly effort to prevent the return of her children to slavery. She managed only to take the life of Mary, however, before being captured. . . .

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