A legal irregularity on the part of the Sheriff was brought to the notice of Judge Carter on the morning of February 29. It was passed over lightly.
On the Sunday after the delivery of the slaves, they were visited in the Covington jail by Rev. P.C. Bassett, whose account of his interview, especially with Margaret, was published in the American Baptist, and may also be found in the National Antislavery Standard of March 15, 1850. Margaret confessed that she had killed the child. "I inquired," says Mr. Bassett, "if she were not excited almost to madness when she committed the act! 'No,' she replied, 'I was as cool as I now am; and would much rather kill them at once, and thus end their sufferings, than have them taken back to slavery and be murdered by piece-meal.' She then told the story of her wrongs. She spoke of her days of suffering, of her nights of unmitigated toil, while the bitter tears coursed their way down her cheeks."
Governor Chase, of Ohio, made a requisition upon Governor Morehead, of Kentucky, for the surrender of Margaret Garner, charged with murder. The requisition was taken by Joseph Cooper, Esq. to Gov. Morehead, at Frankfort, on the 6th of March—an unpardonable delay in the circumstances. Gov. Morehead issued an order for the surrender of Margaret. On taking it to Louisville, Mr. Cooper found that Margaret, with her infant child, and the rest of Mr. Gaines's slaves had been sent down the river in the steamboat Henry Lewis, to be sold in Arkansas. Thus it was that Gaines kept his pledged word that Margaret should be surrendered upon the requisition of the Governor of Ohio! On the passage down the Ohio, the steamboat, in which the slaves were embarked, came in collision with another boat, and so violently that Margaret and her child, with many others, were thrown into the water. About twenty-five persons perished. A colored man seized Margaret and drew her back to the boat, but her babe was drowned! "The mother," says a correspondent of the Louisville Courier, "exhibited no other feeling than joy at the loss of her child." So closed another act of this terrible tragedy. The slaves were transferred to another boat, and taken to their destination. (See Mr. Cooper's letter to Gov. Chase, dated Columbus, March 11, 1856.) Almost immediately on the above tragic news, followed the tidings that Gaines had determined to bring Margaret back to Covington, Kentucky, and hold her subject to the requisition of the Governor of Ohio. Evidently he could not stand up under the infamy of his conduct. Margaret was brought back, and placed in Covington jail, to await a requisition. On Wednesday, Mr. Cox, the prosecuting-attorney, received the necessary papers from Gov. Chase, and the next day (Thursday), two of the Sheriffs deputies went over to Covington for Margaret, but did not find her, as she had been taken away from the jail the night before. The jailor said he had given her up on Wednesday night, to a man who came there with a written order from her master, Gaines, but could not tell where she had been taken. The officers came back and made a return 'not found.'
The Cincinnati Gazette said,—"On Friday our sheriff received information which induced him to believe that she had been sent on the railroad to Lexington, thence via Frankfort to Louisville, there to be shipped off to the New Orleans slave market.
He immediately telegraphed to the sheriff at Louisville (who holds the original warrant from Gov. Morehead, granted on the requisition of Gov. Chase,) to arrest her there, and had a deputy in readiness to go down for her. But he has received no reply to his dispatch. As she was taken out on Wednesday night, there is reason to apprehend that she has already passed Louisville, and is now on her way to New Orleans.
Why Mr. Gaines brought Margaret back at all, we cannot comprehend. If it was to vindicate his character, he was most unfortunate in the means he selected, for his duplicity has now placed this in a worse light than ever before, and kept before the public the miserable spectacle of his dishonor.
We have learned now, by experience, what is that boasted comity of Kentucky on which Judge Leavitt so earnestly advised Ohio to rely."
The assertion of the Louisville Journal, that Margaret was kept in Covington jail "ten days," and that the Ohio authorities had been notified of the same, is pronounced to be untrue in both particulars by the Cincinnati Gazette, which paper also declares that prompt action was taken by the governor of Ohio, and the attorney and sheriff of Hamilton County, as soon as the fact was known.
Here we must leave MARGARET, a noble woman indeed, whose heroic spirit and daring have won the willing, and extorted the unwilling, admiration of hundreds of thousands. Alas for her! after so terrible a struggle, so bloody a sacrifice, so near to deliverance once, twice, and even a third time, to be, by the villainy and lying or her "respectable" white owner again engulphed in the abyss of Slavery! What her fate is to be, it is not hard to conjecture. But friendless, heart-stricken, robbed of her children, outraged as she has been, not wholly without friends,
"Yea, three firm friends, more sure than day and night,
Herself, her Maker, and the angel Death."