Dorcas Allen was an enslaved African woman who killed her two youngest children in an Alexandria slave pen in 1837 rather than let them live in slavery. She reportedly tried to do the same to her older children and even planned to take her own life. When asked why, she said it was to protect them from a life as property.
Allen had once lived as a free person in Georgetown, Washington D.C., but in 1837 that freedom was taken from her. She and her four children were seized and sold into slavery, suddenly transformed from a family into commodities under a system that allowed human beings to be bought, sold, and transported at will.
The family was taken to a slave jail in Alexandria, Virginia. A slave jail was a holding prison used by slave traders. Enslaved Africans were confined there while awaiting sale or transport, often to plantations in the Deep South. Conditions were harsh. Families were locked together in small spaces, inspected by buyers, and routinely separated. For mothers, slave pens were places where children could disappear forever with the stroke of a pen or the exchange of money.
Inside that slave pen, Dorcas Allen understood what was coming. Her children were about to be sold into lifelong bondage. When later questioned about her actions, Allen reportedly stated that she killed her children to prevent them from going into slavery. In her mind, death was the only escape left to them.
That night, she killed her two youngest children. She also attempted to kill the older two, but their cries alerted others, and she was stopped. Newspaper reports indicate that Allen intended to take her own life as well, believing there was no future left for her once her children were gone. Her actions were not random or confused. They were deliberate, born from fear, love, and the certainty that slavery would destroy her children’s lives.
What Dorcas Allen did was not unique, though it was rare and extreme. Many enslaved African mothers faced impossible choices. Under the law of partus sequitur ventrem, “that which is born follows the womb”, children born to enslaved women were automatically enslaved, regardless of their father’s status. Each child increased the enslaver’s wealth while remaining trapped in bondage from birth, leaving mothers like Allen to confront a terrible and inescapable reality.
Some mothers resisted in the only ways they could. Infanticide, abortion, and other forms of reproductive resistance were desperate acts to deny enslavers control over their children’s lives. Margaret Garner, for example, killed her daughter rather than allow her to be returned to slavery under the Fugitive Slave Act.
Annice, in Missouri, drowned five children to deprive her enslaver of future “property” and sparing the children from life in slavery. These acts were morally complex, heartbreaking, and impossible to judge by normal standards. They were responses to a system that reduced human life to property and stripped women of all agency.
Enslaved African women also sometimes used other methods to resist reproductive control, including herbs or other abortifacients. These acts of rebellion were not just personal choices; they were deliberate resistance against an institution that sought to control their bodies and exploit them for economic gain.
Dorcas Allen was later tried in Alexandria for the deaths of her children. She pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. The first trial ended in her acquittal, and the prosecution chose not to pursue charges for the second death.
The case drew attention from prominent white men, including then-Congressman John Quincy Adams, who was appalled by the treatment of Allen and her family. With support from Adams and other abolitionists, Allen’s husband, Nathan Allen, purchased her freedom and that of the two surviving children. The family relocated to Rhode Island as free people, finally escaping the threat of slavery.
Sources:
https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-united-states-gazette-communication/158844835/
https://scholars.unh.edu/dissertation/531/
