In
looking at the
history of
slavery, the mulatto slave and especially the mulatto fugitive has
become an
obscure character. It was not until the
1850 Census that the government began distinguishing slaves as either
black or
Mulatto, and even then, many census takers felt that mulatto was simply
a color and not a race. The fact remains
that
interracial relations between blacks and whites, resulting in
mixed-race
mulatto children, has been a part of our country’s history since its
inception. During the Antebellum Era, it
seems that
mulatto slaves became an increasing presence not only in the race
category of
the census ballots but also as fugitives of their masters.
William Craft, in his autobiography Running a
Thousand Miles for Freedom or, the
Escape of William and Ellen Craft from Slavery, enforces this idea
by
stating, “It may be remembered that slavery in America is not at all
confined
to persons of any particular complexion; there a very large num
ber
of slaves as
white as any one […].”[i] William’s wife, Ellen, represents one of the
most famous historical accounts of a mulatto
escaping to freedom. Both enslaved in
Georgia, William and Ellen
devised a plan for freedom using Ellen's nearly white mulatto skin. Ellen dressed in men’s clothing and put a
cloth in front of her face, claiming the need to seek medical treatment
in
Philadelphia. William acted as her
slave servant escorting his sickly master on his trip.
They slipped into freedom by way of the
railroad.[ii] Mulatto slaves, like Ellen Craft, held many
advantages over their black counterparts, yet in most instances they
received much less consideration.
Maryland
became one of
the first
colonies to create legal repercussions if a white person sought
relations with
a slave. An act of the Maryland General
Assembly of 1664 stated that any English woman who marries a slave
shall become
a slave to her husband’s master for as long as the husband is alive - An
Act Concerning Negroes and Other Slaues.[iii] This law became the source of much debate,
and it was found that some plantation owners were actually encouraging
these
relationships in hopes of gaining whites as property.
The Third Lord Baltimore, Charles Calvert, set out to change
this. As the story goes, Eleanor Butler,
known as “Irish Nell,” had been a servant under Charles Calvert when
she
fell in
love with and decided to
marry a negro named Charles.[iv]
Lord Baltimore did not wish for Nell to endure slavery for life, and
with his
influence, the General Assembly released white women who intermarried
from a
lifetime of servitude.[v] Yet, this would not end
the government’s
desire to control marriage and race relations in the 18th
Century
colony. A law in April 1715 established
that any free white woman that has a child by a black man, free or
slave, or
any white male that impregnates a black woman, free or slave, shall
become a servant
for a term of seven years and their children slaves until the age of 21.[vi] Even with these laws, evidence provides that
interracial relations were still occurring and the mulatto population
of Maryland was in visible existence. In
1755,
it was reported that the colony consisted of 3,592
mulattoes
compared to the 42,764 negro slaves.[vii]
While there is support that mulattoes held a distinct proportion of the population in Maryland during the latter 18th Century and early 19th Century, I had found little evidence to their existence in many of the primary documents up until the 1850 United States slave schedules for the state of Maryland. In looking at the 1850 and 1860 Anne Arundel County slave schedules, I noticed a drastic change in the number of mulattoes who became fugitives of their owner. In 1850 Anne Arundel County, there were 47 reported slave fugitives with 45 being labeled as black and only 2 being labeled as mulatto.[viii] The 1860 slave schedule for Anne Arundel County paints an entirely different picture. In this year, there were 237 slave fugitives being reported with 222 of these labeled as mulatto and only 15 labeled as black.[ix] In the population, 7.7% of slaves were labeled mulatto in 1850 and 10.41% of the slave population represented mulattoes in 1860, an increase of nearly 3% of the slave population.[x] As evidenced from the slave schedule of 1860, it seemed that the overwhelming majority of runaways were mulatto. My initial question coming into this research was why were so many mulattoes fleeing in the later years of slavery? What made their circumstances different, better, or worse, from the rest of the black slave population in Maryland?
In
their novel Runaway Slaves: Rebels on the Plantation,
John Hope
Franklin and
Loren Schweninger note, “except for the virtual elimination of
African-born
blacks, the increase among mulatto runaways between the early and late
periods
represented one of the most significant changes that occurred in the
profile of
runaways.”[xi] There are found many reasons as to why the
mulatto slave would have been far more successful in their flight than
a black slave.
