Robert Smalls

Robert Smalls
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from South Carolina's 7th district
In office March 18, 1884 – March 3, 1887
Preceded by	Edmund W. M. Mackey
Succeeded by	William Elliott
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from South Carolina's 5th district
In office July 19, 1882 – March 3, 1883
Preceded by	George D. Tillman
Succeeded by	John J. Hemphill
In office March 4, 1875 – March 3, 1879
Preceded by	District re-established John D. Ashmore before district eliminated after 1860
Succeeded by	George D. Tillman
Member of the South Carolina Senate from Beaufort County
In office November 22, 1870 – March 4, 1875
Preceded by	Jonathan Jasper Wright
Succeeded by	Samuel Greene
Member of the South Carolina House of Representatives from Beaufort County
In office November 24, 1868 – November 22, 1870
Personal details
Born	April 5, 1839 Beaufort, South Carolina
Died	February 23, 1915 (aged 75) Beaufort, South Carolina
Political party	Republican
Spouse(s)	Hannah Jones (until 1883) Annie Wigg
Military service
Allegiance	United States of America
Service/branch	U.S. Navy and U.S. Army
Years of service	1862–1868
Rank	None (civilian pilot and armed transport captain[1] )
Battles/wars	Siege of Charleston, Sherman's March to the Sea

Robert Smalls (April 5, 1839 – February 23, 1915) was an enslaved African American who, during and after the American Civil War, became a ship's pilot, sea captain, and politician. He freed himself, his crew and their families from slavery on May 13, 1862, by commandeering a Confederate transport ship, CSS Planter, in Charleston harbor, and sailing it from Confederate controlled waters to the U.S. blockade. His example and persuasion helped convince President Lincoln to accept African-American soldiers into the U.S. Army and the U.S. Navy.

Smalls was born in Beaufort, South Carolina. After the American Civil War, he became a politician, winning election to the South Carolina State legislature and the United States House of Representatives. As a politician, Smalls authored state legislation providing for South Carolina to have the first free and compulsory public school system in the United States, and founded the Republican Party of South Carolina. He was the last Republican to represent South Carolina's 5th congressional district until 2010.

Early life

Robert Smalls was born in 1839 as a slave in a cabin behind his master Henry McKee's house on 511 Prince Street in Beaufort, South Carolina.^[2] He grew up in the city under the influence of the Lowcountry Gullah culture of his mother, Lydia Polite, a slave of the McKees.^[3]

Life in Charleston

Smalls's master sent him to Charleston at the age of 12 to be hired out, with the money paid to his master. He first worked in a hotel, then became a lamplighter on Charleston's streets. In his teen years, his love of the sea caused him to work on Charleston's docks and wharves.^[4]

Smalls was a stevedore (dockworker), a rigger, a sail maker, and eventually worked his way up to become a wheelman, more or less a pilot, though slaves would not be called that title. As a result, he was very knowledgeable about Charleston harbor.^[4]

Marriage and family

Smalls married Hannah Jones, a hotel maid, on December 24, 1856. She was five years his senior and had a daughter. Their own first child, Elizabeth Lydia Smalls, was born in February 1858. Three years later they had a son, Robert Jr., who died at age two.

Escape from slavery

The gunboat "Planter," run out of Charleston by Robert Smalls in May 1862

Map of early African-American involvement in the Civil War, including Robert Smalls's liberation of the Planter

In the fall of 1861, Smalls was assigned to steer the CSS Planter, a lightly armed Confederate military transport. On May 12, 1862, the Planter′s three white officers decided to spend the night ashore. About 3 a.m., Smalls and seven of the eight slave crewmen made their previously planned escape to the Union blockading ships. Smalls put on the captain's uniform and wore a straw hat similar to the captain's. He sailed the Planter past what was then called Southern Wharf, stopped at another wharf to pick up his wife and child and the families of other crewmen.

Smalls guided the ship past the five Confederate harbor forts without incident, being as he gave the correct signals. The Planter sailed passed Fort Sumter at about 4:30 a.m. He then headed straight for the Union Navy fleet, flying a white bed sheet as a surrender flag. The Planter had been seen by the USS Onward, which was about to fire until a crewman spotted the white flag. The Onward′s captain boarded the Planter, and Smalls asked for a United States flag to display. He surrendered the Planter and her cargo to the United States Navy.^[4]

Smalls's escape plan had succeeded. In addition to her own light guns, the Planter carried four artillery pieces as cargo along with their ammunition, intended for a Confederate fort. More valuable, however, were the code book containing the Confederate signals, and a map of the mines and torpedoes that had been laid in Charleston's harbor.

