Americans turned to antiquity to make sense of American slavery, just as they turned to Rome to make sense of republican politics.
My background photo for this blog is titled "The Modern Medea". Harper's Weekly printed it on May 18, 1867. It depicts Margaret Garner, a woman who, with her four children, ran away from slavery in January 1856. Slave-catchers pursued her. Rather than suffer her children returning to slavery, Garner killed them.
Americans turned to antiquity to make sense of Garner's filicide. The illustrator from Harper's makes the connection in his choice of title: according to Greek mythology, in order to avenge herself on her disloyal husband Jason, Medea kills their children.
Roman antiquity also provided parallels, which Winterer collects in her book The Mirror of Antiquity. The Black poet (and Unitarian) Francis Ellen Watkins Harper compared Garner to politicians of the Roman republic, whose dedication to liberty made them prefer death to political servitude. Harper writes:
Then, said the mournful mother,
If Ohio cannot save,
I will do a deed for freedom,
She shall find each child a grave.
"The Slave Mother: A Tale of the Ohio"
Proslavery writers also turned to Rome, comparing Garner unfavorably to Verginius, a man who preferred to kill his daughter rather than see her sold into slavery (Winterer 2007: 187). I recount the story of Verginius and his daughter Verginia in my other blog.
My background photo for this blog is titled "The Modern Medea". Harper's Weekly printed it on May 18, 1867. It depicts Margaret Garner, a woman who, with her four children, ran away from slavery in January 1856. Slave-catchers pursued her. Rather than suffer her children returning to slavery, Garner killed them.
Americans turned to antiquity to make sense of Garner's filicide. The illustrator from Harper's makes the connection in his choice of title: according to Greek mythology, in order to avenge herself on her disloyal husband Jason, Medea kills their children.
Roman antiquity also provided parallels, which Winterer collects in her book The Mirror of Antiquity. The Black poet (and Unitarian) Francis Ellen Watkins Harper compared Garner to politicians of the Roman republic, whose dedication to liberty made them prefer death to political servitude. Harper writes:
Then, said the mournful mother,
If Ohio cannot save,
I will do a deed for freedom,
She shall find each child a grave.
"The Slave Mother: A Tale of the Ohio"
Proslavery writers also turned to Rome, comparing Garner unfavorably to Verginius, a man who preferred to kill his daughter rather than see her sold into slavery (Winterer 2007: 187). I recount the story of Verginius and his daughter Verginia in my other blog.