TRACING THE PATH PODCAST

Today’s story chronicles the extraordinary life of Robert Smalls, a formerly enslaved man whose audacious actions significantly impacted the Civil War and its aftermath. The narrative begins by setting the stage with the tensions leading to the Civil War, specifically the debate over slavery’s expansion and the formation of the Republican Party under Abraham Lincoln.

It then dives into Smalls’s early life as a slave and his ingenious escape by commandeering a Confederate steamship, the Planter, and delivering it to the Union. This act of bravery not only made him a national hero but also influenced Lincoln’s decision to allow black troops into the Union Army and ultimately contributed to the Emancipation Proclamation.

Smalls’s story continues through his post-war achievements, including purchasing his former master’s home, serving in the South Carolina House of Representatives and U.S. House, and championing education and civil rights for all, demonstrating how his individual courage fueled a lifelong commitment to social change.

The Stake of the Nation

Is it possible to inspire someone so much that they take it upon themselves to further your dream after you’re gone? In the case of Robert Smalls and Abraham Lincoln, the answer is yes.

The Civil War in the United States was about one thing, the future of slavery. The past was already written. In fact, in 1808, the United States made the slave trade illegal. Thus, without the ability to procure new slaves from foreign lands, the southern states put a new level of importance on the slave labor they already had.

In fact, the status of the new states coming into the Union is what created the tension.

The determination that a new state became a slave state or a free state would ultimately affect the balance of power and determine the future of America. In 1854, a group of abolitionists gathered in Ripon, Wisconsin to decide how to fight slavery best. Their plan was to create a new political party, the Republican Party.

Abraham Lincoln, in 1860, would be their first national candidate.

Lincoln ran a somewhat vague anti-slavery campaign, but his stance on Western expansion states was clear. He wanted them to be free.

After his election in November of 1860, representatives in South Carolina met in Charleston and decided to secede and leave the Union, and they quickly went to neighboring states encouraging the same. This new confederacy moved quickly to shore up defenses of their most important city Charleston. 

And on April 12, 1861, they fired on Fort Sumter, the Union’s last stronghold. 

For 34 hours they bombarded it until Major Robert Anderson, the fort’s commander, surrendered the fort, lowering the flag. The U.S. Civil War had begun.

Fort Sumter lay at the mouth of the River Delta leading to Charleston. Charleston may have been the richest city in America at the time, with its output of cotton and rice being exported to the world.

Defensively, Charleston had another advantage. The waters around it were shallow, preventing larger ships from approaching. One hundred miles south, the Savannah Beaufort Port Royal area, the water was deep. Any navy in the world could get close to the shore there.

While Abraham Lincoln’s win was an uplifting moment of hope for the slaves in the south, the Confederacy’s taking of Fort Sumter was a wake-up call. The south, winning the war, would quell any chance of freedom.

But not everybody lost hope, which brings us to the first hero of our story.

Robert Smalls

Born in 1796, Lydia Polite was taken from her family at the age of nine and put to work in the fields of the McKee Plantation in Beaufort, South Carolina. There she would grow up never seeing her family again.

At the age of 43, by the hands of someone on the staff at the Plantation, perhaps even Henry McKee himself, Lydia got pregnant and gave birth to little Robert Smalls.

Of all the slave laborers, Robert was favored by the McKee family. Robert’s mom was afraid his favored status would leave Robert without the full understanding of the slavery plight, so she made sure he worked in the fields where he would witness the whippings and brutality.

But when he got defiant and was becoming the victim of such things, she pleaded that he be sent to the docks to work as a labourer instead. For $5 a month, Robert was leased as a hotel busboy, all the money going back to the McKees.

Robert was resourceful.

He picked up other jobs like lamplighter for a dollar a month, which he then used to buy small things and resell them to the dock workers. His ingenuity led him to actually saving money, perhaps even making money.For a while he was able to visit his mother on weekends, but that all changed after Ft. Sumter.

