Levi Coffin

Although Levi Coffin's Reminiscences (1876) contained many uplifting accounts of ingenious escapes and hardwon liberty, the famed Quaker Railroad conductor's description of the fate of Margaret Garner is a poignant reminder of the dangers and heartbreak that faced fugitive slaves even in free states such as Ohio. A group of slaves, including Garner, her husband, and their four children, had made an apparently successful journey from Kentucky to Ohio. But, as Coffin recounts, the slaves' owners, reinforced by a posse, tracked the runaways across the border. A despondent Margaret Garner fatally slashed the throat of her youngest child before her apprehenders intervened to prevent her from killing all the children and herself, as was her intent, rather than have them all forced back into slavery. Garner ended up succumbing to illness on the voyage back to her owner. Over a...