Midterm paper source

For my midterm essay, I will be studying Margaret Garner, the woman known for killing her daughter and attempting to kill her other three children after she and her family were caught attempting to escape slavery. The biggest claim I would like to make about this source is that the matter-of-fact tone of the newspaper clipping and the emotionless way Garner is described during the incident is a powerful representation of soul murder. From what I have been learning about psychology in other classes and on my own, dissociation seems to be indicative of the most extreme instances of trauma, and I think this is what Garner was experiencing. The author of the article is very sympathetic to Garner (e.g. "unfortunate woman"; "she was unwilling to have her children suffer as she had done") because they must believe that slavery is cruel enough to rationalize infanticide. Additionally, even though Garner's reasoning makes sense as to why she was as "cool" during the interview as she was while attempting to kill all of her children (she'd rather kill them "at once" and "end all of their sufferings" rather than "have them taken back to slavery, and be murdered by piece-meal"), it's still difficult to fathom that a mother would not be weeping during this act. This is the angle from where I'd like to study Garner, and I would argue that the author of this article was also trying to demonstrate the inconceivable psychological impacts slavery had on enslaved women.