He did fall in love with Hannah, a woman he met at the hotel. She was 31 and had two daughters of her own. But Robert convinced Mr. McKee and Hannah’s master to let them marry. He even negotiated with Hannah’s master to buy her for $800. Giving him the $100 he’d already saved as down payment. They married on Christmas Eve 1856 and then in 1858 they had a daughter of their own.

But once the war started Robert Smalls was conscripted by the Confederacy to work on a steamship, 100 miles away in Charleston. He his wife and kids moved there where he was introduced to the steamship Planter. The Planter was owned by a John Ferguson, a local ship owner in business and but it was leased to the Confederate Army.

The boat was a modern marvel having two steam engines to power the two side wheels. It was made from live oak and cedar to transport cotton, but it had been outfitted with a 32-pound pivot gun, a 24-pound howitzer, and four other small guns. And its modern design only sat into the water three and a half feet, meaning it could travel the creeks, rivers, and swamps all around Charleston. 

Robert was assigned as wheelman to help survey the waterways, place mines, and facilitate transport.

All of a sudden he realized he had landed on the wrong side of the war.

The Most Famous Escape

Abraham Lincoln and the Union had decisions to make about how to best execute their war strategy and sew the nation back together. The first thing they had to do was shore up their international allies. They couldn’t have places like England and France, recognizing the South as a separate country.

But that would be complicated because they had to create a blockade around the South’s most important ports to prevent supplies from coming in. Losing cotton and the other exports would hurt their international friends.

So Lincoln sent Henry Ward Beecher, his greatest abolitionist and advocate, to do a European speaking tour. Henry’s sister Harriet Beecher Stowe, was already famous, well recognized after her book, Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

It wasn’t until July of 1861, that the northern blockade was in place around southern ports. One of the first of those was Charleston. Seven miles outside Charleston stood the USS onward and the Union Navy ships.

The Union did see an opportunity down in Robert’s hometown of Savannah.

The deep water allowed gunboats to move in and they were successful in liberating 10,000 slaves in the area of Port Royal, Savannah and Beaufort on November 7, 1861. Robert Small’s mother was one of the liberated.

Most of the Confederate army and white plantation owners fled, leaving the Union to capitalize on all the rich cotton plantations they left behind. In fact that year, the locals were paid $1 for every 400 pounds of cotton. They harvested over 90,000 pounds, making them the first former slaves to earn wages.

The needs were so great, religious missions and freedmen groups in the north stepped in to help settle land issues, build schools, and even hospitals. This new Port Royal Experiment would be a sample situation of what the north could expect at the end of the war.

News that slaves were free in Beaufort energized Robert, where the Union went, there would be freedom. He could now see freedom for his family much sooner than would take him to raise the $700 remaining to buy his wife back. Freedom now was only a seven mile boat ride away.

Robert Smalls began to hatch a plan of escape, but it would require perfect conditions and him paying attention to every detail. That moment actually came on May 12, 1862.

They had just returned from a two-week trip, 12 miles south at Coles Island, where they had dismantled a Confederate post on the Stonewall River. In the ship were four large guns, 200 pounds of ammo, 20 cords of wood, and supplies on route to James Island.

But docking for the night was customary with the three white soldiers going ashore to sleep in their beds, while the black crew stayed with the ship.

Robert Smalls had been such a good and trusted servant, his request that his family get to come aboard for the evening was approved. It was then that he filled them in on the plan. And while there was crying and fear and tears, the idea of freedom was intoxicating.

He had the family leave around 11 p.m. not too late, long enough to get their things and go upstream and hide on another dock. Then at 3 a.m. smalls in the crew fired up the CSS Planter and puttered it upstream. They had just commandeered a fast-moving Confederate gunship, and would be killed if they were caught.

They picked up their families and slowly made their way toward freedom. Robert Smalls was ready. He donned the straw hat and coat of the captain and adopted his regular posture and movement on the boat. Instead of giving in to the fear and speeding off, they trolled along at lazy, unhurried speed as they passed six separate Confederate checkpoints.

