The Civil War began as an effort to preserve the union, but as
time went on, the North seized the moral high ground by making freedom for
southern slaves a major goal of the war.
This did not mean, however, that the North believed in the equality of
all men.
It was generally believed that the Negro was mentally inferior
and intellectually incapable of performing complex tasks. Even the abolitionist John Brown believed
that the freed slaves would have to be led and supervised like children. While gathering arms for his proposed black
army that would sweep through the south ending slavery, Brown gathered pikes,
believing that firearms were too complicated for Negroes.
In the North, for the first years of the war, a law that had been
enacted in 1792 prohibited blacks from enlisting or fighting in the war. Despite the fact that black soldiers had
served with distinction in both the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812, even
as white men were drafted, black men were not allowed to even volunteer. The remarkable accomplishments of Robert
Smalls helped change this.
Robert Smalls was born a slave, to parents who were slaves, in
South Carolina. Today, the stereotypical
view of slaves are of men who exclusively worked in the fields picking cotton
or tobacco. Actually, many slaves worked
in town as craftsmen, such as carpenters, blacksmiths, or musicians, who earned
wages that were turned over to their masters.
Smalls was hired out as a stevedore, loading and unloading the shallow-draft
ships that plied the coastal plantations.
Cotton was the principal cash crop, and every small community had
a cotton press built near a coastal inlet or the mouth of a small river or
creek. Loose cotton was pressed (usually
by mule, or occasionally, steam power) into bales weighing between 400 and 500
pounds. Shallow-draft ships would then
carry the heavy bales to a larger port where they could be offloaded, sold, and
then loaded onto ships bound for Northern U.S. or British mills.
It was on one of those shallow-draft ships that Smalls rose to
prominence. By hard work and natural
ability, the uneducated slave became, first, a seaman, and eventually a
wheelman (had he been white, Smalls would have been called a pilot).
Pilots did more than simply steer the ship: they navigated the course, and most
important, had an encyclopedic knowledge of the local sandbars and reefs along
the shallow shores of the south all the way down to Florida. Pilots knew how to interpret the currents,
knew the locations of uncharted docks, and had memorized where lay the
submerged tree stumps that could easily rip the bottom off a wayward
vessel. On many vessels, a good pilot
was paid more the ships's captain.
After the fall of Fort Sumter and the start of the war, the CSS Planter was the perfect ship for transporting men and supplies for the Confederacy. Stationed in Charleston Harbor and now lightly fortified and carrying two small cannons, she was capable of moving more than 1000 men along with supplies up and down the coast despite the deep draft ocean-going vessels of the US Navy blockading the port.
Smalls continued as the wheelman of the Planter, which by
now had a crew of eight slaves and four white officers. Exactly when Smalls began thinking of
escaping from slavery is unclear, but he must have been inspired by the sight
of Union ships stationed just past Fort Sumter.
Smalls and the other slaves began plotting their run for freedom.
Against direct orders to the contrary, the captain and his
officers slept ashore. In the early
morning hours of May 13, 1862, Smalls fired up the ship's boilers as
normal--only a few hours early.
No one paid any attention as the ship left the the military docks and
proceeded down the river, to a rendezvous point at which it quietly pulled
alongside another vessel, taking on the wives and families of the escaping
slaves.
As the vessel passed each Confederate checkpoint, the ship gave
the appropriate signal. while passing
the guns of Fort Sumter, Smalls donned the Captain's hat, stood on the bow with
his back turned to the sentries. When
the ship's whistle sounded the appropriate signal--two longs and a short--the
men standing guard on shore waved at the vessel. Politely, Smalls waved back, while being
careful to keep his face averted.
Once past the fort, the deception ended as the Planter did
not turn to continue down the coast, but steamed directly for the nearest
Federal ship, the USS Onward. The
danger was no longer the Confederate guns, but convincing the naval ships that
the Planter was not attempting to attack. As the Onward's Captain, J.F. Nichols,
prepared to fire a broadside into the Confederate ship, Smalls ordered the crew
to raise a white sheet as a signal that the ship intended to surrender.
Not only did the US Navy accept the surrender, but they treated
the ship as a captured prize vessel, meaning that the crew was entitled to a
cash payment equal to half the value of the ship, plus the value of the
cargo--in this case four dismounted cannons and 200 pounds of ammunition. Smalls would eventually receive $6,500 in
prize money ($150,411.12 in 2017 dollars).
In addition, the rear admiral in charge of the Charleston blockade kept
Smalls as pilot aboard the new USS Planter.
More valuable than the ship itself, Smalls turned over to the US
Navy the captain''s code book and maps showing the location of Confederate
mines (then called torpedoes) and coastal gun emplacements. Back in Charleston, the ship's white
Confederate officers were facing court martial.
The escaping slaves with their stolen warship were a propaganda
coup for the North, with newspapers and magazines turning Smalls into a
national hero. Harper's Weekly
embellished the story, having "an aging darky" outwitting the
Confederate checkpoints. In actuality,
Smalls was only 23.
After touring Northern churches, lecturing on the war and
slavery, Smalls returned to the Planter, using his knowledge about the
South Carolina coast while he participated on over a dozen raids. In one such action, while under fire, the
white Captain fled below decks seeking safety forcing Smalls to take over command
of the ship and finish the raid. Shortly
after the raid, he was appointed the ship's captain, a post he held for the
rest of the war.
Of the approximate 200,000 black men who served in either the
army or the navy, fewer than 80 served as commissioned officers.
After the war, Smalls, a Republican, served in the constitutional convention that wrote the new constitution for South Carolina, where he co-authored the civil rights clause. Serving in both the state's House and Senate, he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1874 where he served until 1887, after Reconstruction had ended and the state's Democratic Party had disenfranchised Blacks. Smalls returned to Beaufort, South Carolina as a Customs Agent. When he applied for a pension, it was discovered that all of the official paperwork had been lost and the Navy refused to grant his pension despite the numerous newspaper and magazine articles documenting his career. His pension, $30 a month, was eventually authorized by an act of Congress.
Makes you wonder how many brilliant and talented men were lost to us because of the color of their skin, their country of origin or the part of the country they were born in.
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