Every Day Is Special: April 5 - Honoring Robert Smalls

April 5 - Honoring Robert Smalls

Posted on April 5, 2019

Maybe the white officers on the Confederate military transport ship CSS Planter thought that their enslaved crew members really were content with their lot in life.

Maybe they thought that the black men were incapable of long-range planning.

Maybe it seemed easier, more fun, and more comfortable to go ashore almost every night.

Whatever those three white Planter officers thought, they thought wrong.

About half a year into the Civil War, Robert Smalls, a man born into slavery, was assigned to be a pilot of the transport ship CSS Planter. He decided that gave him an opportunity to escape to freedom.

He carefully laid his escape plan. He pretended to be happy, and he pretended to respect the white officers. He was reliable and accurate with his steering. He secretly discussed his escape plan with seven of the eight enslaved crew members - but, crucially, he didn't confide in the one slave he didn't trust. He made arrangements with his own wife and children - and asked the others planning to escape to make arrangements with their own families. He studied his captain, including his mannerisms, and he acquired a hat similar to the captain's straw hat.

On the evening of May 12, 1862, the captain and two white officers left the Planter, as usual, to spend the night ashore. At 3 a.m., Smalls put on the captain's uniform and the straw hat. Then he and the seven enslaved crew members sailed away from the wharf to a previously-arranged meeting spot on another wharf, where their families got on board.

Smalls's wife gave Smalls a white bed sheet - all part of the plan.

Smalls carefully mimicked his captain's mannerisms and stride as they passed each wharf and fort and the occasional onlooker onshore. He gave the correct signal at each checkpoint. By 4:30, they passed the last fort (Fort Sumter, where the Civil War had started more than a year before).

When the Planter was out of gun range, Smalls ordered the Confederate flag lowered and the white bedsheet raised as the "white flag" that indicates surrender. And he steered straight for the Union Navy fleet, some seven miles away.

The USS Onward spotted the ship and almost fired on it - it was difficult to see the white flag, apparently - but then the sky lightened enough with the oncoming sunrise that one of the Union sailors called out, "I see something that looks like a white flag!" And the order to shoot was cancelled.

When the Planter was near enough to the Onward, Smalls removed his hat and yelled, "Good morning, sir! I've brought you some of the old United States guns, sir."

Because the day before, the Confederate transport ship had picked up four large guns from a previously-U.S. fort located in the South, plus 200 pounds of ammunition and 20 cords of firewood.

So Smalls almost single-handedly brought the Union Navy a Confederate ship, guns, ammunition, and supplies! Even more valuable, he'd brought military intelligence: a Confederate code book containing all their signals, a map or chart showing the locations of all the mines and torpedoes that had been put down in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina, and all the stuff he knew about the Confederate defenses and forts and the local waterways.

Smalls was hailed as a Union hero. Of course, he'd won freedom for himself, his crew, and all their families. The U.S. Congress awarded Smalls and his crew with prize money for their contributions.

Smalls continued to impact history because, based partly on Smalls's courage and intelligence, Lincoln decided to go along with the then-controversial idea of allowing black men to fight for the Union.

Smalls was one of those black men who served in the Union armed forces. Unfortunately, he was treated poorly by many in the Union, because of his skin color - racism existed (and still exists) in the North as well as the South - and he had to fight for the Navy pension he deserved.

After the Civil War, Smalls returned to South Carolina and served in the state legislature and in the U.S. House of Representatives. He also became a businessman who helped start a railroad (the board of directors was entirely African American, other than one white man) and a publisher who founded a newspaper.

Today, April 5, is Robert Smalls's birthday. Spread the word about his derring-do, because we should all know his name!!