Fugitive slave catchers eventually discovered the family’s location and surrounded Uncle Kite’s house, hoping to return them to their owner. Twenty-two-year-old Margaret knew they were done for. Described as a mulatto who was always “cross tempered,”15 Margaret was likely the product of a slavemaster raping her mother. Historians say at least two of her own children had been conceived from the same rampant slavemaster’s sexual assaults. Knowing the horrors that would undoubtedly befall her daughters, rather than see them suffer the same fate, Margaret grabbed a butcher knife and slit her
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