Charles Mitchell was born on Marengo Plantation, Talbot County, Maryland, in 1847, the son of a female house slave whose name is unrecorded and a white Chesapeake Bay oysterman whose name the boy was given. A child's status followed that of the mother, so Charles was a slave from birth. His mother died of cholera in 1850. In spring 1853 James Tilton (1819-1878) was named surveyor-general of the just-created Washington Territory. Before Tilton headed west in 1854, he was given Charles Mitchell by Rebecca Gibson of the family that had owned Marengo. In 1855 the Tilton family and Charles arrived in Olympia. Although the new territory was by law slave-free, the status of Charles was ambiguous until 1857, when the U.S. Supreme Court, in the infamous Dred Scott decision, ruled that slaves who ended up in slave-free territories, whether escapees or brought by their owners, remained slaves. In September 1860, abetted by free Black residents of the British Crown Colony of Vancouver Island, Charles fled to Victoria. Attempts to force return of the 13-year-old child were summarily rejected by the colony's chief justice. After that, Charles Mitchell lived free in anonymity, his ultimate fate uncertain.
Slavery in Maryland
The first Black slaves were brought to Maryland in 1642, most from soil-depleted plantations in the Caribbean. Chesapeake Bay eventually became a major port for slave importation to American: "While fewer than one thousand Africans arrived in Maryland [before] 1697, nearly 100,000 disembarked during the three quarters of a century prior to the American Revolution" ("A Guide to the History of Slavery in Maryland"). One landing point was Easton, a small town in Talbot County on the far backwaters of the bay's Eastern Shore. Charles Mitchell was born on the nearby Marengo Plantation, owned by the Gibson family.
Despite Maryland's long and baleful history with slavery, many in its white population were ambivalent, an uncommon sentiment in most slave-holding regions. Most vocal were Quakers and Methodists, faiths that considered slavery an unchristian abomination. This core of abolitionists made several attempts to ban slavery in Maryland, starting as early as the late 1700s, but none were successful. Some progress was made. In 1796 the Maryland legislature repealed a 1753 law that had outlawed manumissions (the voluntary, documented freeing of slaves by individual owners). As early as 1800 the state's free Black population was sizable, and it continued to grow. The 1860 census, the last before the Civil War, found that 45 percent of the population of Talbot County was Black, 80 percent of whom were free.
Several prominent Black activists began life as slaves on Maryland's Eastern Shore, notably Frederick Douglass (1818-1895), born in Talbot County in 1818. His owner's wife taught him to read, and in September 1838 he escaped and made his way to New York. Douglass became a famed and eloquent abolitionist, public intellectual, author, and adviser to President Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865). Harriet Tubman (1820-1913) was born in adjacent Dorchester County. After escaping slavery in 1849 she became a leading participant in the famous Underground Railroad that smuggled escaped slaves north.
Born a Slave
Charles Mitchell's mother was a house slave at Marengo, the personal servant of the owners' daughter Rebecca Gibson (1825-?), with whom she had grown up. When Charles was born in 1847 he was given the name of his white, oysterman father, but under the colonial legal principle partus sequitur ventrem (literally "offspring follows belly"), he was born a slave.
Charles was just three when his mother died of cholera in 1850. According to family accounts, from her deathbed she asked Rebecca Gibson to "take care of my Charlie," and Gibson responded, "I will" (McConaghy, Free Boy, 18). There is no reason to question the essential accuracy of this account.
James Tilton
James Tilton's biography before 1853 is largely irrelevant to Charlie Mitchell's story. Tilton was born in Delaware, a slave state that bordered Maryland, but raised in Indiana, nearly 600 miles distant and slave free. Tilton married Isabella H. Adams (1826-1896) in 1848 and the marriage produced four children. He was very active in the Democratic Party, which in large part supported or at least tolerated slavery. In 1852 he campaigned in Indiana for presidential candidate Franklin Pierce (1804-1869), with whom he had served during the Mexican-American War. Pierce won and rewarded Tilton, a trained surveyor, with a patronage job as surveyor-general of Washington Territory, created by Congress just two days before Pierce's March 4, 1853, inauguration.