For each checkpoint, Robert smalls knew exactly what to do. He had watched the captain hundreds of times. He knew to make the appropriate hand gestures and horn blows. Sometimes too short, others one long too short, others too short one long.

One by one, each fort allowed him to pass. At 4.25 am, he passed Fort Sumter, headed out to open ocean. It wasn’t until the CSS Planter was outside Cannon reach that it was clear he wasn’t going south around Morris Island, but straight out to sea.

The South Carolina flag and Confederate flags were lowered and a white surrender sheet was hoisted. Someone on the US Navy’s USS Onward saw the white flag and stopped the ships from firing. Roberts first words to the Navy Captain were “I thought this ship might be a view to Uncle Abe.”

 Now it’s here that the lives of Robert Smalls and Abraham Lincoln become intertwined. The leader meets the follower. 

The news of Robert Smalls’ escape spread like wildfire. When the Secretary of the Navy found out, he knew it would encourage the Union and embarrass the South. The New York Times, the New York Tribune, and the Harper’s Weekly all carried big stories. Robert Smalls was famous overnight. He, a young slave, had commandeered a Confederate ship along with 17 slaves, guns, code books, maps, ammunition, and wood. And escaped.

On June 23rd, a London newspaper reported one of the ensuing triumphs that came from Robert Small’s knowledge. It said”

“June 23rd, 1862 Robert Small’s a negro pilot of the inner waters, creeks and swamps, off the coasts of South Carolina, who was considered a person of consequence enough to have his portrait in the paper, has betrayed to the federal squadron a weak point in the approach to the city, a disassembled Confederate post on the Stono River. Federal gunboats took possession of the Stono inlet and advanced up the creek with 2,000 soldiers.”

The New York Tribune said Robert was a hero, one of the few history will delight to honor.

The Union then sent Robert on a speaking tour up the East Coast, where parades and audiences gathered to see him.

At Shiloh Church in New York City, thousands gathered to hear “The Hero of the Planter”.

While he shared his story, he also spoke to encourage other blacks to join the fight and securing freedom for the slaves. Worried that the South would still win the war, Smalls lobbied the Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton, to allow black troops in the Union Army.

Even though black Americans had fought in every battle, a 1792 law was passed, banning African Americans from bearing arms for the army. Despite the absurdity, Lincoln was slow to change that.

Some believe he was walking a tightrope, trying not to give any border state to reason to join the South. Nevertheless, Lincoln was eager to have an audience with Robert Smalls, Frederick Douglass, and Army’s surgeon Anderson Ruffin Abbott to hear their viewpoints on the situation.

After that meeting, Robert did walk away with an order, giving him the right to recruit 5,000 black troops in the Port Royal Beaufort area.

Then, just a few short months later, Abraham Lincoln unveiled the Emancipation Proclamation to the world. And while this intertwining of Robert Smalls and Abraham Lincoln’s lives has begun. It’s just getting started.

The Port Royal area was quite different when Smalls returned. Schools and hospitals had been erected, northern soldiers now lived there, and a new kind of community was forming, which brings us to the next hero of our story.

Up in Massachusetts, Harriet Buss, born in 1826, had grown up on a farm, but as early as she could remember, she wanted to be a teacher. In her late teens, in fact, her parents sent her to a school, specifically for that.

Her first teaching job was in Massachusetts, but that was just a stepping stone for her chance to teach again in Illinois. It was in this land of Lincoln that she really formed her opinions on the war and what should happen.

It was there that she heard about the Port Royal experiment, the need for teachers, and all the people so very eager to learn.

In 1863, she got her chance to move to Beaufort and teach. Living far from home, Hattie wrote letters home to her parents every week. Is in these letters we find the humanity of what she was doing. She wrote about her students from four years old to 61 who were eager to learn and to read and to write.

She wrote about the preconceived notions people had about the teachers from the north. She had seen snide remarks about the rich white women who just wanted to plant New England schoolhouses in the South, debunking every myth. 

