Gullah Statesman: Robert Smalls from Slavery to Congress, 1839-1915

By Edward A. Miller, Jr.

A political biography of the first African American hero of the Civil War

A native of Beaufort, South Carolina, Robert Smalls was born into slavery but—through acts of remarkable courage and determination—became the first African American hero of the Civil War and one of the most influential African American politicians in South Carolina history. In this largely political biography of Smalls's inspirational story, Edward A. Miller, Jr., traces the triumphs and setbacks of the celebrated U.S. congressman and advocate of compulsory, desegregated public education to illustrate how the life and contributions of this singular individual were indicative of the rise and fall of political influence for all African Americans during this rough transitional period in American history.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of South Carolina Press
• Release date: Dec 23, 2021
• ISBN: 9781643362977

Book preview

Chapter 1

Escape of the Planter and War Service

In the early morning hours of May 13, 1862, a lookout on the Union warship Onward, part of the blockading squadron off Charleston, South Carolina, raised the alarm. His vessel was the inside ship assigned to monitor traffic in the channel from Charleston and over the bar to the open sea. His impression was that Onward was under attack by a Confederate ram, a type of ship feared by the crews of wooden sailing vessels in the Union blockading force. Immediately, the crew of the anchored Onward took action to warp the ship into a position where its guns could be brought to bear on the black shape materializing through the haze and mist off the port quarter. At the moment the number three port gun was being elevated to fire, a sailor cried out, I see something that looks like a white flag.¹

Onward’s captain, Acting Volunteer Lieutenant J. F. Nickels, ordered the vessel be allowed to come alongside. As it came nearer, no white faces could be seen. Indeed, the crew appeared to consist entirely of black men, women, and children who, when it was seen that the Union ship would not fire, ran out on deck—some dancing, some singing, whistling, jumping; and others stood looking towards Fort Sumter, and muttering all sorts of maledictions against it. One of the black men, elegantly dressed, removed his hat and said, Good morning, sir! I’ve brought you some of the old United States guns, sir! Captain Nickels had in his charge the Confederate armed steamer Planter, a cargo of unmounted guns, eight men, five women, and three children representing themselves to be slaves. The organizer of this successful abduction of the Charleston port commander’s dispatch and transportation steamer was the ship’s pilot, Robert Smalls, a twenty-three-year-old slave.²

Smalls’s feat was especially remarkable because of the risk he and his associates took in stealing the Planter from Southern dock, directly in front of the office and home of Brigadier General Roswell S. Ripley who was commanding the Second Military District of South Carolina. Smalls’s operation was planned some days in advance, and he received agreement from most of the other slaves in the crew to join him. Since the Planter was commanded by a white officer, Captain C.J. Relyea, and had a white mate, Samuel H. Smith, and a white engineer, Zerich Pitcher, Smalls had to wait for his opportunity to escape from Charleston. The chance came when all three officers decided to spend the night ashore, contrary to standing orders in the military district.³

Smalls’s success depended on whether the crew members remaining behind did not inform on him, on his own ability to operate the ship on which he ordinarily served as wheelman, on his ability to get his confederates and families aboard without being noticed by armed guards, and on his understanding of the harbor’s security and operational procedures. He felt confident that his knowledge and experience would see him through. He said later he was more apprehensive that the Union ships would fire on the Planter than would the forts. Smalls got up steam at about 3 A.M., hoisted the Palmetto and Confederate flags, and proceeded to the North Atlantic wharf where he took on board his wife, two children, and others concealed on the ship Etowah. He piloted the ship down the South Channel and gave the correct steam whistle signal at Fort Johnson and again at Fort Sumter. The tide was against the vessel, and it was daylight when Sumter was passed. At the fort, his signal was acknowledged, and the Planter, perhaps mistaken for the guard boat coincidentally out of service that morning, was given authority to pass. Smalls took the precaution of standing in the pilothouse window with his arms folded as did Captain Relyea, and he wore the captain’s large straw hat. He struck his state and Confederate colors and hoisted a dingy towel or handkerchief. Because Smalls made the proper signal, his feat was less dangerous in rebel controlled waters than it was approaching the perhaps jumpy Union blockading force. Had he been challenged and stopped, however, he would have paid the penalty with his life.⁴