The Gibson and Tilton families had a long history of both friendship and intermarriage, and Rebecca Gibson and James Tilton were cousins. Tilton was to travel by ship around the Horn to take up his post in Olympia, accompanied by his wife, daughter Fannie, and son Edward; sister Clara and her sons; half-brother Edward; and an Irish nurse. While starting out, probably in early 1854, Tilton stopped to visit the Gibsons. Marengo had fallen on hard times. By 1852 the soil was largely exhausted and much of the land had been sold off. Only Rebecca Gibson, her mother, and 13 slaves still lived there. Eleven of the slaves were female, including an 80-year-old woman, a woman in her 60s, one infant girl, and two women, aged 25 and 23, one of whom may have been Charlie's aunt. As described by historian Lorraine McConaghy,
"By the time Charlie was born … the big house had burned. Of the remaining slaves, only two were males of working age. By 1850, Marengo was a world of women, black and white, living together on a ruined plantation as cholera moved across the waters" (McConaghy, Free Boy, 17).
With the manor house gone, everyone lived in outbuildings. It seems likely that Rebecca was forced to sell the two able-bodied slaves; there was no work for them. Charlie was too young to be set free without a guardian. Rebecca couldn't spare another slave to fill that role, and she couldn't bring herself to sell him.
By 1853 the game was up. Rebecca and her mother sold the remnants of the plantation and moved into a small house in St. Michaels. The remaining slaves were sold off, all but Charlie and a young woman, Becky, probably his aunt. Rebecca Gibson simply didn't know what to do with Charlie that wouldn't betray her pledge to his dying mother. Then, with fortunate timing, Tilton showed up and the problem was solved. Gibson asked to put the boy, now 6 or 7, in Tilton's care, and Tilton agreed. Family lore characterized it as either a gift or a late wedding present, and by 1855 Charlie was living in a big white house in Olympia, Washington Territory, with Tilton and his various dependents.
Slavery and the Law
Before the U.S. Constitution went into effect in June 1788 (nearly 12 years after the Declaration of Independence), the Articles of Incorporation formed the basic framework for American governance. It was an ineffective bundle of compromises that gave the individual states, not the central government, most of the power. A continually contentious issue – slavery's expansion into or exclusion from the new territories on the western frontier – had to be addressed time and again as more land opened for settlement. Slaveholders and their sympathizers wanted the law to mandate the extension of slavery into the vast areas being added to the nation's real estate. Those opposed to slavery, or at least to its expansion, wanted most or all new territory to be slave-free.
On July 13, 1787, the Confederation Congress passed the Northwest Ordinance, which established a government and defined the basic laws for Northwest Territory, comprising approximately the future states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin. One article of the ordinance read in relevant part, "There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said territory, otherwise than in the punishment of crimes …" ("Northwest Ordinance," Art. 6). Notwithstanding this prohibition, slaves alleged to have escaped into free territory from any slave-holding region were subject to seizure and return to their owners.
Every attempt to address the slavery question with national legislation produced compromises to maintain the balance of power in Congress between slave and free states. The Missouri Compromise of 1820 admitted Missouri to the union as a slave state and Maine as a free state. With the exception of Missouri, slavery was prohibited in most of Louisiana Territory, purchased from France in 1803, a vast swath of land that cut diagonally across American's heartland from New Orleans to the Canadian border. Other laws followed, including the Compromise of 1850 and 1854's Kansas-Nebraska Act. The issue remained fraught, and soon pro- and anti-slavery forces in Kansas were in armed conflict.
The Far West
Before Oregon Territory was created by Congress in August 1848, early non-Native settlers formed a provisional government that banned slavery and required slaveowners to free their slaves. Facially benign, it was grounded in racism. Fearing an influx of Blacks, free or slave, a companion "exclusion act" prohibited their residency in Oregon. Among the punishments for overstaying the allotted time was a public whipping. The law was replaced by a second exclusion act in 1849, less draconian but still designed to greatly limit or eliminate Black residency. There is no record of either statute being applied north of the Columbia River and only a few scattered instances of them being applied at all, but racism would sully Oregon politics well into the twentieth century.
