Robert Smalls was born into slavery in 1839. Smalls’ master sent him to Charleston at the age of 12 to be hired out, with the money he made to be paid to his master. Smalls started at a hotel, then became a lamplighter, until his teen years when his love for the sea led him to the docks of Charleston. Smalls became a dockworker, a rigger, a sail maker, and eventually worked his way up to being a wheelman.

 

In the fall of 1861, Smalls was assigned to steer the CSS Planter, a lightly armed Confederate military transport. On May 12, 1862, the Planter’s three white officers decided to spend the night ashore. The following morning, Smalls and seven of the eight enslaved crewmen decided to make a run for the Union blockading ships, as they had previously planned. Dressed as a captain, he sailed the Planter out of the Wharf. He stopped to pick up his family and the families of the other crewmen during his journey north, where he surrendered the ship and her cargo to the United States Navy. Notable cargo included artillery, ammunition, code book, secret signals, and a map of the mines and torpedoes laid around Charleston harbor.

 

Smalls and his crew quickly became well known in the north. Congress passed a bill, signed by President Abraham Lincoln, which awarded Smalls and his crewmen the prize money for the Planter. Smalls’ share was $1,500, which equates to about $34,000 in 2012 dollars. Smalls’ bravery became a major argument for allowing African Americans to serve in the Union Army. Smalls was later reassigned to the USS Planter, now a Union transport. He also, piloted the ironclad USS Keokuk in a major Union attack on Fort Sumter.

 

Immediately following the war, Smalls returned to his former master’s house in Beaufort, SC and purchased it. In Beaufort, Smalls, with a business partner, opened a store for freedmen. In 1866, President Andrew Johnson’s vetoes were overrode and Congress passed a Civil Rights Act. In 1868, they passed the 14th Amendment, extending citizenship to all Americans regardless of their race.

 

Smalls became very involved with politics, partly because of the "Party of Lincoln which unshackled the necks of four million human beings.” He went on to hold offices in the South Carolina House of Representatives, the South Carolina Senate, and the United States House of Representatives.

 

Smalls definitely lived an interesting life with many honors and a lasting legacy…. But this, as stated earlier, is a brief history.