He needed $800 to buy his family, stole a warship and became the first Black captain in U.S.historyn.

At 4:15 in the morning on May 13th, 1862, a Confederate warship approached the most heavily fortified military position in the American South.

Fort Sumpter stood like a dark giant in the middle of Charleston Harbor, its massive walls bristling with cannons that could tear any vessel to pieces in seconds.

The guards on duty watched as the ship approached, its steam whistle piercing the pre-dawn silence with a familiar signal.

Two long blasts, one short, the coded message that meant the ship was friendly.

The guards relaxed.

They recognized the silhouette of the CSS Planter, the dispatch boat that General Roswell Ripley used to transport weapons and supplies.

They could see the figure of the captain standing in the pilot house, arms crossed in his characteristic pose, wearing his signature straw hat.

Everything looked normal.

Everything looked routine.

The guards waved the ship through without a second thought.

They had no idea that the man in the straw hat was not Captain Charles Rilaya.

They had no idea that the man steering that ship was a 23-year-old slave named Robert Smalls.

And they had no idea that in less than 1 hour that slave would deliver the Confederate warship, its cargo of weapons, and 16 black men, women, and children to the Union Navy.

This is the story of the most daring escape in the history of American slavery.

This is the story of a man who went from being property to being a captain.

From being a slave to being a congressman, from being owned to owning the very house where he had once been held in bondage.

This is the story of Robert Smalls.

To understand what Robert Smalls did on that morning in 1862, you first have to understand where he came from.

You have to go back 23 years to a small cabin behind a plantation house in Bowford, South Carolina.

That is where Robert Smalls was born on April 5th, 1839.

His mother’s name was Lydia Polite.

She was a slave, the property of a wealthy planter named Henry McKe.

Robert’s father was never officially identified, but many historians believe it was Henry McKe himself.

This was not unusual in the antibbellum south.

Slaveholders frequently fathered children with the women they enslaved.

Children who would be born into bondage just like their mothers.

Children who would be property just like any other possession on the plantation.

Robert grew up in that small cabin, playing in the dirty yard, watching the world through the eyes of a child who did not yet understand the full horror of his situation.

Lydia worked in the McKe household, not in the fields.

This was considered a privileged position among enslaved people.

House slaves had better food, better clothing, and were spared the backbreaking labor of planting and harvesting.

But Lydia was terrified that her son would grow up soft.

She was terrified that Robert would become comfortable in the big house and forget what slavery really meant.

She had seen it happen before.

She had seen house slaves who looked down on field slaves who thought themselves better because they slept under the same roof as their masters.

Lydia did not want that for her son.

She wanted Robert to understand the truth.

She wanted him to see the reality of what it meant to be owned by another human being.

So she did something that might seem cruel, but that would shape Robert Smalls for the rest of his life.

She made him watch.

Lydia took young Robert to witness the whippings.

She made him stand there, a small boy with wide eyes, as overseers tied enslaved men and women to posts and beat them with leather straps until their backs were roar and bleeding.

She made him listen to the screams.

She made him see the blood dripping into the dirt.

She made him understand that this was what slavery was.

Not the comfortable life in the big house.

Not the handme-down clothes from the master’s children.

This, the whip, the blood, the absolute power of one human being over another.

Robert never forgot those images.

They burned themselves into his mind like a brand.

And as he grew older, something began to change inside him.

The comfortable little boy who had played in the yard of the big house began to transform into something else.

He became defiant.

By the time Robert was a teenager, he had developed a reputation for trouble.

He talked back.

He refused to follow orders.

He questioned everything.

The overseers did not know what to do with him.

He was too valuable to sell, especially if Henry McKe really was his father.

But he was too difficult to manage.

Once locked up for his rebellious behavior, punished for the crime of refusing to accept his place in the world.

The McKes decided that something had to change.

They could not have a defiant slave setting a bad example for the others.

They could not have Robert undermining the carefully constructed hierarchy that kept the plantation running.

So in 1851, when Robert was just 12 years old, they made a decision that would change his life forever.

They sent him to Charleston.

Charleston in 1851 was one of the largest and most important cities in the American South.

