Mulatto is a term of Spanish origin used to describe a half-white half-black person. The Spaniards were the first to hold black slaves in North America, although they did not originate the trans-Atlantic slave trade, the Portuguese having that honor. Cortez' black slave is thought to have brought the smallpox epidemic that wiped out 90% of the population of Central Mexico in a few months. The first black slave to gain his freedom in North America belonged to the ill-fated Navarez expedition and was promptly re-enslaved and sold in Mexico by the three Spaniards, including the chronicler Cabeza de Vaca, with whom he had lived as a brother in the wilds of Southern North America from 1528-36.

It seems from the available narratives that mixed race slaves fought harder for freedom than their black counterparts. Whether this is because they felt freedom was a birth right on account of them being half or more white, because of a genetic propensity toward willfulness inherited from the white parent, as claimed by the witness to Frank Anderson’s bid for freedom, or simply because they felt that their light complexion might give them a better chance of blending into the free population, is unknown. It is known that white slaves serving 3 to 31 year indentures escaped, rose up and were beaten to death with more regularity than black slaves serving life terms. Again, to what of the three possible causes for this defiance suggested above do we look to explain this? Or do we take them all into consideration, which is the inclination of this reader?

In any case, mixed-race slaves were regarded as potential trouble makers and were therefore often kept closer to their master and mistress and given more lenient duties as household staff and often some measure of power over their darker fellows to encourage their loyalty—bequeathing free black Americans the petty politics of shade that is a key subject of African American movie making to this day.

This account from 1828 might seem out of place here. But for me ancient combat is really a matter of technology. Frank and his companions used the very same weapons and faced similarly formidable enemies as Spartacus and other servile rebels of the Roman Period. In fact, if all I had was a scythe blade and loin cloth, I think I'd rather be dealing with black powder hunters with bloodhounds than velites and hasati with armored war dogs.

Frank Anderson was born a mulatto slave to a wealthy white man of Wilmington North Carolina about 1810. He was noted for having much of his ‘father’s blood’ in him, and being defiant. He never permitted himself to be whipped without a fight. It would take a gang of men—mostly fellow slaves—to overpower him. Then he would be whipped. His back was so striped from the whip that he had ridges of raised scars on his back like the ridges on a washboard.

Frank had been whipped chiefly for being proud and spirited and for coming home late after the Saturday dances. In 1927 or 28 he ran off into the countryside. The area had numerous canebrakes and swamps for concealment, and had a lot of agricultural land to plunder for supplies. The first thing Frank did was break off a scythe blade and put a straight handle on it. He made a wooden scabbard and attached it to his twine belt. On numerous occasions he managed to elude or fight off negro hunters and their hounds. [While out foraging it is likely that Frank smeared onions on his feet to throw off the bloodhounds.]

The area was rich with larger game, such as deer and bear. But the slave’s only took prey between the size of raccoons and chickens with the few small caliber guns they had. In the area that Frank travelled through on his way to a secret hideaway a local black bear was seen making off with arm loads of corn, dropping the corn over a fence, and then climbing the fence and picking up the corn before continuing on its way. The wild canebrakes and swamps about Wilmington and Cape Fear were not vast enough for a true resistance community with women, who could build dwellings and hunt large game like the Seminole’s down in Florida. The bears were feared. But nothing was feared more than the white man’s negro hunting patrols.

Fortunately, the inveterate laziness of the whites prevented them from finding the small band of escaped slaves that Frank took up with. They lived in a rocky outcropping in the midst of a swamp, behind a thick canebrake. The whites were not active or physically fit enough to negotiate the canebrake. Frank had been free for eleven months and had a price of $100 on his head.

One day a young boy made his way to the hideout and was accepted by Uncle Amos, their prophet, who star-gazed and had dreams that came true. The night after the boy joined them Amos had a dream that they must leave or one of them would be killed. They spent the day getting their weapons ready and foraging in the countryside. They bedded down with the intention of scattering and meeting at a place 14 miles away in the morning. During the night the boy said he heard something in the canebrake. Uncle Amos did not believe him.

While eating breakfast the men were surprised by negro hunters with shotguns and drawn revolvers, and a dog to each one. A gang of slaves had cleared a path through the canebrake by night. Amos instructed them to march over together and each one of them attack and cut a man and his dog. The negro hunters were wary though, and ordered them to wade through the swamp single file.

As Frank was known to be trouble one of the hunters said to him, “If you run I’ll blow your brains out.”

Frank, who was known to run ‘like a deer’, bounded off and was shot dead. This broke the spirit of the band and they were marched across the swamp one at a time and shackled to each other, and marched off to the road, where a mule cart waited for Frank’s body. His body was carried to the cart by slaves. For thirteen miles back to Wilmington Frank’s blood stained the sandy road, as his father, James Anderson, rode behind his son’s draining body on his horse, having ordered his murder.

William was born in 1804 in Lexington Kentucky. His mother was a black slave named Elizabeth and his father was George Higgins, a white man, a cousin to Elizabeth’s owner, who pimped her out to friends and relatives. None of her seven children were by the same father.

