Robert Smalls Escapes Slavery

People

Robert Smalls

In the early morning hours of May 13, 1862, Robert Smalls, a 23-year-old enslaved ship pilot, commandeered the CSS Planter, a Confederate military transport ship docked in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina. With the three white officers ashore for the night, Smalls and his fellow enslaved crewmen fired up the boilers around 3:00 a.m. and steered the vessel to a nearby wharf, where they picked up their families, including Smalls' wife Hannah and their children. With sixteen people aboard, Smalls donned the captain's straw hat and coat, then piloted the ship past five Confederate checkpoints and fortifications, including the imposing Fort Sumter, giving the correct whistle signals at each point. At Fort Sumter, while the women below deck prayed and the men's knees buckled with fear, Smalls calmly pulled the whistle cord and delivered two long blows and a short one, the Confederate pass signal. He then sailed the Planter straight to the Union naval blockade and raised a white flag, surrendering the ship, its cargo of four artillery pieces and 200 pounds of ammunition, the captain's code book containing Confederate signals, and a detailed map of the mines laid throughout Charleston Harbor. The escape instantly made Smalls a national hero in the North. The intelligence he provided about Charleston's defenses proved invaluable to Union commanders, who were surprised to learn how thinly the Confederates had spread their forces. Congress awarded prize money to Smalls and his crew for the capture of the Planter. In August 1862, Smalls traveled to Washington and met with President Abraham Lincoln and Secretary of War Edwin Stanton to argue for enlisting African American soldiers in the Union Army, a cause his own daring example helped advance. Smalls served as a pilot and later captain of Union vessels throughout the war, participating in 17 major engagements, including the attack on Fort Sumter aboard the ironclad USS Keokuk. When the Planter's white captain attempted to surrender the ship to the Confederates during one battle, Smalls assumed command and sailed it to safety, earning his promotion to captain, making him the first Black captain of a vessel in U.S. military service. After the war, Smalls used his prize money to purchase the Beaufort mansion of Henry McKee, the man who had enslaved him and his mother, at a tax auction for $665. He went on to serve in the South Carolina state legislature, authored legislation establishing the state's first free and compulsory public school system, and was elected to the United States House of Representatives, where he served five terms between 1875 and 1887. At the 1895 South Carolina Constitutional Convention, Smalls was one of only six Black delegates who fought against, and refused to sign, a new constitution designed to strip Black citizens of their voting rights. He died on February 23, 1915, at the age of 75, in the same Beaufort house where he had once been enslaved, having lived one of the most extraordinary lives in American history: from enslaved child to war hero to United States Congressman.