The Planter had been a cotton steamer, owned by John Ferguson, which sailed the Pee Dee River. In March, 1861, it was chartered by the Confederate government along with its crew, including Smalls, and put into service running supplies (primarily munitions and ordnance) between the widespread Charleston fortifications. Built of red cedar and oak, the vessel displaced 300 tons, was 147 feet in length, and drew less than 4 feet of water—making it well-suited for service in the creeks and rivers of South Carolina’s coastal areas. A wood-burning sidewheeler, the Planter was armed with a 32-pounder cannon and 22-pounder howitzer. Its cargo, when abducted by Smalls, was made up of four guns and a guncarriage. These guns were to be delivered to Charleston’s Middle Ground battery (Fort Ripley) and the carriage to Fort Sumter the following morning. Of more importance to the Union was the information possibly provided by papers found aboard and, more certainly, the subsequent information offered by Smalls. The vessel with Smalls sailed on all the waters around Charleston, even as far south as Port Royal/Beaufort, before the area was captured by Union forces. Smalls was also said to have been useful to the federal force as he knew where the Confederate torpedoes [as mines were then called] were sunk in the harbor, having helped to place many of them. Notwithstanding the military and propaganda values of the Planter, Smalls’s memory of local waters and rebel dispositions were his most valuable contributions to the Union.⁵

Onward’s Captain Nickels notified his superior, Commander E. G. Parrott, captain of the USS Augusta and commanding officer of the blockading fleet off Charleston, of his prize and turned the vessel and crew over to Parrott. Parrott put aboard a crew commanded by Acting Master William Watson and directed him to proceed down the coast via St. Helena Sound and Broad River 60 miles to Port Royal—the headquarters of Flag Officer [Commodore] Samuel F. Du Pont who was in charge of South Atlantic blockading activities. The Planter, with its prize crew and contrabands, left the waters off Charleston and arrived off Port Royal shortly after 10 P.M. As the Planter approached Du Pont’s flagship, the USS Wabash, some confusion occurred because the rebel vessel was not recognized. It was thought once again to be a ram. This matter was quickly resolved, however, and the Planter was anchored off Hilton Head near Beaufort, where Smalls was born.⁶

Du Pont’s view was that the shallow-draft Planter would be useful to the navy, but he was also fascinated by the hero, Robert himself. He described Smalls as a pleasant-looking darky, not black, neither light, extreme amount of woolly hair, neatly trimmed, fine teeth; a clean and nice linen check coat with a very fine linen shirt having a handsome ruffle on the breast, possibly part of the wardrobe of the Navy officer who commanded the boat. Du Pont did not record whatever explanation Smalls gave for his exploit that was planned for a week or two. Later Smalls said to a black audience, Although born a slave I always felt that I was a man and ought to be free [Applause], and I would be free or die. He continued to say that he included the Planter in his calculation because he thought the vessel might be of some service to ‘Uncle Abe.’⁷

Others have attributed Smalls’s motivation to his hearing that Union Major General David Hunter had directed the recruiting of black men in and around Beaufort and the Port Royal/Sea Island area and that Hunter had taken action declaring all slaves in his command free. The first limited freedom declaration was made April 13, 1862, but it was little noticed because it closely followed Hunter’s more newsworthy capture of Fort Pulaski in Georgia. His May 9 proclamation declaring all slaves in South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida free on the ground that slavery and martial law were incompatible received considerably more attention. His announcement was followed by orders calling for the enlistment of all able-bodied black males. The orders were followed by impressment of unwilling blacks and resulted in the virtual stripping of farm workers in the occupied districts. It seems unlikely that Smalls heard of Hunter’s actions (that were later canceled by Washington) in the short time before he made his voyage, and he was probably not inspired by them.⁸