William’s master, Benjamin Young, moved to the Missouri River, about 40 miles above Saint Charles, in 1816, when William was 12. Master Young was a doctor who also had a farm worked by 25 slaves, including William’s mother. When he was a baby his mother had been whipped for breast feeding him. As a 12 year old domestic William used to lay indoors and listen to the crack of slaves being whipped and screaming. Any slave who did not get to the fields at 4:30 in the morning received 10 lashes. The ‘negro-whip’ had a 3-foot handle weighted with lead at the butt. The cowhide lash was 7-feet long, and the tip was plated with wire. When whipped a slave would typically cry, “Oh! Pray—oh! Pray—oh! Pray.” A horse whip was not platted with wire.

William’s mother was hired to Major Freeland, a drunk who had a house full of slaves he did not really need, just so he would have someone to throw bottles and chairs at. William lived with Major Freeland for five or six months before he ran away. Upon being captured by Major Benjamin O’Fallon and his hounds, he was taken to the Saint Louis Jail. Upon being redeemed [this was a great expense for the slave owner] by Major Freeland, William was tied up in the smoke house and severely whipped. After the whipping the Major’s son Robert was sent out to give William ‘Virginia Play’ which was the way the major had treated his slaves back in Virginia, by lighting a fire of tobacco stems beneath him until he was ‘well smoked’ having been driven to fits of coughing and sneezing.

William was hired to Elijah P. Lovejoy, editor of the St. Louis Observer. William owed Elijah a debt into his old age, for the abolitionist set him on the road to being a prolific author in later years. Unfortunately, while delivering type to another Newspaper’s office William was attacked by a gang of slave-owner’s sons and beaten badly. He fought some, but had to drop the type and run. After recovering the type Elijah informed William that the father of one of the boys meant to whip him for hitting his boy. Elijah escaped into the street but was caught by the enraged Mister McKinney and beaten severely over the head with a ‘large cane’. William was incapacitated for 5 weeks due to this beating and ‘lost the situation’ with Mister Lovejoy, who, years later, was killed by proslavery militants.

For a time William was hired to Captain Otis Reynolds, ‘a good man’, who employed him as a waiter on board a Mississippi steamer. On the steamer William heard much about Canada, a place where a slave might be free. As with other slaves such as Solomon Northup, and Moses Roper, sailors turned out to be the slave’s best friend. He received news and advice from these travelling men, who spent much time in places where slavery was not the law of the land. Soon though, his steamer experience was to get him hired to a dreadful man.

Mister Walker, a ‘soul-driver’ as the slaves called him, and a ‘slave-trader’ as the whites called him, asked to purchase William for a large sum. The man’s reputation and business were such that, Benjamin Young, ‘a near relative’ of William, would not sell him ‘down to Orleans’, from where slaves rarely returned. He did hire William out. It was now William’s task to ready slaves for market. He saw a woman jump overboard and drowned rather than be sold ‘down the river’.

One particular group of slaves was all older, being sold down the river to die under the harshest conditions, having outlived their usefulness in the North. It was William’s job to pluck out their gray hairs and apply shoe polish to their beards and hair with a brush.

Down South in Natchez William discovered that autonomous slave catching patrols captured runaways and then billed the owner a steep price, whereas in the North the law pursued escapes slaves at the owner’s request. Seeing his fellow men bought and sold and locked up in slave pens, deeply scarred William, and made him determined to escape someday.

In Vicksburg, Mister Walker, as usual, set up at the best hotel to meet with buyers, with plenty of wine on hand. Although he had threatened William often he had never beaten a slave himself. William poured the wine glasses too full, resulting in some spillage. After the men left Mister Walker took him to task, gave him a note and a dollar, and directed him to deliver these to the jailer at the jail. Being suspicious of his master’s intentions, yet unable to read, William went down to the docks and asked a sailor to read the note for him. The sailor warned him that “They are going to give you hell!”

William waited for a free black man to appear, and offered to pay him the dollar to deliver the note to the jail. The man did so and William skulked around the jail listening to the terrible whipping. When the man came out bearing a note to Mister Walker, William offered him 50 cents he had saved for the note. He then took the note to a stranger who read it for him. Now knowing what to say to Mister Walker, he returned to the soul-driver with the jailer’s note.

William decried how ‘slavery makes its victims lying and mean; for which vices it afterwards reproaches them, and uses them as arguments to prove that they deserve no better fate.’

When Benjamin decided to sell off William and his family to separate buyers William attempted to flee with his Mother. Although he was aided by the fact that Benjamin had given him the latitude to ‘find you a good master’ he was naïve concerning the duplicity of strangers. He describes America as being the land of ‘Democratic whips and Republican chains’. His mother was sold down the river. His sister was sold to a sex fiend along with 4 other girls ‘for his own uses’. William was sold twice more, and eventually escaped. He was rescued by an Ohio Quaker by the name of Wells Brown, and took the good man’s name. William Wells Brown settled in Cleveland Ohio, from where he worked to ship escaped slaves over to Canada. William wrote numerous books and lived to the age of eighty.