Exclusion laws were in large part a solution in search of a problem. The first pioneers and non-Native settlers to the Pacific Northwest were not from the slave-owning class. Many were from slave states and did not oppose the "peculiar institution," but didn't aspire to own slaves, simply because they did not need to and could not afford to. Some fortunate few would become wealthy exploiting the region's copious timber and minerals, but this was not a land for huge plantations requiring the labor of slaves. Almost all Black people who made it to the Pacific Northwest were not brought, but came on their own, putatively as free people. Charlie Mitchell was a notable exception.
Charles Mitchell in Olympia
Congress made Washington Territory slave-free from day one, and its legislature never passed an exclusion law. There was prejudice, of course, but race was not a hotly contentious matter, at least until the Mitchell case, perhaps because there were very few African American settlers. George Bush (ca. 1790-1863), a free mulatto from Missouri, arrived in 1845 as one of the region's first pioneers. Fifteen years later, the 1860 federal census counted only 30 Blacks or mulattos (26 men and four women) in Washington Territory, which at that time comprised 240,000 square miles (much of it first surveyed by James Tilton) including all of today's Idaho, large parts of Montana, and a sliver of Wyoming. About a half dozen Blacks or mulattos lived in or near Olympia, not counting George Bush's five sons.
It is interesting that in the 1860 federal census, Charles Mitchell is found on a page with the preprinted title "Free inhabitants of" followed by a handwritten "Thurston County." It seems most probable that the form was used in both slave and slave-free territories and states and had separate pages for free and slaves, the latter used only in states and territories where slaves were counted separately.
The nature of the relationship between James Tilton and Charles Mitchell depended on whom you asked, and when. Charlie was born a slave, a fixed status unless formally freed or slavery abolished. James Tilton supposedly promised Rebecca Gibson that he would have Charlie trained as a ship's steward (cook) and set him free when he came of age. He attended school in Olympia, most likely with Native American and mixed-race children. There is no indication that he was mistreated, yet he remained a slave, not a family member. It seems that his legal status simply was not a matter of discussion or contention. Until it was.
The Dred Scott Decision
Given that Washington Territory was by law slave-free, Mitchell's status was legally ambiguous, an ambiguity resolved in 1856 by the U.S. Supreme Court in Dred Scott v. Sandford. It is generally considered the worst decision and most malevolent opinion ever rendered by the nation's highest court.
In 1846 Dred Scott and Harriet Scott sued to be declared free people, arguing that previous owners had taken them to the slave-free state of Wisconsin and the slave-free portion of Louisiana Territory for extended periods of time before returning them to Missouri, a slave state. Missouri legal precedent held that slaves who became free (for example, by living in a slave-free state) were forever free. The Scotts won, the decision was appealed, and a decade later it wound up at the U.S. Supreme Court.
The opinion, written in 1857 by Chief Justice Roger Taney (1777-1864) for a 7 to 2 majority, went far beyond that necessary to decide the case. As summarized by the National Archives, the court ruled that "enslaved people were not citizens of the United States and, therefore, could not expect any protection from the federal government or the courts," and that "Congress had no authority to ban slavery from a Federal territory" ("Milestone Documents"). Slaves were not citizens, but property, and could be treated as such. In Taney's words, "Negroes" had been judged "so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his [the white man's] benefit" (Chief Justice Taney, Dred Scott v. Sandford, par. 36). All the congressional compromises making some new territories free but allowing slavery in others were null and void. Only the citizens of a state could vote to allow or disallow slavery. Washington Territory was still 32 years away from statehood.
Under Dred Scott, since Charlie Mitchell was a slave in Maryland, he remained one in Washington Territory, regardless that Congress had declared the territory to be slave-free. The Democrat-dominated Washington Territorial Legislature passed a resolution, purely symbolic, that read in relevant part, "we understand the opinions and principles entertained by the majority of the supreme court … in the Dred Scott case, to be fair interpretations of the constitution of the United States …" ("Joint Resolution").
