"My race needs no special defense, for the past history of them in this country proves them to be the equal of any people anywhere. All they need is an equal chance in the battle of life.”

 

Dear Friends,

He sat at the conference table next to Frederick Douglass as they tried to convince President Abraham Lincoln that African Americans should be allowed to fight for their freedom. He served five terms in Congress. He ran a newspaper and helped found a state Republican Party.

But first, he had to win his freedom.

To do that, he conceived a bold plan that struck a blow against the Confederacy so significant that he was heralded across the nation. Carrying out his mission required bravery, intelligence, and precision timing — attributes that many whites at that time thought blacks didn’t possess. Robert Smalls proved them wrong and changed history in doing it.

In April 1861, the American Civil War began with the Battle of Fort Sumter in nearby Charleston Harbor. In the fall of 1861, Smalls was assigned to steer the CSS Planter, a lightly armed Confederate military transport under the command of Charleston's District Commander Brigadier General Roswell S. Ripley. The Planter's duties were to deliver dispatches, troops and supplies, to survey waterways, and to lay mines. Smalls piloted the Planter throughout Charleston harbor and beyond, on Area Rivers and along the South Carolina, Georgia and Florida coasts. From Charleston harbor, Smalls and the Planter's crew could see the line of Federal blockade ships in the outer harbor, seven miles away. Smalls appeared content and had the confidence of the Planter's crew and owners, and at some time in April 1862, Smalls began to plan an escape. He discussed the matter with the other slaves in the crew, except one whom he did not trust.

The Gunboat Planter

Just before dawn on May 13, 1862, Robert Smalls and a crew composed of fellow slaves, in the absence of the white captain and his two mates, slipped a the Planter off the dock, picked up family members at a rendezvous point, and then slowly navigated their way through the harbor. Smalls, doubling as the captain, even donning the captain’s wide-brimmed straw hat to help to hide his face, responded with the proper coded signals at two Confederate checkpoints, including at Fort Sumter itself, and other defense positions. Cleared, Smalls sailed into the open seas. Once outside of Confederate waters, he had his crew raise a white flag and surrendered his ship to the blockading Union fleet.

In fewer than four hours, Robert Smalls had done something unimaginable: In the midst of the Civil War, this black male slave had commandeered a heavily armed Confederate ship and delivered its 17 black passengers (nine men, five women and three children) from slavery to freedom.

“One of the most heroic and daring adventures since the war commenced was undertaken and successfully accomplished by a party of Negroes in Charleston,” trumpeted the June 14, 1862, edition of Harper’s Weekly. Commodore S.F. DuPont, the commander of the federal fleet barricading Fort Sumter, in Charleston Harbor, wrote to the Department of the Army that Smalls provided information “of the utmost importance” to the Union, such as the location of mines he had helped lay in the harbor while working for the Confederacy, news accounts show.

Smalls then became a ship pilot for the Union, serving as a volunteer until he was commissioned as a second lieutenant in Company B of the 33rd Regiment, U.S. Colored Troops. He fought in 17 battles and is credited with recruiting 5,000 blacks. He was later designated a major general in the South Carolina militia.

After his Military Career, he went on to business and politics.  He served in both houses of the South Carolina Legislature and in 1874 was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, beating a white Democrat in a district that was almost 70 percent black. (The 15th Amendment had given African Americans the vote in 1870.)

Smalls died of malaria and diabetes in 1915 at the age of 75.  He was buried in his family's plot in the churchyard of the Tabernacle Baptist Church in downtown Beaufort. The monument to Smalls in this churchyard is inscribed with a statement he made to the South Carolina legislature in 1895: "My race needs no special defense, for the past history of them in this country proves them to be the equal of any people anywhere. All they need is an equal chance in the battle of life.” 

 

Our recognition of Robert Smalls’s legacy continues today. The USAV Major General Robert Smalls (LSV-8) is a Kuroda class logistics support vessel operated by the US Army. It was the first Army ship to be named for an African American, in 2004.  A Statue of Robert Smalls is in the US National Museum of African American History.

Here is a video link with the highlights of his life.

Visit www.Poindexterdental.com

or

Call 713-734-7611 to make your appointments today! Our hygienists are here five days per week for your convenience!