By Owen Findsen
The Cincinnati Enquirer

At 4 a.m. on a clear, starlit morning, March 10, 1856, the steamer Henry Lewis was descending the Ohio River below Troy, Ky., hugging the Kentucky shore. The boat was loaded with cargo for New Orleans and had 40 passengers aboard, including Margaret Garner, her family, and a U.S. marshal, assigned to guard them.

Mrs. Garner's case was lost. Although she had killed her daughter to prevent her from being taken back into slavery, she was too valuable as a slave to be executed for murder.

Attorney John Jolliffe pleaded eloquently before U.S. Commissioner John L. Pendery, who said he would delay his ruling for a month, until March 18. It was hoped that the city would calm down and the roaming gangs of Southern toughs would leave town. Commissioner Pendery had ruled in favor of fugitives in the past, and he might do so again.

But another U.S. Commissioner, Edward S. Leavitt, closed the case March 1. He ruled that "the question is not affected by the fact that the law of the United States...may be viewed as unjust or oppressive. Until repealed or adjudged void by unconstitutionality, it must be respected and obeyed as law."

He returned Mrs. Garner, her three children, her husband, Simon, and his parents, Simon and Mary, to Boone County slave owner Archibald Gaines.

The Garners were put on an omnibus to transport them to the Kentucky ferry. People lining the streets threw eggs at the marshals. One of the marshals was a young printer named A.O. Russell, who, years later, said the incident moved him to join the new Republican Party, vote for Lincoln and fight for the Union in the Civil War.

Mr. Jolliffe tried to obtain a writ of habeas corpus to return the fugitives to Ohio, where Mrs. Garner would be tried for murder. It would probably cost Mrs. Garner her life, but a ruling against the Fugitive Slave Law could save others.

Col. Gaines was ordered by Kentucky Gov. Charles Morehead to confine Mrs. Garner in the Covington jail, pending an order from Ohio Governor Salmon P. Chase to return them to Ohio for trial. Gov. Chase, a Cincinnati attorney, was famous for his defense of fugitive slave cases. On March 4, Gov. Chase demanded a return of the slaves.

Col. Gaines had no intention of losing his slaves. He kept them in the Covington jail for one week. Then he came to Cincinnati to announce that he had "fulfilled his obligation in good faith, and even now would be glad to aid the proper authorities in carrying into effect any proceedings in regard to Margaret and her children that may be deemed right by the governments of the two states."

Col. Gaines put the slaves on the Henry Lewis. He was sending them to the Gaines family plantation in Arkansas, too far for escape.

As the Henry Lewis came around a bend in the river, the E. Howard, traveling the opposite direction, loomed into view. There was a collision.

The Henry Lewis spun around and began to sink. Fire broke out, and the cabin deck split in two from the weight of cargo on the roof. People ran from their beds and raced for the hurricane deck, the highest on the boat. Many of them were bruised and cut from the falling cargo.

The boat settled to the bottom in 20 feet of water, with only the hurricane deck above the water line.

People fell into the river where they hung onto floating boxes. Boats from the E. Howard pulled them from the icy water. At least 15 people, many of them children, drowned.

Mrs. Garner fell overboard with her baby. She was rescued, but the baby drowned. The Louisville Courier-Journal reported that "the mother exhibited no other feeling than joy at the loss of her child."

She was put on board the steamer Hungarian and sent back to slavery.

On June 1, 1857, a year after the Margaret Garner trial, attorney John Jolliffe was invited to dine with a friend in Covington. As he walked along the street, a man blocked his way and began shouting at him, calling him a "negro thief."

The information in this story came from the Enquirer, editions of Jan. 29 and 30, 1856.