A later observer of Smalls, a carpetbagger who arrived in South Carolina five years after the war, claimed that Smalls’s fame for leading the Planter escape was undeserved. Some of the black folk, he wrote, said he did this in fear and trembling at the mouth of a loaded pistol leveled by a braver and more determined slave, one who never shared in the fame of the Planter’s exploit and was big enough not to care to. As will be seen, Smalls’s enemies through the years would seek to attribute cowardness to Smalls and the plan and execution of the Planter incident to others. There is no real doubt, however, that Smalls was the leader he was recognized to be. In fact, an account written only days after the Planter’s voyage suggests that those crew members left behind at Charleston were afraid to run the risk, even if only for their families’ sake, and were excused by Smalls. Some of Smalls’s companions may have joined him because they were forcibly taken from [the Beaufort area] last November [when the rebels fled from the Union forces] and wanted to get home. Smalls was said later to have claimed that his plans were delayed and thwarted by the cowardness of his associates. He also said that he was well aware of the consequences to be expected if caught, and told his wife: I shall be shot. Smalls added that when he asked his wife if she was willing to take the risk, she replied, I will go, … for where you die I will die.⁹

Du Pont certainly was impressed with Smalls, whom he characterized as superior to any [contraband] who has yet come into our lines, intelligent as many of them have been. Du Pont noted also that Smalls’s feat was not entirely unprecedented in that General Ripley’s barge, a short time since, was brought out to the blockading fleet by several contrabands. On April 22 the captain of the USS Bienville, one of the vessels blockading Charleston, reported fifteen contrabands came off to this ship at 2 o’clock this morning. They state that … the boat they used belonged to the Quartermaster department of the rebel army, the same organization to which the Planter was assigned. Brigadier General H. W. Benham, commanding the Northern District of General Hunter’s Department of the South, said: About the 1st instant [around the first day in May], the morning after we had obtained the information from the negro deserters of the boat’s crew of General Ripley, he planned an attack below Charleston using troops landed by sea. Du Pont questioned Smalls about the barge incident because of Benham’s operation and perhaps also because it may have given Smalls an incentive to abduct the Planter. But he did not record Smalls’s views of the barge, only what was said in Charleston about its loss. They made much to-do about it, Smalls told him, And talked a great deal, ordered sharper lookouts and more pickets. I think they had more to say this morning about me, though, when they find the steamer gone. Records of events related to Ripley’s barge are sketchy, but a result of the action of the unnamed contrabands was heightened Confederate reaction to the Planter’s loss.¹⁰

Rebel reaction was indeed immediate. The Charleston Daily Courier reported, "Our community was intensely agitated Tuesday morning by the intelligence that the steamer Planter, for the last twelve months or more employed both in State and Confederate service, had been taken possession of by her colored crew, steamed up, and boldly run out to the blockaders…. The news was not at first credited. The story continued, Three of the slaves belonged to Captain Ferguson, one to Mrs. Michel, and one to Mrs. McKee [latter would be Smalls]. A few days later the same journal printed a letter noting that Fort Ripley work was discontinued and asked, Is it because four of the guns intended for the defence of the city have been stolen? Charleston’s population apparently had reason to be concerned for its safety; Smalls had noted before he left Charleston that the news of the burning of the Norfolk Navy Yard and the destruction of the Merrimac" caused great agitation. The Wilmington, North Carolina, Journal said, The occurrence at Charleston of the stealing of the steamer Planter in broad daylight is one of the most shameful events in this or any other war. Emma E. Holmes, of Camden, South Carolina, wrote in her diary that she was horrified and that Smalls’s act was most Disgraceful, even if it was one of the boldest and most daring things of the war. The Charleston Mercury reported, The run to Morris Island [at the harbor’s mouth] goes out a long way beyond the fort [Sumter?] and then turns. The ‘Planter’ did not turn. The Columbia, South Carolina, Guardian hoped that the recreant parties will be brought to speedy justice, and the prompt penalty of the halter rigorously enforced.¹¹ Since Smalls and his companions were safely out of Confederate hands, the latter hope went unfulfilled.

