History is Philosophy teaching by example.

When sorrow clouds the mind, the spine grows strong;
no pretty words can soothe or cure what heavy hands can break.
When sorrow is deep, the secret soul keeps its weapon of choice:
the love of all loves.
From Margaret's aria "A Quality Love"
Margaret Garner Act I, Scene 3

History, according to an ancient saying, is philosophy teaching by example. While Dionysius of Halicarnassus attributed it to Thucydides, it has become almost cliche as used by such personalities as Lord Bolingbroke, 19th century Congressman Fisher Ames, President James Garfield, and who knows how many others unremembered? But history by itself would teach us little without powerful reminders from the Arts and Humanities. A case in point is the story of Margaret Garner, and American slave from Kentucky.

The historical story is fairly well known. Margaret was among a group of seventeen Kentucky slaves who fled in January, 1856, across the frozen Ohio River. An old slave named Simon, his wife and son, his son's wife Margaret Garner, and their four children made their way to the house of a former slave named Kite. There they were tracked by their pursuers. Margaret swore she would kill herself and her children before she would be taken back into slavery. The slaves fought, but when they saw it was in vain, Margaret took a butcher knife and slashed the throat of her daughter. She was restrained before she could kill the other three and herself.

The trial lasted two weeks, and the slaves were returned to their master in Kentucky. Ohio fought, among other things for the right to try Margaret for the murder of her son, but Kentucky refused to return her
for trial, claiming that the federal law for the return of slaves to the slave state took precedence over Ohio's right to try her. From the historical event, we can learn the irony of the state of Kentucky,
appealing to federal priority over state law. The Virginia and Kentucky resolutions were a great part of the arguments of states' righters from shortly after ratification of the constitution. It shows the hyprocisy of the argument that the civil war was fought over states' rights rather than slavery. In this
case, slavery clearly had precedence over the principle.

From art we have the painting Margaret Garner or The Modern Media by Thomas Satterwhite Noble. Through it we can witness the painter's conception of the anger and hatred of the pursuers. We can see the look of desperation in Garner's face, the fear and horror in the faces of her children.



Frances E. W. Harper also gives us a view of the scene in her poem The Slave Mother. We can read the poem and feel some of the emotion present in the scene. How much more vivid it is than a simple historical account.

Dreams! Vain dreams, heroic mother,
Give all thy hopes and struggles o'er,
The pursuer is on thy track,
And the hunter is at thy door...

I will save my precious children
From their darkly threatened doom,
I will hew their path to freedom
Through the portals of the tomb.

More recently, we have the fictionalized account of Toni Morrison in Beloved. This novel is based on the story of Margaret Garner who is represented in the character Sethe. Her daughter becomes Beloved. Many years later, Beloved's ghost returns to haunt her murderess and all the other members of Sethe's community. Historian William W. Freehling puts it this way: "Sethe, alias Margaret Garner, must haunt the memories of those who believe that antebellum Southerners routinely supported states' rights." The moral of Morrison's story is, of course, that slavery's legacy lived long beyond the civil war into the 20th century.

So we learn something by way of example from the historical incident. But how much more we can learn by understanding the incident to begin with and reading the literature and looking at the art.