Post by Admin on Jul 19, 2021 12:40:21 GMT -4
Robert Smalls: Sailor Turned Senator
Robert Smalls, Black Heroes of the Civil War
Robert Smalls, a pilot who, on May 13, 1862, seized the CSS Planter from Charleston, South Carolina and delivered her to the United States Navy.
Robert Smalls' daring escape from slavery into the hands of the Union Navy put him on a path to become the public face—and prominent recruiter—of Black sailors for the Union. He himself would parlay that into a successful political career.
Raised in slavery in South Carolina, the son of an unknown white man, Smalls gained experience as a rigger and sailor after his owners moved from Beaufort to the larger port city of Charleston, where he married Hannah Jones, an enslaved hotel maid.
When his attempts to buy his wife and family out of slavery failed, he plotted an escape. As the Civil War broke out, he became a deckhand on the Confederate supply ship the Planter and learned how to navigate between ports. Before dawn on May 13, 1862, as white officers and the crew slept, he slipped the Planter out of Charleston Harbor with eight men, five women and three children on board, chugging quietly from slavery toward freedom.
Ready to blow up the ship if caught, Smalls gave the right signals to pass five checkpoints (including Fort Sumter) and, once in open waters, raised a white bed sheet in surrender to the Union Navy blockade. He handed over the craft’s guns and ammunition, as well as documents detailing Confederate shipping routes, departure schedules and mine locations.
The daring escape helped encourage President Lincoln to authorize free Blacks to serve in the military. Congress awarded $1,500 to Smalls, who went on a speaking tour, recruiting Black men to serve. He also conducted 17 missions on the Planter and the ironclad USS Keokuk in and around Charleston.
Once commissioned as a brigadier general in the South Carolina militia, he ran a variety of businesses before launching into politics—as a member of both South Carolina’s House of Representatives and its state Senate. His term in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1874 to 1879 was marred when he was convicted of taking a $5,000 bribe while in the state Senate. Sentenced to three years in prison, he was pardoned before serving any time.