Official Confederate reaction appeared directed primarily against the white officers who had failed in their duty. General Ripley telegraphed his commander in Savannah, Major General John C. Pemberton, who then notified General Robert E. Lee in Richmond. After reading the reports from Charleston, Lee’s staff responded that Lee very much regrets the circumstance, and hopes that necessary measures will be taken to prevent any repetition of a like misfortune and to bring to punishment any party or parties that may be proved guilty of complicity in the affair or negligent in not preventing it. Meanwhile, General Ripley wrote Pemberton that the mischief has occurred from the negligence of the captain and officers of the boat and their disobedience of orders.… I shall prefer charges against them at an early day and lay them before [you]. A Richmond newspaper shared this view, saying that the incident should consign the military authorities of that city—at least those who had the matter in charge—to petticoats or strait jackets for the rest of the war. Captain Relyea and his officers were convicted and sentenced to fine and imprisonment by a court-martial. But, on review, the sentences were remitted for the technical reason that the military court did not have jurisdiction over contract employees. As for Smalls, his fate in rebel hands would not have been as formally decided as the white officers. Returning to Charleston in March, 1865, Smalls remarked that a great price was once put on [his] head, however, direct evidence of this was lacking.¹²

If Smalls deserved Confederate vengeance, it should have been for the immediate contribution he made to the Union cause with his intelligence information rather than for turning over the Planter and its cargo. In over a year under the rebel flag, Smalls had been aboard the Planter while the vessel was employed by Lieutenant John Randolph Hamilton. Hamilton, a former U.S. Navy officer now in Confederate uniform, used the Planter, to survey the bars along the coasts of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. He helped destroy the federal lighthouse at Hunting Island, lay mines in the Edisto River, and move men and guns from Bay Point to Hilton Head before its capture and to batteries Gregg and Walker on Morris Island.¹³

The information Smalls provided was clearly important, and Du Pont acted upon it at once. Specifically, Smalls reported that Confederate fortifications on Cole’s Island on the Stono River, protecting Charleston’s southwestern flank, had been disarmed in early May, probably due to a shortage of guns and a fear of being cut off. Furthermore, because Smalls was a skilled pilot familiar with the waters, he could give accurate details of the area. Du Pont later reported to the secretary of the navy that, from information derived chiefly from the contraband pilot, Robert Smalls, he ordered a reconnaissance of the Stono area and on May 20, 1862, ordered in the Union gunboats Onadilla, Pembina and Ottawa. The mission was successful, entered Stono [River] and ‘old fort’ opposite Legareville. He said further, I have no doubt the Charlestonians thought their time had come. Later, Navy Secretary Gideon Welles, complimenting Smalls for his valuable assistance, said the river was occupied as far as Legareville, and examination extended further to ascertain the position of the enemy’s batteries. The seizure of Stono Inlet and river secured an important base for military operations, and was virtually a turning of the forces in the Charleston harbor. It was not entirely clear that Smalls accompanied the expedition, but he and the Planter would soon be in active service supporting Union forces in the Charleston and Port Royal area.¹⁴

Robert Smalls was born in Beaufort, South Carolina, on April 5, 1839, in slave quarters behind a house at 501 Prince Street. His mother Lydia was herself born a slave on Ashdale Plantation on Ladies’ (now Lady’s) Island across from the town. She was brought to Beaufort as a house servant by her master, John K. McKee, to care for his five children. It was the custom then for many Sea Island plantation owners to live seasonally in Beaufort; some of them, like McKee, lived there permanently. House servants, known in the Gullah dialect as Swonga people, were the slave elite because they saw the white man’s world more closely, had an opportunity for social development, and could be the link between the majority field slaves and whites.¹⁵