Coincidentally, or perhaps not, in the years following Dred Scott the state of California became increasingly racist. Due mainly to discoveries of gold, it had an unusually large population of free Blacks, numbering more than 4,000 by 1860, about four times the 1850 count. The influx was not welcome; there was even talk of passing a law to reinstitute slavery, which the Dred Scott opinion would allow as an exercise of popular sovereignty.
Go North, Young Man
In January 1849 Britain established the Crown Colony of Vancouver Island, with the settlement called Victoria as its seat of government. That year approximately 400 African Americans made their way there, most from the San Francisco area. By the end of 1860, more than 20 percent of Victoria's population was African Canadian, all free, some prosperous.
Word of there being in Olympia a young mulatto boy, a slave, had filtered into Victoria. James Alan, a free Black who lived there, was steward on the American sidewheel steamer Eliza Anderson, which made regular mail and passenger runs between Olympia and Victoria. In September 1860, Alan and William Davis went to Olympia, found Charlie running errands, and invited him to come to Victoria, where they said he would be free and cared for until grown. If he decided to go, he had to come to the dock early the next day so Alan could hide him in the galley of the ship. Although only 13 years old and relatively well-treated, Mitchell didn't hesitate. Before dawn on September 24 he made his way to the Eliza Anderson. Alan concealed him in a cupboard in the galley, and the ship left on schedule. William Davis was also aboard.
With Charlie huddled in the galley, the Eliza Anderson docked at Seattle, as it regularly did when sailing between Olympia and Victoria. There had been a rash of Army desertions from Fort Steilacoom, and the ship was regularly searched for missing soldiers. On this occasion the searchers found none, but they did find Charlie Mitchell. The skipper, Captain John Flemming, recognized him, having dined on more than one occasion at the Tilton home in Olympia. Charlie admitted to having run away, but said he had done so on a dare. Flemming ordered his first mate to lock the boy in the lamp room of the ship. He may have tried and failed to find a southbound vessel to return Charlie to Tilton's custody, but finally settled on making the boy earn with labor his fare to Victoria and (so he thought) back to Olympia.
International Incident
Things did not unfold as Flemming expected. Word of a young Black boy's captivity on the ship soon got out and a crowd, both free Blacks and sympathetic whites, gathered on the dock. In the absence of a telegraph or any other rapid means of communication, the news had not reached Olympia. It seems quite probable that the events about to transpire in Victoria were concluded before James Tilton even knew Charlie was there.
Captain Flemming was not about to let Charlie out of his custody voluntarily. Alan, Davis, and a prominent Black resident of Victoria, William Jerome, raced to the offices of barrister Henry Crease, who heard them out and agreed to take the case. He prepared sworn statements for all three explaining Charlie's circumstances, then went before the colony's chief justice, David Cameron. The judge quickly issued a writ of habeas corpus ordering that Charles be released into the custody of local authorities and brought before the court. Sheriff Thomas Harris soon appeared at the Eliza Anderson with the writ and demanded that Flemming produce Mitchell. Flemming refused, claiming that his ship remained American soil no matter what port it was in. Harris said he would break the door down, and Flemming said he would resist. Washington Territory's acting governor, Henry M. McGill (1831-1915), was by chance on board, and after lecturing the sheriff about international law and whatnot, convinced Captain Flemming to set the boy free.
Charlie left the Eliza Anderson to cheering from the crowd and a chorus of boos from the ship. He was held in the Victoria jail overnight and brought to court the next day, September 26. The colony's attorney general, George Hunter Cary, represented the boy and read the statements in his support into the record. Barrister George Pearkes did the same for the evidence presented on behalf of Captain Flemming. James Tilton was nowhere to be found, and probably still unaware of what had happened.