It was a center of commerce, culture, and slavery.

More than 150,000 enslaved Africans had passed through Charleston’s port during the transatlantic slave trade.

The city’s economy was built on the labor of black people, and its docks and warehouses were constantly busy with the business of human bondage.

The McKe hired Robert out to work in Charleston.

This was a common practice among slaveholders.

Instead of keeping an enslaved person on the plantation, they would rent them to businesses in the city.

The enslaved person would work for the business and the slaveholder would collect the wages.

Robert got nothing except a place to sleep and food to eat.

But for Robert Smalls, Charleston was not a punishment.

It was an education.

The 12-year-old boy from Bowfort took to the water like he had been born to it.

He started working as a steodor on the docks, loading and unloading ships.

He learned how to tie knots and splice ropes.

He learned the names of every part of a sailing vessel.

He watched the ships come and go, and he memorized the patterns of the harbor.

He worked as a rigger, climbing the tall masts to adjust sails and repair rigging.

He worked as a sail maker, learning how to cut and sew the heavy canvas that powered the ships.

He worked as a lamp lighter on the docks, keeping the harbor illuminated through the dark nights.

And with every job, with every task, Robert Smalls was learning.

He was storing information in his mind like a squirrel stores nuts for winter.

He was preparing for something, even if he did not yet know what that something was.

As Robert grew into a young man, he became one of the most skilled maritime workers in Charleston.

Ship captains and harbor masters knew his name.

They trusted him with important jobs.

They recognized his intelligence, his work ethic, his natural talent for anything related to ships and the sea.

Robert learned how to navigate the complex waterways around Charleston.

He learned where the sandbars were, where the channels ran deep, where a ship could safely pass, and where it would run ground.

He learned the tides and the currents, the way the wind shifted with the seasons, the signs of approaching storms.

He became an expert on Charleston Harbor, a place that would later become the most heavily defended military position in the Confederacy.

And he learned something else, something that would prove even more valuable.

He learned how to pilot a ship.

In 1856, when Robert was 17 years old, something happened that changed his life almost as much as his arrival in Charleston had.

He fell in love.

Her name was Hannah Jones and she was an enslaved woman who worked as a maid at a hotel in the city.

The exact details of how they met have been lost to history, but we know that Robert was captivated by her.

Hannah was smart and strong with a quiet determination that matched Robert’s own fierce spirit.

They began courting, meeting whenever their work schedules allowed, stealing moments together in a world that did not recognize their humanity, let alone their love.

On December 24th, 1856, Robert and Hannah were married.

It was Christmas Eve, a day that would hold special meaning for them for the rest of their lives.

Of course, their marriage had no legal standing.

In the eyes of the law, they were property, not people.

They could not enter into contracts, including the contract of marriage.

Their union existed only because their owners allowed it to exist, and it could be dissolved at any moment if those owners decided to sell one of them away.

But Robert and Hannah did not care about the law.

They cared about each other.

With their owner’s permission, Robert and Hannah moved into a small apartment together in Charleston.

It was a cramped space, but it was theirs.

For the first time in his life, Robert had something that felt like a home, something that felt like a family.

And soon that family began to grow.

In 1858, Hannah gave birth to their first child, a daughter they named Elizabeth.

Robert held his baby girl in his arms and felt a love so powerful it frightened him.

He looked at her tiny face, her small fingers, her perfect little body, and he knew that she was not free.

Elizabeth Smalls was born a slave just like her mother and father.

She was property just like the furniture in the hotel where Hannah worked.

She could be sold, separated from her parents, sent to a plantation in Alabama or Mississippi where Robert would never see her again.

The thought was unbearable.

Robert had accepted his own bondage, had learned to navigate the boundaries of his enslaved life, had found ways to maintain his dignity and his sense of self despite the constant degradation.

But he could not accept this for his daughter.

He could not watch Elizabeth grow up in chains.

He had to do something.

Robert began saving money.

It was not much.

Enslaved people were sometimes allowed to keep a small portion of the wages they earned when hired out or to earn extra money by taking on additional work.

Robert took every opportunity.

