In 1862, a 22-year-old slave named Robert Smalls accomplished an unthinkable feat of cunning, deception, and bravery: he stole a ship. But it wasn’t just any ship that this crafty young man decided to nab. No, he knew what he needed and had meticulously planned to get it. His vessel of choice was fully stocked with hundreds of rounds of ammunition,
The Gun-boat "Planter," which was stolen by Robert Smalls, May 1862.
Robert Smalls was born in Beaufort, South Carolina, April 5, 1839 – February 23, 1915, in a cabin behind the house of his master, Henry McKee, on 511 Prince Street in Beaufort, South Carolina. His mother Lydia Polite,was a slave of McKee. Robert grew up in the city under the influence of the Lowcountry Gullah culture of his mother.
Compared to slaves in the field, Lydia and Robert faced less horrific conditions, and this worried Lydia. She wanted her son to see and understand the savagery and inhumanity of enslavement, so Lydia, with presumably the heaviest of hearts, sent Robert into the fields to experience true slavery, whipping posts and all. This education forever changed Robert, igniting within him a spirit of defiance and rebellion that would later lead to a covert, nail-biting escape to freedom.
Smalls' master sent him to Charleston at the age of 12 to be hired out, with the money to be paid to his master. He began in a hotel, then became a lamplighter on Charleston's streets. In his teen years, his love of the sea led him to work on the docks and wharves of Charleston.This arrangement continued until Smalls was 18 when he negotiated to keep all but $15 of his monthly pay, a deal which allowed Smalls to begin saving money. Smalls met a hotel maid, Hannah Jones, whom he married on December 24, 1856. She was five years his senior and already had a daughter. The savings that he accumulated were later used to purchase his wife and daughter from their owner for a sum of $800. Their first child together, Elizabeth Lydia Smalls, was born in February 1858. In 1861 they had a son, Robert Jr., who died at the age of two.
Smalls became a stevedore (dockworker), a rigger, a sail maker, and eventually worked his way up to being a wheelman (more or less a pilot, though slaves would not be called by that title). He became very knowledgeable about Charleston harbor.
Smalls's daring escape succeeded. Besides her two small cannons, the Planter had four valuable artillery pieces aboard as cargo as well as their ammunition, intended for a Confederate fort. Even more valuable, however, were the code book containing the Confederates' secret signals, and a map of the mines and torpedoes laid around Charleston harbor.
Smalls piloted the ship past the five Confederate forts that guarded the harbor. They suspected nothing, since he had given the correct Confederate signals. The Planter passed Fort Sumter approximately 4:30am, and he headed straight for the U.S. fleet, flying a white bed sheet as a sign of surrender. He was spotted by the USS Onward, which was about to fire until a sailor noticed the white flag. When the Onward′s captain boarded the Planter, Smalls requested to raise the United States flag. He then surrendered the Planter and her cargo to the United States Navy.
Smalls quickly became well known in the North. Newspapers described his actions, and Congress passed a bill, signed by President Abraham Lincoln, that awarded Smalls and his crewmen the prize money for the Planter. Smalls' share was US$1,500 ($35,555 in 2016). He met President Lincoln two weeks later and gave a first hand account of his adventure.
Smalls' bravery became a major argument for allowing African Americans to serve in the Union Army. He worked with the Navy until March 1863, when he was transferred to the Army. Due to racism at that time, he only served as a civilian. By his own account, Smalls was present at 17 engagements in the Civil War.
With the encouragement of Major General David Hunter, the Union commander at Port Royal, Smalls went to Washington, D.C., in August 1862 with Mansfield French, to try to persuade Lincoln and Secretary of War Edwin Stanton to permit black men to fight for the Union. He was successful and Stanton signed an order permitting up to 5,000 African Americans to enlist in the Union forces at Port Royal. Those who did were organized as the 1st and 2nd South Carolina Regiment (Colored).
Smalls served as a pilot for the Union Navy. In the fall of 1862, Planter had been transferred to the Union Army for service near Fort Pulaski. The Union got Smalls as a naval pilot. Smalls was later reassigned to USS Planter, now a Union transport. On April 7, 1863, he piloted ironclad USS Keokuk in a major Union attack on Fort Sumter. The attack failed, and Keokuk was badly damaged. Her crew was rescued shortly before the ship sank.
In December 1863, Smalls became the first black captain of a vessel in the service of the United States. On December 1, 1863, the Planter had been caught in a crossfire between Union and Confederate forces. The ship's commander, Captain Nickerson, decided to surrender. Smalls refused, fearing that the black crewmen would not be treated as prisoners of war and might be summarily killed. Taking command, Smalls piloted the ship out of range of the Confederate guns. For his bravery, Smalls was named to replace Nickerson as the Planter′s captain.
Smalls returned with the Planter to Charleston harbor in April 1865 for the ceremonial raising of the American flag upon Ft. Sumter.
He was a delegate at several Republican National Conventions and participated in the South Carolina Republican State conventions.
During the Reconstruction Era, Smalls was elected a member of the South Carolina House of Representatives from 1865 and 1870, and the South Carolina Senate between 1871 and 1874. He also served briefly as the commander of the South Carolina Militia with the rank of major general.
In 1874, Smalls was elected to the United States House of Representatives, where he served from 1875 to 1879. From 1882 to 1883 he represented South Carolina's 5th congressional district in the House. The state legislature gerrymandered to change the boundaries, including Beaufort and other heavily black, coastal areas in South Carolina's 7th congressional district, making the others with high white majorities. Smalls was elected from the 7th district and served from 1884 to 1887. He was a member of the 44th, 45th, and 47th through 49th U.S. Congresses. During consideration of a bill to reduce and restructure the United States Army, Smalls introduced an amendment that “Hereafter in the enlistment of men in the Army ... no distinction whatsoever shall be made on account of race or color.” The amendment was not considered by Congress. He is the last Republican to have been elected from the 5th district until 2010. He was the longest serving African-American member of Congress until Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. in the late 20th Century.
After the Compromise of 1877, the U.S. government withdrew its remaining forces from South Carolina and other Southern states. White Democrats had used violence and election fraud to regain control in the state legislature. As part of wide-ranging Southern white efforts to reduce African-American political power, Smalls was charged and convicted of taking a bribe five years earlier in connection with the awarding of a printing contract. He was pardoned as part of an agreement in which charges were also dropped against Democrats who had been accused of election fraud. [Foner, p. 198]
Smalls was active politically into the twentieth century. He was a delegate to the 1895 South Carolina constitutional convention, and, together with five other black politicians, strongly opposed white Democrat efforts to disfranchise black citizens. They wrote an article for the New York World to publicize the issues, but the constitution was ratified. It and similar constitutions passed court challenges of the time.
Smalls was appointed U.S. Collector of Customs in Beaufort, serving from 1889 to 1911 with only a short break in service. He lived as owner of the house in which he had been a slave.
Robert Smalls
The Audacity of Robert Smalls | Michael B. Moore | TEDxStMarksSchool
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