"What if they just took the boat?
They could do it. It would be dangerous, but... what if they just took the boat?
They had the men for it. There were eight of them that were solid. They were good sailors and they could keep their mouths shut. Truth be told, Robert could probably handle it on his own. He worked on all types of ships: schooners and slips and side-wheel steamers like the Planter. If he could just get his hands on the wheel...
Robert Smalls knew these waters. He'd been sailing them for years. He knew every inlet and every island. He could read the tides, intuit the shifts and the currents. He couldn't "read" read. They didn't teach slaves to read, but he taught himself to interpret the nautical charts - not that he'd need them, not around here. He'd been piloting the Planter for months, moving Confederate soldiers and supplies up and down the coast. He knew where all the mines were outside of Charleston. Hell, he'd been there when they set most of them.
He could do it, couldn't he? What if they just took the boat?
It started as a joke from one of the other slaves that worked on the Planter, but the joke stopped being funny. They started talking about it at night. They started making plans. They were a year into the war, a year since Fort Sumter and Jefferson Davis putting up the flag, but the Yankees were closing in. They had taken back Beaufort Island, just off the coast.
Robert's mother was there now. He was born there - she was too: two generations of native-born slaves from Beaufort island. She'd be safe there now, free even, if the Yankees stuck to their word. But who could say. He couldn't control what Abe Lincoln would do. He couldn't control much. He wasn't the man at the wheel. But if they took the boat, they could go straight to Beaufort. But really, they wouldn't even need too. If they took the boat, they'd just have to take it to the blockade, just off the coast, where the Union gunboats laid in wait.
It started as a joke from one of the other slaves that worked on the Planter, but the joke stopped being funny. They started talking about it at night. They started making plans. They were a year into the war, a year since Fort Sumter and Jefferson Davis putting up the flag, but the Yankees were closing in. They had taken back Beaufort Island, just off the coast.
Robert's mother was there now. He was born there - she was too: two generations of native-born slaves from Beaufort island. She'd be safe there now, free even, if the Yankees stuck to their word. But who could say. He couldn't control what Abe Lincoln would do. He couldn't control much. He wasn't the man at the wheel. But if they took the boat, they could go straight to Beaufort. But really, they wouldn't even need too. If they took the boat, they'd just have to take it to the blockade, just off the coast, where the Union gunboats laid in wait.
They'd have to pick their moment. They'd have to put enough distance between the Planter and the shore before anyone rose the alarm. They'd go right by Ft. George. Right and by Ft. Sumter itself. They'd have to get there right before dawn or someone would notice there were no white faces on board... and that would be that...
If they got caught... they couldn't get caught... They would blow the Planter and themselves up before they got caught.
They could just take the boat.
They could just take the boat.
Robert talked to Hannah, his wife, a hotel maid he met when his owner, Mr. McKee, brought him to a house he owned in Charleston. Robert's mother convinced the man to let the then twelve-year-old boy get a job. He made $16 a month - he got to keep $1. He saved for years. And when he met Hannah and they had a baby named Eliza, he was somehow able to buy them. Buy his own wife and child, from their owner for $800.
However, he knew that did nothing to ensure their safety. His mother made sure he knew that. She taught him that as a boy. She made sure he knew that their life of relative ease in the master's house was nothing like freedom. It was an impermanent thing. He'd seen men and women and boys and girls his age, younger even, sold at auction, prodded, humiliated, distributed. She'd send him into the fields, to the whipping post to see and understand that his life was not his own - not here.
So, Robert told his wife that it would be dangerous, but Robert had seven men who agreed to go with him, who placed their faith in him, who would leave at a moment's notice, who wouldn't tell a soul, and who waited for his command. He told her that she and their two daughters had to be on that boat. It may be the last thing he ever did, but he was going to take that boat and the wheel in his own hands - and with it all of their lives.
The crew of the Planter spent the afternoon of May 12th, 1862, loading cargo from a dock in front of the Confederate headquarters in Charleston, watched by two dozen armed guards. By the end of the workday, the Planter was loaded with six heavy cannons and nearly a thousand pounds of ammunition. The work was exhausting.
The ships' captain, the first mate, and the engineer wanted to kick back and head into to town. So they left Robert; capable Robert, dutiful Robert, in charge in their absence. Told him to make sure the Planter was ready to cast off at 6 AM for a routine run. It would be a quick trip to re-supply a fort down the coast, up the channel, past Ft. Johnson, past Sumter up through the harbor, take a left and hug the coast on the way south to avoid the Union blockade. The three Confederate seamen went off to the bar or the brothel or wherever the night took them. It was no matter to Robert.
At 3 AM, Robert broke into the captain's room and stole his uniform, his pistols, and the broad, straw hat he wore to keep the sun out of his eyes. By 330, his co-conspirators were on board, stoking the fire and building up steam. The engine was loud. It would certainly wake the watchmen, but 330 was a reasonable hour if a captain wanted to get an early start.