There was some dispute as to who Smalls’s father was, but there was no doubt that he was white. His father may even have been John McKee, Lydia’s master. Some have claimed Smalls was the son of a very distinguished Jew, in some places identified as Moses Goldsmith—a wealthy Charleston merchant. Smalls’s descendants, however, claim that it was McKee. Apparently, Robert Smalls was known during his early years and until after the war as Robert Small. It has been suggested that his last name alludes to his physical height, but he was not particularly short—he was five feet five inches tall. However, the record is not clear on these points; often wartime documents use Smalls.¹⁶

Upon John McKee’s death in 1848, Robert Smalls and his mother were inherited by McKee’s son, Henry. One of his playmates, a white man related to his owner, said Smalls was raised in our family as a house boy, always proved himself intelligent and of a kind disposition. Smalls did not recall his early years in the McKee household in Beaufort as particularly harsh, but his biographers credit him with developing a taste for freedom in that atmosphere. In testimony he gave before the American Freedmen’s Inquiry Commission in 1863, Smalls described some of the hard conditions under which slaves lived which he saw while traveling as a child in the Beaufort area. For example, he said, he saw stocks in which the people are confined from twenty-four to forty-eight hours, with sixty-pound weights attached to a slave’s leg as punishment. He also said he saw a man owned by John Verdier wearing an iron collar with two prongs sticking out at the sides like cow’s horns, and whippings of slaves by Dr. Reed (whom Smalls accompanied to the fields on several occasions) when the doctor saw anything that did not suit him. Smalls seems to have appreciated the injustice of such treatment, often for the simplest thing if it was not done to suit the owner’s notion. His childhood was in an area where 83 percent of the population was slave at that time; only seven other counties in the nation had higher concentrations. In 1851, however, either McKee’s fortunes in the Beaufort area declined or he branched out into the cotton brokerage trade. He sold his house on Prince Street to the de Treville family and built another several blocks away on the corner of Carteret and Bay Streets. Some historians say that Henry McKee moved from Beaufort and purchased Cobcall—a plantation near Georgetown. It seems likely that he resided in Beaufort until the war only to flee when the Union forces took over the area. Smalls’s mother, Lydia, did not leave Beaufort with the family, but instead remained in the town during the federal occupation.¹⁷

In 1851, the same year the Prince Street house changed hands, the twelve-year-old Smalls was hired out as a laborer in Charleston—staying with Mrs. Eliza Ancrum, the sister-in-law of his master. First he was a waiter at the Planter’s Hotel for $5 a month paid to his owner, and then later he was a lamplighter for a city contractor and a stevedore on the Charleston docks. These jobs preceded employment with John Simmons—eventually as a ship rigger in winter and a sailor on coastal vessels in summer. On December 24, 1858, at the age of seventeen he married Hannah Jones, a slave hotel maid fourteen years his senior. She was the daughter of Simon Mattis. Smalls said he married her because, My idea was to have a wife to prevent me running around—to have somebody to do for me and to keep me. The colored men in taking wives always do so in reference to the service the women will render. Asked if love entered the calculation among black men, Smalls answered, No, sir, I think not. He was free to marry because he had made an arrangement with Henry McKee which gave him freedom of employment. Instead of passing all his pay to his owner, he would turn over $ 15 monthly. He made a similar deal with Hannah’s owner, Samuel Kingman, for a promise of $5 monthly, thus gaining permission for her to marry. A daughter, Elizabeth Lydia, was born in February, 1858; under the law she became Kingman’s property. Thereupon Smalls made a contract with Kingman to purchase his wife and child for $800. A son, Robert, Jr., was born in 1861, but whether Smalls made another purchase arrangement is unknown. When he fled Charleston, Smalls had saved $700 of the $800 he owed his wife’s master, but he never paid any of it.¹⁸