The end was anticlimax. Cary's closing argument for Charles was brief and powerful. While his status in Washington Territory may have been ambiguous, he was now standing in a courtroom in the Crown Colony of Vancouver Island, inarguably on British soil. English legal precedent was fixed and clear – any slave who made it to British territory was thereafter a free person. Judge Cameron wasted no words, noting that "no man could be held as a slave on British soil and … Mitchell's 'arrest' by Flemming was illegal. I order that the said sheriff do discharge the said Charles from his said custody forthwith" (quoted in McConaghy, Free Boy, 52-53).
Reaction Down South
Communications being what they were in 1860, newspapers in Washington Territory didn't join the battle until it was over. The Olympia newspaper Pioneer and Democrat (in which Tilton was an investor) followed the generally pro-slavery policy of the Democratic Party. On September 28, 1860, two days after Mitchell had been freed, the paper carried a long, fervent, racist, and somewhat incomprehensible diatribe about the horrible injustice done to Tilton. The headline was "Fugitive Slave Case," yet much of the article seemed determined to prove that Charles Mitchell was not a slave at all.
The paper promised to "present the circumstances and influences used to wean his [Charlie's] affections from those who have been to him a father and mother, rather than master and mistress." This was at best a category mistake, but more resembled a lie. No proof of "weaning" was adduced, just allegations. But the newspaper doubled down, claiming that Charles was not and had never been a slave of the Tiltons – to the contrary, they had been his "benefactors": "For the last two or three years a number of black ingrates … have been assiduous in their endeavors to bring about a rupture between the boy and his benefactors." According to the newspaper, Charles had resisted all these years of blandishment "until the arrival of a flashy looking darky … from Victoria," a reference to William Davis. Finally, Captain Flemming and Governor McGill argued that no Canadian court "had the right to annul the relationship existing between guardian and ward, such as existed between Gen. Tilton and the negro boy Charley [sic]" ("Fugitive Slave Case").
In response to written testimony that "the boy is a slave of Gen. Tilton," the newspaper insisted "he is not and never has." But at another point Tilton is characterized as Charlie's "master." Then a very odd assertion: "The facts are, he is welcome to any additional liberty he may be supposed to be at present invested with, and it is hoped he will stay away" ("Fugitive Slave Case"). Had this been said in court it would have caused many to throw up their hands and say, "Well, okay then, what's all this fuss about?"
Tilton Speaks Up
The last section of the lengthy article in the Pioneer Democrat was either written by Tilton or summarized an interview he had given:
"The family of Gen. Tilton hope the boy may never return to them, as his services have lately not been equivalent to his expenses, and by his own act he has released them from the condition under which he was brought out here … He is naturally intelligent, and retains one quality for which all of his mother's people were remarkable – honesty. As with most mulattoes, he lacks stability, and has not the faithfulness and gratitude which distinguishes the pure African, and was remarkable in his mother's people for the several generations they have been held to service in Maryland.
"This is one of the rare cases in which supposed kidnapping or negro stealing is equally acceptable to the stealer and the stealee, and the good of the kidnapped is the only thing sought for by the mistress or her friends" ("Fugitive Slave Case").
Tilton's comments were an odd mix of affection, grievance, racist tropes, and resignation. The veil of benevolence later slipped when he asked Acting Territorial Governor McGee to petition federal authorities to investigate the matter "to the end that the owner of the slave may have justice" ("Charles Was Young ..."). Nothing came of it.
Mitchell may have spent the rest of his life in British Columbia, but from the day he walked out of the courtroom a free boy he was lost to history. There is some census data that suggests he returned to Baltimore in 1870, age 23, and lived with his Aunt Becky for two or three years. If so, it seems likely that he then returned to Victoria and married, but did not live to see 40.
On February 3, 1876, "'a colored man named Charles Mitchell' left the logging community of Sooke with a white man and a canoe laden with cedar shingles" (McConaghy, Free Boy, 81). Neither was seen again, but a canoe and shingles were found washed up on shore. If this Charles Mitchell was indeed Charlie, he left behind a widow and four children, one born after his disappearance. No photograph or verified image of Charlie Mitchell has ever surfaced.