He worked longer hours.

He took jobs that no one else wanted.

He scraped together every penny he could.

And then he went to Hannah’s owner with a proposal.

He wanted to buy his family’s freedom.

He wanted to purchase Hannah and Elizabeth outright to make them legally free so that no one could ever separate them.

Hannah’s owner listened to the proposal.

He considered it for a moment and then he named his price.

$800.

That was what he wanted for Hannah and the baby.

$800.

For context, the average annual wage for a laborer in 1858 was about $300.

Robert had managed to save $100, a sum that had taken him years to accumulate.

He would need 700 more.

At his current rate of saving, it would take him decades.

Elizabeth would be a grown woman, possibly with children of her own, before Robert could afford to buy her freedom.

and there was no guarantee that Hannah’s owner would not sell them before then would not grow impatient or fall into debt and put Hannah and Elizabeth on the auction block.

Robert was trapped.

He had a family that he loved more than life itself, and he was utterly powerless to protect them.

He was a man of extraordinary intelligence and skill, respected by ship captains and harbor masters throughout Charleston.

And yet in the eyes of the law, he was nothing.

He was property.

He was a thing to be bought and sold.

The frustration must have been overwhelming.

The anger must have been constant.

But Robert Smalls did not give up.

He did not sink into despair.

Instead, he made a promise.

He told Hannah that they would be free.

He did not know how.

He did not know when.

But he swore to her that one day they would escape from slavery.

They would take their children and they would find freedom.

It was a promise that seemed impossible.

Escape from the deep south was extraordinarily difficult.

The Underground Railroad operated primarily in the border states where the distance to freedom was measured in miles rather than hundreds of miles.

Charleston was deep in the heart of slave country, surrounded by plantations and patrolled by slave catchers.

The few enslaved people who tried to escape were usually caught and punished severely, often sold to the brutal sugar plantations of Louisiana or the cotton fields of Mississippi, where conditions were even worse.

But Robert made the promise anyway.

And Robert Smalls was not a man who broke his promises.

In 1861, the world that Robert had known his entire life was shattered.

On April 12th, Confederate forces opened fire on Fort Sumpter, the federal military installation in the middle of Charleston Harbor.

The Civil War had begun.

Robert watched from the docks as the cannons roared, as smoke billowed over the water, as the United States flag was lowered, and the Confederate flag was raised over the battered fort.

For white southerners, this was a moment of triumph.

They had struck the first blow against the northern aggressors.

They had declared their independence and their determination to preserve their way of life.

But for enslaved people like Robert Smalls, the outbreak of war meant something very different.

It meant opportunity.

Within months of Fort Sumpter’s fall, Union warships appeared on the horizon.

They took up positions outside Charleston Harbor, forming a blockade that stretched for miles along the coast.

Their mission was to strangle the Confederacy economically to prevent the South from exporting its cotton and importing the weapons and supplies it needed to wage war.

The Union ships were so close that Robert could see them from the docks.

Their tall masts visible against the sky, their flags snapping in the ocean breeze.

They were only 7 miles away.

7 miles.

That was the distance between slavery and freedom.

7 mi of water guarded by the most heavily fortified harbor in the Confederacy.

7 mi.

That might as well have been 7,000.

But Robert Smalls looked at those distant ships and something began to stir in his mind.

An idea, a plan, a way to keep his promise to Hannah.

In the fall of 1861, Robert was assigned to work on a ship called the CSS Planter.

The planter was a sidewhe steamer, a civilian vessel that had been pressed into military service by the Confederate Army.

Before the war, it had been used to transport cotton along the coastal waterways.

Now, it served as a dispatch boat and transport for General Roswell Ripley, the commander of Confederate forces in the Charleston district.

The planter carried weapons, ammunition, and supplies to the various forts and batteries that defended the harbor.

It laid mines, which the Confederates called torpedoes, in the shipping channels to destroy any Union vessels that tried to enter.

It carried messages and orders between the different military installations, and it was piloted by Robert Smalls.

The Confederate officers had quickly recognized Robert’s skills.

He knew Charleston Harbor better than almost anyone.