How Smalls managed to meet these multiple obligations, particularly when he accepted a job in July, 1861, as a deck hand on the Planter for only $16 a month, is obscure. In fact, Smalls’s employment situation may have been very difficult if he was earning money outside his regular job. Slaves were prohibited by state law from owning any real or personal property. Those hired out for wages needed a badge their owners had to purchase from the city, a requirement that was strictly enforced as of 1860 because of white fear of slave unrest. There was also a 10 P.M. curfew for blacks; those out after this time had to have a pass from a white owner or employer. An old colleague wrote that Smalls engaged in trading to supplement his income while aboard the Planter. Perhaps he also received a raise because, about the time the Confederate government chartered the vessel in March of 1861, Smalls became the wheelman—actually the pilot—but Southerners did not assign the latter title to blacks.¹⁹

It was probable that Smalls received some education during his years in Charleston. An associate in later years said about Smalls, Although debarred by statute from attending school, he educated himself with such limited advantages as he could secure. Smalls also participated in seven societies of blacks, that may have assembled in violation of laws of South Carolina [that] say … no more than four colored men shall meet together unless a white man is with them. These societies were primarily to help one another in sickness and distress, but the subject of freedom was sometimes talked about by the members. Smalls said that this did not happen often because they were afraid to trust each other fully. He added that even such limited treason was, unlike in the city, unknown on plantations where the subject was restricted to churches in which slaves pray constantly for the ‘day of their deliverance.’²⁰

Robert Smalls’s delivery of the Planter into Union hands was a national sensation at the time. Harper’s Weekly, for example, printed pictures of Smalls and the Planter with a prominent article on the plucky Africans.²¹ The New York Commercial Advertiser commented:

We suppose few events that have taken place during the war have produced a heartier chuckle of satisfaction than the capture of the rebel armed steamer Planter.… It is a remarkable instance, even in these times, of riches taking themselves to wing and flying away. Here were eight contrabands made out of the commonest clay imaginable, and with souls so vulgar that their very existence has been questioned; yet they actually emancipated not only themselves, but as many others, bringing a highly valuable present to Uncle Sam…. The fellow who managed this affair proves that, in spite of his name, he is no Small man.²²

With a similar taste for humor, the Daily Tribune said, This morning there appeared in our harbor a new steamer, and curious eyes soon found it to be the Planter of Charleston … and ‘planted’ in the bay by a black pilot and engineer. A Southern historian writing about the incident over fifty years later thought that the "importance of the taking of the Planter and the heroism of Smalls were exaggerated all out of proportion in the North and seemed offended that Dr. Alpheus Crosby, in an address at Dartmouth in 1866, questioned whether Robert E. Lee would make as good a citizen of the reconstructed South as Robert Smalls! He said what Smalls did was plucky, but Smalls and his associates took no extraordinary risks. Perhaps in a belief that a black man could not have done such an act unaided, he wrote, It is said that two whites, a white woman and the negro crew were privy to the plot. He did admit, however, that Smalls’s knowledge of the waters around Charleston and the state of the city’s defenses was valuable to his new found friends."²³

The unusual attention to a relatively minor event was given probably because such actions on the part of slaves, while not unprecedented, were extremely rare. Dixie’s black slaves, although not necessarily reconciled to their situation, seldom left their work places even when they were free to do so. It might have been, as one historian observes, parochial ignorance and consequent uncertainty that kept them from the free states or from wholesale migration to Union lines except when forced by economic conditions. In the South before federal troops liberated blacks, there were no revolts of any kind by slaves. No doubt this caused Northerners sympathetic to the plight of the enslaved to look for evidence of blacks working actively for their own freedom as a natural reaction to their condition. An understandable error of the abolitionists was to assume that the born slave or the Negro born free in a slave-ridden culture necessarily felt about slavery as a free-born white would if suddenly enslaved.²⁴ Smalls was, therefore, an exception, and he was also articulate, modest, and well-appearing—characteristics that made him hero material.