The crew of the Planter spent the afternoon of May 12th, 1862, loading cargo from a dock in front of the Confederate headquarters in Charleston, watched by two dozen armed guards. By the end of the workday, the Planter was loaded with six heavy cannons and nearly a thousand pounds of ammunition. The work was exhausting.
The ships' captain, the first mate, and the engineer wanted to kick back and head into to town. So they left Robert; capable Robert, dutiful Robert, in charge in their absence. Told him to make sure the Planter was ready to cast off at 6 AM for a routine run. It would be a quick trip to re-supply a fort down the coast, up the channel, past Ft. Johnson, past Sumter up through the harbor, take a left and hug the coast on the way south to avoid the Union blockade. The three Confederate seamen went off to the bar or the brothel or wherever the night took them. It was no matter to Robert.
At 3 AM, Robert broke into the captain's room and stole his uniform, his pistols, and the broad, straw hat he wore to keep the sun out of his eyes. By 330, his co-conspirators were on board, stoking the fire and building up steam. The engine was loud. It would certainly wake the watchmen, but 330 was a reasonable hour if a captain wanted to get an early start.
Smalls, dressed in the captain's uniform, pulled the hat down despite the darkness. He raised the confederate flag and then they took the boat. They rendez-vous-ed with a small ship, bobbing in the harbor. Smalls' family and 4 other sailors' families boarded the Planter. Off they went into the night.
At Ft. Johnson, an old Revolutionary War battlement, built into the hillside of Windmill Point on James Island, the lookouts trained their guns on the boat, but Smalls whistled out the signal. Remember, he knew all the codes. They let the Planter pass, but the tides conspired against them, and it was dawn when they came upon Ft. Sumter. At that point, it was light enough that they could make out the men with their guns if anything was amiss. From that distance, from that light, the men would've been able to make out the race of Robert Smalls. But in the captain's hat, pulled low over his face, and his collar up high, with the same peculiar bearing the captain was known for, they didn't notice. He pulled the cord on the whistle, sounding out the code: twice long, once short, and waited...
The men on the battlement held their fire.
The men on the battlement held their fire.
By the time anyone at Ft. Sumter noticed the Planter didn't turn left, that it was heading out to sea, they were out of range. Robert Smalls held the wheel and they pressed on toward the blockade with a gift. The Union captain who spotted the Planter as it charged at them from out of the fog, who trained his own guns on this renegade ship that seemed poised to ram through the line... when he saw the white flag that indicated surrender, and he thought the damned-est thing: a handsome, 23-year old black man in a Confederate captains' coat, a frilly shirt, and sixteen slaves - men, women, and children, dancing on the deck of a side-wheel steamer.
And it was quite a gift.
There was the boat itself, a useful addition to the thin Union fleet and the guns, some of which were Union cannons, lost after the fall of Ft. Sumter the year before. But the prize was Robert Smalls himself. While his family went off to join his mother in Beaufort to the promise of safety and emancipation, Smalls became a sailor for the United States Military. Not a sailor *in* the United States Military. For he may have been free, may have just freed himself, but he was still black and there were no black sailors *in* the United States Military - not officially. But still, he turned all the knowledge he gained while under the yoke of the Confederacy: troop positions, gun placements, codes, supply routes, methods, mines, and torpedoes, and turned them against themselves. He planned attack routes. He piloted the Planter through the endless maze of the islands he knew so well, and pointed out enemy positions and points of entry on maps he taught himself to read.
And it was quite a gift.
There was the boat itself, a useful addition to the thin Union fleet and the guns, some of which were Union cannons, lost after the fall of Ft. Sumter the year before. But the prize was Robert Smalls himself. While his family went off to join his mother in Beaufort to the promise of safety and emancipation, Smalls became a sailor for the United States Military. Not a sailor *in* the United States Military. For he may have been free, may have just freed himself, but he was still black and there were no black sailors *in* the United States Military - not officially. But still, he turned all the knowledge he gained while under the yoke of the Confederacy: troop positions, gun placements, codes, supply routes, methods, mines, and torpedoes, and turned them against themselves. He planned attack routes. He piloted the Planter through the endless maze of the islands he knew so well, and pointed out enemy positions and points of entry on maps he taught himself to read.
His commander called him a hero. He also called him a, "pleasant looking darkie," but this gave him the wheel.
Robert Smalls was famous among the furious rebels and fearful slave-holding southerners who were looking at the slaves in their midst, wondering which among them might take a boat of their own, or grab a whip, or burn the house down. So, the Confederacy placed a $4000 bounty on Robert Smalls' head, but a $5000 reward was offered to Smalls by Congress. Another $15000 was split among the band of thieves.
