Order Without Law

In the first year of the war, near the time of Sanders’ departure, Frank Mitchell, a slave who ran away from his home and went to the Northern army. He was picked up by the 64th Ohio Volunteer infantry and made a cook for a company in the regiment. It was some time after the battle of Shiloh, and the 64th Ohio regiment was camped in the woods near Iuka, Mississippi, on a Sunday morning. Lieutenant Sanders was in his tent when suddenly he heard a loud screaming out on the parade ground. He asked the orderly to see what the trouble was, and soon afterward went out himself. There he saw a black man running across the parade ground as hard as he could go, and behind him a great strapping fellow was doing his best to catch up with him. As he was closing in on the man, Sanders’ orderly halted the two and placed Mitchell with the officer of the guard. Sanders question him as to why he was running across the parade ground in that manner. He said he was Frank Mitchell, a slave who had belonged to a soldier in the Confederate army and he had run away. He informed Sanders that he was a good cook, so Sanders kept him as a cook in a company of the regiment until transferring him into another brigade with his cousin, Dr. Pierce, but he soon returned. When Sanders left the army over the mishandling of other slaves, Mitchell begged him to take him along. Sanders told him that he was going on horseback, and that if Mitchell could make it to Tallahoma in southern Tennessee he would take him north. Sanders rode along very rapidly but every night when he camped, to his astonishment Mitchell would amble into his camp and stay with him. In Louisville they boarded a boat for Cincinnati. On the other side of the Ohio an officer asked him who the darky was. Sanders replied that Mitchell was a free man and they were traveling together. The officer said that they did not allow any negro to go out of Kentucky who did not show his free papers. Sanders told the man that he did not have any papers. The officer told him that he was sorry, but he could not take him out of that state. Sanders told the porter to leave his trunk on the boat, having made up his mind that he would not go out of Kentucky unless Mitchell went with him. Brigadier General R. S. Granger, an old friend of Sanders, was in command of Louisville at the time. Sanders went to see him, telling him that he wanted to take Mitchell back North. General Granger soon fixed matters and when Sanders took a boat for Cincinnati, Mitchell went with him. After finally making Cincinnati, the pair went on to Akron where Sanders rejoined his family and went back to work in his uncle's law firm and Mitchell went to work on a farm and lived there the rest of his life.