It could have been he was so light skinned that he could pass as a white person. I believe the term was “crossing the line.”

There was one free colored man named Cansler who served briefly in my grandfather’s 43rd Tennessee.

His mother was white who took up with one of her father’s slaves and bore a number of children by him.

One of the brothers served as a colored cook for the colonel of the 59th Tennessee, while another brother, passed himself off as a white man and served as such in the ranks of the 59th.