Abolitionists brought him to New York and put the young Robert Smalls in front of rapturous crowds. The Secretary of War brought him with a delegation to meet the President in order to argue for freeing and arming the slaves. There are people who say Smalls swayed the president. That his passion and his heroism changed Abe's mind and changed the course of the war. There are others who point out that Lincoln already made up his mind at that point. That he already made the Emancipation Proclamation to his cabinet a month or so before. Regardless, there was an August day in 1862, when a 23 year old former slave met the President of the United States. Though each man knew the other by reputation, they both must've had a moment when each internally assessed the other man in the flesh against the one they had seen in some cross-thatched drawing in Harper's...
By war's end, Robert had been in 17 battles. He piloted an ironclad that took 90 shells in an assault on Ft. Sumter. He was awarded for his heroism. He was given formal command of the Planter, a rank, and a pension. When Charleston surrendered, he was at the wheel again, bringing the Planter back to that dock in front of the Confederate headquarters. He was mobbed and hailed as the conquering hero he basically was. Afterward, he returned home to Beaufort island, where his mother was born a slave, where he had been born a slave in a cabin behind his former master's house. Then he bought that house and the whole plantation with the money he got for taking the boat, and he lived there with his family until his death in 1915...
...but before he died, during the 54 years since he passed Ft. Sumter in the shimmer of dawn and headed out to the open ocean, Robert Smalls fought to keep hold of the wheel.
By war's end, Robert had been in 17 battles. He piloted an ironclad that took 90 shells in an assault on Ft. Sumter. He was awarded for his heroism. He was given formal command of the Planter, a rank, and a pension. When Charleston surrendered, he was at the wheel again, bringing the Planter back to that dock in front of the Confederate headquarters. He was mobbed and hailed as the conquering hero he basically was. Afterward, he returned home to Beaufort island, where his mother was born a slave, where he had been born a slave in a cabin behind his former master's house. Then he bought that house and the whole plantation with the money he got for taking the boat, and he lived there with his family until his death in 1915...
...but before he died, during the 54 years since he passed Ft. Sumter in the shimmer of dawn and headed out to the open ocean, Robert Smalls fought to keep hold of the wheel.
They called it Reconstruction, though the name never sat right. It wasn't a rebuilding. It wasn't a clearing of rubble, patching of fences, or a new coat of whitewash on a Neo-Classical plantation home. The order of things had been upended. Hundreds of years of violence, oppression, theft, murder, and unconscionable acts in the name of... what? Take your pick: order, progress, capital, faith... were ended. There were no charts to follow, no way to know what lay ahead. Robert Smalls tried to do his part and lead the people on Beaufort Island through the fog.
He learned to read. He founded the first public school in South Carolina. He negotiated for better working conditions and fairer labor practices for former slaves. He was elected to the state legislature and made those rules law. He served five terms in the United States Congress, where he fought to desegregate public transportation and the military, to stop the tax code from punishing the poor and enriching the wealthy, and to give women the right to vote. He was one of the most powerful and effective black politicians of the 19th century in that brief period before the Klan and its conspirators and the state governors and their conspirators defrauded and threatened and lynched votes away from men like him.
"We stuffed ballot boxes, we shot Negroes, and we are not ashamed of it." - Late South Carolina's Governor and Senator, Benjamin Tillman
This is the final piece of the story, and I'll leave it to you to decide what it all means:
There was a day, after the world had been undone and should've been remade, but instead got Reconstructed. Supposedly this was during summer. When the Smalls lived in that house on Beaufort: the white pillars, the wrap-around porches, the whole thing. I imagine the Sea breeze as a relief from the wetness of the sweltering heat. The kids reading books on the front porch and Hannah Smalls playing a piano by an open window. A woman appeared on the path. An older white woman who slowly walked toward the house, past the empty slave quarters, the overgrown lawn flecked with wild flowers, and came up the front stairs. The woman was acting strangely. She had dementia and Robert was the one to recognize her. See, she was the wife of the man who once owned him. That man died some years before and here she was, tired and confused. She said this was her home, but it was... different somehow, so different now... Well, the Smalls took her in and she lived there comfortably, until her death."
This is the final piece of the story, and I'll leave it to you to decide what it all means:
There was a day, after the world had been undone and should've been remade, but instead got Reconstructed. Supposedly this was during summer. When the Smalls lived in that house on Beaufort: the white pillars, the wrap-around porches, the whole thing. I imagine the Sea breeze as a relief from the wetness of the sweltering heat. The kids reading books on the front porch and Hannah Smalls playing a piano by an open window. A woman appeared on the path. An older white woman who slowly walked toward the house, past the empty slave quarters, the overgrown lawn flecked with wild flowers, and came up the front stairs. The woman was acting strangely. She had dementia and Robert was the one to recognize her. See, she was the wife of the man who once owned him. That man died some years before and here she was, tired and confused. She said this was her home, but it was... different somehow, so different now... Well, the Smalls took her in and she lived there comfortably, until her death."
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