The River Between Freedom and Slavery

February is coming to a close, and I’d be remiss if I didn’t focus an entry about living on a literal divider line (the Ohio River) between a slave state (Kentucky) and a free state (Ohio) during Black History Month. I did a little bit of research and found some enthralling information, so a long post is ahead.

First of all, my daughter’s class visited the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati yesterday, and I told her to make sure to visit “The Slave Pen.” That one stopped me in my tracks when I was there a couple of years ago. According to the Freedom Center’s website: “The Slave Pen, built in the early 1800s, was recovered from a farm in Mason County, Kentucky, less than 60 miles from the Freedom Center. The structure was used as a holding pen by Kentucky slave trader, Capt. John W. Anderson, to temporarily warehouse enslaved people who would be sold farther south. The slave pen plays an integral role in telling the greater story of the internal slave trade in the United States.”

I remember standing in front of it for a really long time, reflecting and trying to wrap my head around the fact that humans were held captive here and it was acceptable. I will never forget seeing it. I found an amazing website where you can take a look inside the slave pen. Be aware though, it’s nothing like standing in front of it in person, so if you ever get a chance to visit, I recommend it.

Margaret Garner

No historical story of crossing the Ohio River to freedom is as harrowing as Margaret Garner’s.

In January 1856, Margaret Garner escaped from Maplewood plantation in Boone County, Kentucky — just southwest of Newport — with her family and other enslaved people. About seventeen people in total crossed the frozen river on foot on a January night. They made it to Cincinnati and took shelter in a house in the Mill Creek area. When federal marshals and the plantation owner surrounded the house, Margaret Garner killed her two-year-old daughter with a kitchen knife rather than allow her to be returned to slavery. She wounded her other children before being stopped.

What followed was one of the most legally and morally complex trials in American history. The state of Ohio wanted to try her for murder because if she was a person who could commit murder, she was legally a person, not property, and could not be returned to Kentucky. The slaveholder wanted her back as property. The federal government sided with the slaveholder. She was returned to Kentucky and eventually sent to the Deep South. She died in 1858, possibly of typhoid, still enslaved.

Toni Morrison, who grew up in Lorain, Ohio (about four-ish hours north of Cincinnati), turned Margaret Garner’s story into Beloved, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1988. The actual crossing point between Boone County (near Covington) and Cincinnati is a few miles from where Cincinnatians cross the river every single day without a second thought.

Henry Boyd

Henry Boyd was an enslaved man from Kentucky who was so skilled as a carpenter that he was allowed to hire himself out and keep a portion of his wages. He eventually saved enough money to purchase his own freedom and crossed the river to Cincinnati in the 1820s. He went on to found the Boyd Bedstead Company, one of the most successful furniture manufacturing businesses in antebellum Cincinnati, employing both Black and white workers. He invented a patented bed frame construction method, and “Boyd Bedsteads” are now precious artifacts. His factory was burned twice likely by arsonists angry about the success of a Black man. He rebuilt it both times. His story represents a defiant, entrepreneurial freedom that coexisted with the escape stories. The current location is at the northwest corner of Eighth and Broadway in downtown Cincinnati. Boyd was also a very active conductor in the Underground Railroad, and his home was said to have sheltered about five people and was thought to be one of the first stops after crossing the Ohio.

Crossing the Ohio Didn’t Mean Ultimate Freedom

What a lot of people don’t consider is that crossing the Ohio River didn’t automatically make escaped slaves safe just because they reached the Ohio side. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 meant that slave catchers could pursue escaped people deep into free states — into Cincinnati, into Columbus and even into Canada. Yes, Ohio was a free state in law, but racism and horrible people existed on that side, too. Cincinnati, in particular, had a large population of Southern sympathizers and merchants whose livelihoods depended on Kentucky trade. They had no interest in helping escaped slaves. Crossing the Ohio was the beginning of the danger, not the end of it.

Reflecting

It’s because of these stories that I feel incredibly lucky to live right on the border of such a rich area of American history. And I think it’s an obligation to know and learn about it. From my window, I can look at the river and reflect on the unimaginable horrors that people faced to gain freedom from evil. This post doesn’t even begin to cover all of it, but I find these stories especially powerful as I view and walk by these landmarks every day.

Leave a comment