Such was the official reception of Smalls that Du Pont wrote to Welles, I do not know whether, in the eyes of the Government, the vessel will be considered a prize; but, if so, I respectfully submit to the Department the claims of this man Robert and his associates. Du Pont’s words suggest he was uncertain Smalls, a civilian, had a legal entitlement to prize money, but the Navy Department immediately drafted a bill for congressional approval that would pay Smalls and his associates a portion of the value of the Planter and its cargo. Just six days after the Planter was surrendered to the blockading fleet, and even before Du Pont acted on Smalls’s intelligence information, a bill (S. 317, An act for the benefit of Robert Small and others) was introduced on the Senate floor. On that day, skipping debate and consideration of the bill by any committee, the Senate passed it without a recorded vote. A New York newspaper editorialized that the House should not miss the chance to pass the Senate’s bill for the first trophy from Fort Sumter. It continued, And the country should feel doubly humbled if there is not magnanimity enough to acknowledge a gallant action because it was the head of a black man who conceived, and the hand of a black man that executed it. On May 27, 1862, the House also approved the legislation without amendment, and it was signed by President Lincoln on May 30.²⁵

The bill provided that the secretary of the navy should have the Planter appraised to set its value so that an equitable apportionment of one-half of such value could be made between Smalls and his associates who assisted in rescuing her from the enemies of the Government. Perhaps in a belief that blacks were not responsible enough, the bill also provided that the funds allocated to each individual should be invested in U.S. securities and the interest be paid out yearly until the navy secretary might decide to pay out the principal. Welles put the money matter in Du Pont’s hands, and the former reported that his survey board found the value of the vessel to be $9,000 and the loose guns, some of which were repaired cannons damaged in the 1861 Confederate bombardment of Fort Sumter, to be worth $168. Du Pont wrote Welles that he would make the following apportionments:

The other women (not mentioned above) [wives of Robert Smalls and John Smalls and John Smalls’s sister] derive benefit through their various relationships to the men; these two have no such connection, and are destitute and unprovided for.²⁶

It was unrecorded what was paid at once to the blacks and what was later paid as principal. As for Smalls’s companions, the record was silent as to what became of them. Smalls said in 1895 that he took the oath of a soldier on the 14th day of May 1862, along with other members of the crew, but he may have been elaborating on events in his attempt to qualify for a veteran’s pension. Furthermore, the Planter, and presumably its crew, were not transferred from the navy to the army until September.²⁷ It was clear, however, that his associates had no share in his fame.

Meanwhile, the Planter, now in federal service, was undergoing modification for the troop transport and coastal courier roles it would have throughout the war. Modifications to the ship were hasty, consisting of building musket-proof bulwarks around her aft and about the machinery. It was ready on June 21, 1862, to proceed with the screw steamer Crusader—both ships under the command of Lieutenant Commander A. C. Rhind and piloted by Smalls—up the North Edisto River below Charleston to test Confederate defenses. This minor expedition was Smalls’s last with the Planter for some months; he was assigned as pilot aboard Du Pont’s flagship, USS Wabash. His military service was interrupted by his value as a spokesperson for the federal agencies and social reformers in the Port Royal area charged with defense of the area and care of the now free former slave population.²⁸

On April 19, 1861, a week after the Charleston garrison fired on Fort Sumter, President Lincoln proclaimed a blockade of the southern coast. The Union navy hardly had the fleet or bases to sustain this effort. In November, 1861, after similar successful naval operations elsewhere, the Union began a campaign to secure a harbor for its Savannah-Charleston fleet. Port Royal was an excellent natural harbor, located just 50 air miles south of Charleston and two-thirds of the way to Savannah. Flag Officer Du Pont commanded the attack on the forts, protecting the harbor entrance on Hilton Head. He succeeded in reducing the defenses and in landing troops to occupy the fortifications, the villages of Port Royal and Beaufort, and much of South Carolina’s Sea Island area. But with this outstanding victory came the responsibility of thousands of slaves now under Union control; their masters leaving them behind and fleeing with the defeated defending force.²⁹