A main reason was that the lighter their skin
color, the less discrimination a person faced in the 19th
Century,
and since there were a high proportion of mulattoes in the free Negro
group, a lighter skinned
escapee could virtually blend in with their population surroundings.[xii] As with the case of Ellen Craft, some
runaways would simply be mistaken for a white person.
Another equally important factor on the side of the mulatto
slave
was the situation they found themselves in during slavery.
In many cases, mulatto slaves were given
employment in the homes of their owner as cooks, maids, servants,
tailors,
waiters, and drivers; in this atmosphere a slave could learn the
demeanor and
skills that would be necessary to survive in the free black world.[xiii] Some of the most important skills they would
quickly learn was to read and especially write and this would prove
fruitful in fabricating freedom passes and papers, and “even during the
early period […],
nearly ten
percent of mulatto runaways possessed forged papers, compared with 6
percent among
blacks.”[xiv] In runaway ads that I have come across, the
high intelligence level and occupation of a mulatto is often mentioned,
whereas
it is often lost in the ads of black runaways.
Runway ads found in
newspapers
often represented the most thorough portrayal of those slaves that
chose to
flee. In looking at the Maryland
Gazette, which was published in
Annapolis, there were very few ads in 1804 and1805 that listed the
runaway as
mulatto. Out of the twenty-nine ads found
in
these two years only five were listed as mulatto slaves.[xv] In the 1829 Maryland Gazette
only two ads noted mulatto runaways, while only one mulatto was
discovered in both 1831 and 1832.[xvi] While attempting to trace the number of
slave ads that I found containing mulatto runaways, the realization set
in that
it would be nearly impossible to distinguish between many of the ads. Many owners used a variety of terms to
describe the color of their fugitive.
Such terms as “lighter complexion,” “yellow complexion, and
“bright
complexion”, which made it difficult to determine if they were of
mixed-race or simply a fair skinned black, were regularly used
throughout newspapers of the time. This
only added to the perplexing issue of the race of a slave.[xvii]
Before the 1850 census, the name
for a child of a black and pure white seemed to be lost in the history
books except for a few sources such as advertisements.
One can only speculate as to why this term
was not used more frequently or with greater force.
Much of the Antebellum South, of which Maryland remained, held
strongly
to its idea of the “one-drop rule” which means that a person with only
a single
drop of blood was to be labeled black; this, of course, was to increase
the
slave population in the South.[xviii]
This forced many mulattoes to continue in slavery even when many of
their relatives were free. It is easy to understand why more
mulatto slaves were successful
in
escaping and blending in with the free population but why were these
fugitives,
especially in Anne Arundel County, not sought out more fiercely? One can only speculate into the minds of a
slave owner but in speaking with Dr. Clara Small of Salisbury
University, she
brought up some very interesting perspectives.
Maybe more was not done to restrain these runaways due to the
fact that many
of these slaves were children of owners, and therefore it was easier to
turn
your head when your own blood wanted to end this harsh life of slavery.[xix] It supposed that some slave owners would show
favoritism to their own children, even if they were bound to a life of
servitude. Also, Dr. Small mentioned
the sociology of the slave owner’s wife as an important factor. This wife very well could have been jealous
of these children who were the result of her husband’s infidelity with
slaves;
and it is likely that the wife would not have wanted her husband to
chase
after these runaways.[xx]
While an obvious answer as to the metality of the
mulatto
and their relationship with their owner is difficult to discern, it is
evident that interracial relations have been a part of Maryland’s
history since
its inception. The mulatto may not be
found in our history books until the 19th Century but these
persons
of mixed race held important roles in the slave community, both as
workers and
as active participants in the Underground Railroad.
With the help of many infamous Marylanders of mulatto descent
such as Frederick Douglass and Benjamin Banneker, a space, literally
and
figuratively, had been opened for the mulatto in Maryland.
The purpose of this research is to not
forget the legacy given to us of the mulatto slave; these characters
helped pave
the way for a plethora of other cultures to gain acceptance in
the United States. 