A friend of mine wrote this 6/17/2020 on Facebook and it was so well written I thought it should be preserved for posterity.
We are nearing Juneteenth. And I feel it’s time to share the story of Robert Smalls. One of my all-time heroes. And a man about whom shockingly few individuals are familiar. I’ll give the brief version. But holy hell, this guy was a badass.
Robert Smalls was born a slave in South Carolina. By the time of the American Civil War, he was employed as a harbor pilot at Charleston, where he lived with his Master, his Mistress, his wife, and children, along with several other slaves. Robert, you see, was no “ordinary” slave.
He was one of a class of skilled tradespeople raised from among the slaves to fill necessary roles in the Southern economy. This was a useful role to have, if one had to live as a slave, in the Antebellum South. But after the opening of hostilities with the North, it was near essential, as many tradesmen were taken up into the military. Robert’s job as a harbor pilot meant that he guided ships into, out of, and around the busy port of Charleston.
Robert’s master was one of those stereotypical “benevolent” masters. To hear Robert tell it, he was more an employer and supervisor than an “owner.” He gave Robert and his fellow slaves a great deal of autonomy, and frequently dined and talked with Robert. We don’t know how he felt about abolition or emancipation (emancipation was illegal in South Carolina of the 1860s), but Robert (who never wasted a moment to tear down the myth of the “Lost Cause”) seems to have thought him “about as decent a man can be when he owns another human being.”We’ll come back to this in a moment.
Charleston at this time was one of the South’s biggest ports, but like every major southern port except New Orleans, it was heavily silted up – the level of the sea floor was barely adequate in places to accommodate a depth of about four feet below the keel; at the deepest point, it was just around seven feet. This is significant because large ships – particularly merchant ships and warships, have deep drafts and long keels… a skilled harbor pilot is absolutely essential, and becoming a skilled harbor pilot in the twenty-first century requires intensive study and training, let alone in the nineteenth century with none of our modern conveniences. Soon, Robert was attached as the official harbor pilot of the Confederate gunboat CSS Planter, a timberclad sidewheel gunboat. Robert took the helm for Planter whenever she was in port, and was often directed by his commanding officer to guide other ships into and out of Charleston using Planter as a guide. In other words: this was a smart, capable man who was actually trusted by the white men who owned him.
But Robert wasn’t under any delusion. He hated being a slave. And worse yet, he hated having his skills used in the service of the Confederacy. His Master, the only moderating influence on Robert’s hatred for the whole system (he once claimed he’d avoided escaping because the man had done so much for himself and his wife) was called up to serve in the Confederate States Army, and Robert was left to the management of the Mistress – a malevolent woman who loathed people of color, and did everything she could to live up to the -worst- stereotypes of the slave owner. While physical abuse of slaves was “frowned upon” by Charleston authorities, she did everything she could to make Robert, and any other slave, as miserable as possible.
As the war went on, Robert decided that he could no longer continue in his role as a harbor pilot. He determined that he would escape, along with his wife and children, to the North. And so Robert Smalls concocted a very clever plan.
Robert and his fellow black sailors were never to be left alone on CSS Planter, at least not while she was “on station” with a full head of steam. But often they were. One night in 1862, Robert’s white officers and most of the whites in the crew, went awol and attended a fancy dress ball in Charleston. Robert was left aboard with the other black men of the crew, and a skeleton crew of whites. Robert and his fellows quickly overwhelmed the whites. Some, who were sympathetic to Robert, even helped him. With this done, Robert and the other black men made an heroic dash to town, smuggling their wives and children into the hold of CSS Planter. That done, they set out, with full CSN Navy ensign flying.
Charleston was the most heavily fortified port in the Confederacy – dominated by Fort Sumter and numerous batteries, forts and installations, as well as torpedoes (what we’d now call ‘mines’.) Robert knew these defenses intimately. He’d made a study of them, you see, and knew what sorts of guns each battery contained, along with their approximate ranges and rates of fire (did I not tell you this man was brilliant?)
As Robert approached each of the numerous fortifications, he moved at regular patrol speed. The men in the batteries, who had seen Robert sail Planter past many times, waved hello, yelled ‘good evening Rob!’ and in some cases, even fired small signal cannons as a salute and good will gesture. Once Robert was beyond the range of the outermost Southern fortification, he hove to within visual range of both Fort Sumter and the Union’s North Atlantic Blockading Squadron. He and his men hauled down the Confederate Naval Insignia, and bundled it and the white crewmen they’d imprisoned into a longboat mounted with a flag of truce. The longboat sailed back to Charleston. Planter remained, and smalls then had the colors of the US Navy, which he’d secretly smuggled aboard the ship, raised. By doing all of t his, he was signalling that the ship had been “captured” by the US Navy and that he was obeying the normal rules of engagement.
This done, Planter set off at full speed toward the Union fleet, making specifically for the flagship of Rear Admiral Samuel Francis Dupont, signalling that he wished to surrender the vessel as a prize to the Admiral. Dupont, amazed by all of this, allowed this to transpire. He was shocked when the vessel’s acting captain turned out to be a black man. Who had in the hold of his ship a number of black women and children. Smalls offered a deal to the Admiral. If he would guarantee sanctuary to the families aboard, he would give extensive knowledge of the topography of the Charleston seafloor, the layout of the fortifications, their armament, and ranges, along with known vessels in harbor and their typical patrol schedules. It was, in short, more than Union intelligence had been able to gather in six months.
Dupont not only accepted the deal, he even went a step further. He would support Robert Smalls if he approached the US Navy for financial reimbursement for the capture of an enemy prize. Although the Navy initially balked at this, the fact that Robert Smalls was backed by Dupont could not be disputed. And so, the Navy offered Smalls a deal. If he would serve as planter’s pilot in US Navy service, he would be awarded the ship’s full prize value at the end of the war. He agreed. And in fact, went a step further. After serving for some time in the role, he requested command of the vessel. Rear Admiral Dupont agreed. Robert Smalls was the first black man to be given command of a United States Navy Vessel since the revolutionary war….
Robert Smalls served as pilot and commander of USS Planter through the end of the ACW. He was well regarded by the Navy, and by his fellow sailors, and was so popular that, when the war was over, Charleston – birthplace of secession- actually erected a statue to his honor.
When the war was over, Robert Smalls returned to Charleston and forgave his former, with whom he became friends, even lending the man money to help with his post-war debts. When he died, Smalls purchased the family manor, and then saw to it that the Mistress was taken care of, despite her cruelty, and dementia, which often led to her mistaking Smalls for her husband or, alternatively, believing that the war had never ended… (edit: Seriously, she was apparently a train wreck. The man was a saint.)
Robert Smalls would also serve as a Congressman for South Carolina – the first black South Carolignian to serve in that role, and later became a friend of both President Grover Cleveland and President Theodore Roosevelt. He died in 1913 one of the wealthiest men in South Carolina.
