Robert Smalls
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A page from an 1862 issue of Harper's Weekly showing, on the left, an engraving of Robert Smalls, a bearded young Black man in coat and tie looking forward, and on the right, the Planter, a small ship at rest on the water in front of a pier.
source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki...
Robert Smalls' birthday was yesterday; Smalls, who became one of the most remarkable figures of the Civil War, was born into slavery on April 5, 1839 in Beaufort, South Carolina.
After working as a sail-maker and longshoreman, Smalls achieved a position of responsibility as a pilot in Charleston Harbor. On the evening of May 12, 1862, Smalls and the enslaved crew of the CSS Planter, a small Confederate transport, had been left aboard the ship overnight.
They arranged for their families to visit and bring them dinner, then hide on the wharf. In the pre-dawn hours of May 13, they picked up their families and, with Smalls mimicking the Planter's captain (wearing his uniform and a straw hat) and delivering the correct hand signals, sailed out through Charleston Harbor past Fort Sumter. They then raised a white flag and delivered the Planter, four artillery pieces, and a naval code book into the hands of the US Navy.
Smalls, with his excellent knowledge of the harbor (including mine placement), began serving with the Navy as a consultant and civilian pilot. In August, 1862, he traveled to DC to help convince Secretary of War Edwin Stanton to allow Blacks to enlist in the US Army.
In 1864, Smalls was invited to Philadelphia to serve as an unofficial delegate to the Republican National Convention; following the war, he purchased his former enslaver's house in Beaufort after it was seized for non-payment of taxes. He used his savings, including significant prize money from the capture of the Planter, to form a short-haul horse-drawn railroad (with an almost entirely African-American board of directors) and start a newspaper in 1872.
Beginning in 1875, Smalls, who had learned to read while in Philadelphia, served five non-consecutive terms in Congress as a Radical Republican, including sponsorship of a (failed) amendment to integrate the Army.
Smalls is commemorated in a number of ways, including the Army transport vessel USAV Major General Robert Smalls and the Robert Smalls House, a National Historic Landmark in Beaufort. Smalls died of complications from diabetes in 1915.
Robert Smalls' birthday was yesterday; Smalls, who became one of the most remarkable figures of the Civil War, was born into slavery on April 5, 1839 in Beaufort, South Carolina.
After working as a sail-maker and longshoreman, Smalls achieved a position of responsibility as a pilot in Charleston Harbor. On the evening of May 12, 1862, Smalls and the enslaved crew of the CSS Planter, a small Confederate transport, had been left aboard the ship overnight.
They arranged for their families to visit and bring them dinner, then hide on the wharf. In the pre-dawn hours of May 13, they picked up their families and, with Smalls mimicking the Planter's captain (wearing his uniform and a straw hat) and delivering the correct hand signals, sailed out through Charleston Harbor past Fort Sumter. They then raised a white flag and delivered the Planter, four artillery pieces, and a naval code book into the hands of the US Navy.
Smalls, with his excellent knowledge of the harbor (including mine placement), began serving with the Navy as a consultant and civilian pilot. In August, 1862, he traveled to DC to help convince Secretary of War Edwin Stanton to allow Blacks to enlist in the US Army.
In 1864, Smalls was invited to Philadelphia to serve as an unofficial delegate to the Republican National Convention; following the war, he purchased his former enslaver's house in Beaufort after it was seized for non-payment of taxes. He used his savings, including significant prize money from the capture of the Planter, to form a short-haul horse-drawn railroad (with an almost entirely African-American board of directors) and start a newspaper in 1872.
Beginning in 1875, Smalls, who had learned to read while in Philadelphia, served five non-consecutive terms in Congress as a Radical Republican, including sponsorship of a (failed) amendment to integrate the Army.
Smalls is commemorated in a number of ways, including the Army transport vessel USAV Major General Robert Smalls and the Robert Smalls House, a National Historic Landmark in Beaufort. Smalls died of complications from diabetes in 1915.