Union military commander Brigadier General Thomas W. Sherman announced to occupants of the area that the government does not intend to … interfere with any of your lawful rights or your social institutions, but the rebel whites were unconvinced and did not return. Sherman reported, Every white inhabitant has left the island. The wealthy islands of Saint Helena, Ladies, and most of Port Royal are abandoned by the whites, and the beautiful estates, with all their immense property, left to the pillage of hordes of apparently disaffected blacks and, he might have added, various government agents and soldiers. Ten thousand blacks, still officially slaves, were left on the islands near starvation because of the demand for food by the twelve thousand soldiers occupying the area. Sherman was discouraged by the hordes of totally uneducated, ignorant, and improvident blacks [that] have been abandoned by their constitutional guardians, not only to all the future chances of anarchy and starvation, but in such a state of abject ignorance and mutual stolidity as to preclude all possibility of self-government and self-maintenance.³⁰ Sherman and Du Pont called on Washington for help, especially for food.

Salmon P. Chase, secretary of the treasury, was the designated collector of the war tax Congress imposed on states in rebellion. Chase, in a mixture of idealism and opportunism, saw the chance to test the ex-slaves’ performance as free laborers and their ability to produce income from cotton for the hard-pressed Treasury. By January, 1862, Chase’s agents were beginning their campaign to organize work on the plantations. Conditions in the area were attractive to Northern abolitionists who welcomed an opportunity to improve the ex-slaves’ lives. The first of these Gideonites to arrive was the Reverend Mansfield French, a Methodist minister from New York. He was quickly followed by teachers, more New York Methodists, less-evangelical Congregationalist Bostonians, and later others from Philadelphia. Men and women, many of them young, answered the call and were placed in charge of plantations and the establishment of schools and medical facilities to aid the blacks.³¹

The blacks were not enthusiastic about continuing to work cotton because they never had been paid for growing it. They preferred food crops for which they had an immediate need. Abolitionist superintendents were mostly young and all overworked. Their black charges, moreover, were not officially free and had little concept of wage earning. They only had a vague grasp of the idea of freedom and did not understand that the ration of corn and salt that they had once received from masters was in return for their labor. In their view it was an entitlement. But even if they were paid for labor, the wages would not be paid until the crops were sold. Further, there were too many former house slaves and even too many field hands for most of the year. The latter were only needed in existing numbers at picking time and during the hard winter to haul in marsh grass as fertilizer. Cotton brokers in the service of the Treasury carried off cotton on hand, furniture, and even the Beaufort library’s books—all to be sold to pay the war tax. Only 5 percent of the income from these properties shipped to the North was to be returned to pay for the Port Royal experiment. The Northerners wanted to help the blacks by giving them land and schooling which had been against the law. By the spring of 1862, an organization of outsiders was in place to guide an overwhelmingly black and illiterate population, but the economic situation was marginal to desperate. This was the world to which Smalls returned and wherein he would be recognized as a leader.³²

BUILDING A REPUTATION

Major General David Hunter, who replaced Sherman at the end of March, 1862, as commander of the Department of the South, was sent the newly appointed Brigadier General Rufus Saxton to supervise the black work experiment. Saxton made his headquarters in Beaufort, where he would take charge of plantations and inhabitants and pay the missionaries with government funds. Hunter’s May 12 slave roundup had seized five to six hundred blacks for the army, but he had no authority to pay them. Within a week or two, Washington’s dissatisfaction with Hunter’s actions was apparent. Du Pont reported that he thought Hunter would be relieved of his command, and he went to see the general on May 29, 1862, to give him support. The meeting was interrupted by Mansfield French, the missionary leader. French had developed a plan "to send the Planter home [New York] with Robert and the contraband crew and have the people visit them and get up meetings at the Cooper Institute and have the Mayor preside and raise money for the