She hadn’t met any rich white women teachers, insisting just about everybody came for the work and had to borrow money just to get there. Furthermore, she was outnumbered by the black local teachers they had hired, and even furthermore to that, the local population didn’t lack religion.

They just needed to learn to read and write.

And she wrote about one student in particular. He had been pretty good with numbers, but didn’t learn to read and write growing up. And he had enough money to hire her as his personal tutor because he had big ambitions.

His name was Robert Smalls, the guy who stole the Planter ship. She also referenced seeing Harriet Tubman and the all black squadron the 54th Regiment from Massachusetts that came to town.

It was after all the Port Royal Experiment that got Harriet Tubman’s attention in the first place. She’d already spent 10 years on the Underground Road and found this a new way to help.

Small’s also worked for the Navy. He was again the pilot of the planter. All in all, he saw 17 military actions as pilot. In one such heated battle, when the captain decided it was time to surrender, smalls took the helm and navigated them swiftly out of there, despite the gunfire. He knew the consequence for him and the crew would be different than for that of the captain.

And for his quick action and bravery, he was promoted to Captain, the first black soldier to do so, earning him $150 a month. 1864 would be a turning point for Smalls. His world would come full circle. In March he was sent to pilot the Planter to Philadelphia to be overhauled.

While there, in a moment foretelling the future, he was asked to move to a segregated seat on a street car. Humiliated, he chose to walk instead.

And then using his celebrity status, he organized a massive boycott of the public transit system. That ability and charisma to move an audience got him a delegate position to the Republican Convention, the party of Abraham Lincoln.

Upon his return home, he then founded the Republican Party of South Carolina. And in his full circle moment, as a free man of some distinction, with money in his pocket, he purchased at tax auction, his old home, the McKee family plantation.

For Smalls and Lincoln, where one candle is ending, the other is just getting brighter. And soon again, they shall share another day.

Robert’s old master, Henry McKee, had passed on, leaving his wife still home, but ill. In a moment of pure sincerity and empathy, Robert Smalls in his wife, let Joan McKee remain in the home, and they took care of her, their former master, until she died.

Robert Smalls became a real part of the community. His hero status, local roots, and goals for the Black community allowed him to pursue his dreams.

One of them was education for all. Like hiring Hattie Buss, he wanted everyone to have that option. As a member of the board of Buford County Schools in 1867, he helped architect a plan to buy a large tract of land solely for education purposes.

In 1868, he was elected to the South Carolina House of Representatives, where he had a hand in crafting the new State Constitution. In it, they eliminated debtor’s prisons, removed property ownership as a requirement for public office, and they were the first to include compulsory education for all children.

As a House member, he also lobbied the US government to turn the deep waters of Port Royal into a full-scale naval base. He also connected the Port of Savannah to Augusta by Railroad.

And his efforts to help South Carolina led him to being elected to the United States House of Representatives from South Carolina led him to being elected to the United States House of Representatives from South Carolina, which brings us back to the final act of Robert Small’s military career.

In April of 1965, the Confederate capital of Richmond had fallen, and on April 9th, General Lee surrendered at the Appomattox courthouse. Nevertheless, Abraham Lincoln wanted a poetic and symbolic end to the war. He thought it would be perfect if they raised the flag at Fort Sumter, exactly four years to the day that it was taken down.

So a ceremony was quickly assembled, people from all over descended upon Charleston. Robert Smalls piloting the Planter, filled with freed people, arrived at Fort Sumter that morning.

President Lincoln couldn’t attend himself, but sent Henry Ward Beecher to give a speech.

And Major Robert Anderson, who had surrendered the flag at Fort Sumter four years earlier, was there to hoist it back up.

The song, the Star-Spangled Banner, was played, and Henry Ward Beecher announced the end of the war.

In his speech, he thanked God that Abraham Lincoln remained safe for the duration of the war.

That was April 14, exactly four years to the day Fort Sumter was taken. On that same exact evening, just a few hours later, in Washington D.C., John Wilkes Booth killed Lincoln at Ford’s Theater and yelled, “The South is avenged before fleeing.”