Service to the Union

Smalls gave detailed information about Charleston's defenses to Admiral Samuel Dupont, commander of the blockading fleet, and he quickly became a hero in the North. Newspapers told his actions, and the U.S. Congress passed a bill awarding Smalls and his crewmen the prize money for the Planter. Smalls's share came to US$1,500 (equivalent to $35,555 in 2015). He met President Lincoln two weeks later and gave him a first-hand account of his adventure.

Smalls's courage became a major argument for permitting African Americans to enlist in the Union Army. Smalls worked as a civilian with the Navy until March 1863, when he was transferred to the Army. By his own account, Smalls was present at 17 major battles and 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, the 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 the 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.^[4]

In 1864, Smalls was in a streetcar in Philadelphia and was ordered to give his seat to a white passenger. Rather than ride on the open overflow platform, Smalls left the car, an incident that was cited in the debate which integrated public transportation in Pennsylvania in 1867.^[5]

Smalls returned with the Planter to Charleston harbor in April 1865 for the ceremonial raising of the American flag upon Ft. Sumter.

Smalls was discharged on June 11, 1865, but continued to pilot the Planter which was serving a humanitarian mission, bringing food and supplies to blacks who lost their homes and livelihoods in the war. On September 30, the Planter entered the service of the Freedmen's Bureau.^[5]

After the Civil War

Immediately following the war, Smalls returned to his native Beaufort, where he purchased his former master's house at 511 Prince St. His mother, Lydia, lived with him for the remainder of her life. He allowed his former master's wife, the elderly Jane Bond McKee, to move into her former home prior to her death. Smalls spent nine months learning to read and write. He purchased a two-story Beaumont building to be used as a school for African American children.^[5]

In 1866 Smalls went into business in Beaufort with Richard Howell Gleaves, opening a store for freedmen. That April, the "radical" Republicans who controlled Congress overrode President Andrew Johnson's vetoes and passed a Civil Rights Act. In 1868, they passed the 14th Amendment, extending citizenship to all Americans regardless of race.

Smalls supported the Republican Party, saying it was:

"The party of Lincoln which unshackled the necks of four million human beings."

In his campaign speeches he said:

"Every colored man who has a vote to cast, would cast that vote for the regular Republican Party and thus bury the Democratic Party so deep that there will not be seen even a bubble coming from the spot where the burial took place."

Later in life he recalled:

"I can never loose [sic] sight of the fact that had it not been for the Republican Party, I would have never been an office-holder of any kind—from 1862—to present."

He was a delegate at several Republican National Conventions and participated in the South Carolina Republican State conventions.

He was a delegate at the 1868 South Carolina Constitutional Convention where he was a part of the effort to make free, compulsory schooling available to all South Carolina children.^[5]

During the Reconstruction Era, Smalls was a member of the South Carolina House of Representatives from 1865 and 1870, followed by the South Carolina Senate between 1871 and 1874. He also served in the South Carolina militia until 1877 and briefly was its commander with the rank of major general.^[5]

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.” However, the amendment was not even considered by Congress. He was the last Republican to have been elected from the 5th district until 2010, and was the second-longest serving African-American member of Congress (behind his contemporary Joseph Rainey) until the mid-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 resorted to violence and election fraud to regain control of the state legislature. As part of wide-ranging 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 by which charges were also dropped against Democrats accused of election fraud.^[6]

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.

For some time, he was also a director of a black-owned railroad, the Enterprise Railroad, and helped publish the black-owned newspaper, the Beaufort Standard.^[5]

Family

By his first wife, Hannah Jones Smalls, Robert Smalls had three children—Elizabeth Lydia (1858-1959; m. Samuel Jones Bampfield, nine living children), Sarah Voorhies (1863-1920, m. Dr. Jay Williams, no children), and Robert, Jr., who died in infancy. Hannah Jones Smalls had two daughters before she met and married Robert Smalls: Charlotte Jones (m. Willie Williams) and Clara Jones (m. James Rider).^[7]

Hannah Smalls died on July 28, 1883; on April 9, 1890, Robert Smalls married a Charleston schoolteacher, Annie E. Wigg who bore him one son, William Robert Smalls (1892–1970). Annie Smalls died on November 5, 1895.^[8]

Smalls died of malaria and diabetes in 1915 at the age of 75.^[5] He was buried in his family's plot in the churchyard of the Tabernacle Baptist Church in downtown Beaufort.

Honors and legacy

• Fort Robert Smalls was named in his honor; it was built by free blacks in 1863 on McGuire's Hill on the South Side of Pittsburgh during the American Civil War. It survived until the 1940s.^[9]
• The Robert Smalls House in Beaufort, SC, has been designated a National Historic Landmark.
• A monument and statue are dedicated to his memory where he is interred at Tabernacle Baptist Church in Beaufort.
• The desk that Smalls used as Collector of Customs is on display at the Beaufort Arsenal Museum in Beaufort.
• In 2004, the U.S. named a ship for Robert Smalls. It is USAV Major General Robert Smalls (LSV-8), a Kuroda class logistics support vessel operated by the U.S. Army. It is the first Army ship named after an African American.
• There is an exhibit at the U.S. Army Transportation Museum dedicated to Robert Smalls's contribution to the US Army.
• Charleston held commemorative ceremonies on the 150th anniversary of Robert Smalls's escape with the Planter, with special programs on May 12 and 13 of 2012.
• The Oregon Civil War Sesquicentennial presented a special 150th Anniversary program on May 16, 2012 at the Kenton Public Library branch in Portland, Oregon honoring Robert Smalls's epic voyage to freedom and his contributions to society.
• During World War II, Camp Robert Smalls was established as a sub-facility of the Great Lakes Naval Training Center to train black sailors.

See also

• List of slaves

References

1. Rodriguez, Junius. Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, And Historical Encyclopedia, Volume 2. ABC-CLIO. Retrieved July 12, 2013.
2. "Robert Smalls, War Hero and Legislator", Beaufort County Library.
3. Robert Smalls—Official Website and Information Center.
4. Henig, Gerald, "The Unbeatable Mr. Smalls", America's Civil War, March 2007.
5. Reef, Catherine. African Americans in the Military. Infobase Publishing, May 14, 2014, pp. 184–186.
6. Foner, p. 198.
7. "Robert Smalls", Civil War Preservation Trust: Civil War Figures As Examples of Character and Leadership.
8. Billingsley, Andrew , Yearning to Breathe Free: Robert Smalls of South Carolina and His Families.
9. "Greater Pittsburgh Area". North American Forts. Retrieved July 4, 2008.

General

• Coker, P. C., III. Charleston's Maritime Heritage, 1670-1865: An Illustrated History. Charleston, S.C.: Coker-Craft, 1987. 314 pp.
• Downing, David C. A South Divided: Portraits of Dissent in the Confederacy, Nashville: Cumberland House, 2007. ISBN 978-1-58182-587-9
• Foner, Eric ed., Freedom's Lawmakers: A Directory of Black Officeholders During Reconstruction Revised Edition. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1996). ISBN 0-8071-2082-0. Between 1865 and 1876, about two thousand blacks held elective and appointive offices in the South. A few are relatively well-known, but most became obscure after being omitted from official state histories after Reconstruction. Foner profiles more than 1,500 black legislators, state officials, sheriffs, justices of the peace, and constables in this volume.
• Gabridge, Patrick, Steering to Freedom (Penmore Press, 2015). ISBN 1942756224 Fictional novel of Robert Smalls's life.
• Rabinowitz, Howard N. Southern Black Leaders of the Reconstruction Era (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1982) ISBN 0-252-00929-0
• Kennedy, Robert F., Jr. Robert Smalls, the Boat Thief (New York: Hyperion, 2008). ISBN 1-4231-0802-7. A picture book illustrated by Patrick Faricy.
• Billingsley, Andrew. Yearning to Breathe Free: Robert Smalls of South Carolina and His Families (University of South Carolina Press, 2007). ISBN 978-1-57003-686-6.
• Thomas, Rhondda R. & Ashton, Susanna, eds (2014). The South Carolina Roots of African American Thought. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press."Robert Smalls (1839-1915)," p. 65-70.

External links

• United States Congress. "Robert Smalls (id: S000502)". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
• "Robert Smalls", African-American history site.
• Lynn Moseley, "Robert Smalls: Warrior and Peacemaker", Teaching US History, Lesson created by South Carolina history teacher
• Robert Smalls: Former Slave and Civil War Hero, Hagley Museum and Library
• "Civil War hero Robert Smalls seized the opportunity to be free", Avis Thomas-Lester, Washington Post
• In the episode "The Wheel" of the podast The Memory Palace, published on February 10, 2016, Nate DiMeo tells the story of Robert Smalls.
• Burial place of Robert Smalls at Find A Grave.