He could navigate the treacherous channels and sandbarss that had wrecked so many ships.

He knew the tides and the currents, the locations of the underwater obstacles, the safe passages through the minefields.

The white officers trusted Robert to steer the ship while they focused on military matters.

They had no idea that with every trip, with every mission, Robert Smalls was memorizing information that would later be used to destroy them.

The planter was under the command of three white officers.

The captain was Charles J.

Relia, a man in his 40s with a distinctive straw hat that he wore everywhere.

The first mate and the engineer were also white men.

The rest of the crew, the men who actually operated the ship, were all enslaved black men.

There were eight of them in total, including Robert.

They shoveled coal into the boilers.

They maintained the engines.

They loaded and unloaded cargo.

They did all the hard physical labor that kept the planter running.

And they were trusted.

This was the strange irony of slavery in the Confederate military.

The South desperately needed labor to support its war effort, and enslaved people provided that labor.

But in using enslaved people so extensively, the Confederacy was putting weapons and military intelligence into the hands of people who had every reason to want the South to lose the war.

The white officers of the planter slept easily at night, never imagining that their enslaved crew might have plans of their own.

Robert began studying the planter with new intensity.

He noted every detail of its construction, its capabilities, its armament.

The ship was about 150 ft long with a shallow draft that allowed it to navigate waters where larger vessels could not go.

It was armed with a 32-pounder cannon and a 24-pounder howitzer along with several smaller guns.

More importantly, the planter had access to places that Robert had never been able to go before.

It traveled to every fort and battery in the harbor.

It visited military installations throughout the coastal region, and Robert paid attention to everything.

He memorized the signals that ships used to identify themselves to the guards at each checkpoint.

Two long whistle blasts, one short.

That was the signal for Fort Sumpter.

Other forts had different signals.

Robert learned them all.

He memorized the locations of the mines that had been laid in the harbor channels.

He knew exactly where they were because he had helped to place them.

He studied the movements of the guards, the timing of their watches, the moments when they were most alert, and the moments when they were likely to be drowsy or distracted.

He was gathering intelligence piece by piece, building a mental map of the Confederate defenses that would be worth more to the Union than a regiment of soldiers.

As the month passed, Robert’s plan began to take shape.

He would steal the planter.

He would take his family and the families of the other enslaved crewmen and he would sail right out of Charleston Harbor, right past the Confederate forts, right through the guns that could blow them out of the water in seconds.

He would use his knowledge of the signals to fool the guards.

He would use his skill as a pilot to navigate the dangerous channels and he would deliver the ship with all its weapons and military intelligence to the Union Navy.

It was an insane plan.

It was almost certainly a suicide mission.

If anything went wrong, if a single guard became suspicious, if the engine failed or the signals were incorrect, they would all be killed.

The Confederate army had made it very clear what would happen to any enslaved person who tried to escape.

They would be executed, probably publicly as a warning to others.

But Robert Smalls had spent his entire life watching others be whipped and tortured and sold away from their families.

He had spent his entire life being told that he was property, that he had no rights, that his very existence depended on the whims of white men who saw him as nothing more than a tool.

He was done waiting.

He was done hoping that someone else would set him free.

He was going to free himself.

The first challenge was convincing the other enslaved crewmen to join him.

Robert could not do this alone.

He needed the whole crew to cooperate or the plan would fail before it even started.

But approaching other enslaved people about an escape plan was incredibly dangerous.

If any one of them reported Robert to the authorities, he would be killed immediately.

Robert had to choose carefully, had to identify the men he could trust, had to gauge their willingness to risk everything for freedom.

He spoke to them one by one in whispered conversations during quiet moments on the ship.

He laid out his plan.

He explained the risks.

He made clear that they would probably die.

And one by one, the men agreed.

They all had families.

They all had wives and children who could be sold away at any moment.

They all had the same burning desire for freedom that drove Robert Smalls.

Only one member of the crew was excluded from the plan.

There was one man that Robert did not trust and so he told him nothing.

The rest of the crew swore to follow Robert wherever he led them.

The hardest conversation was with Hannah.

Robert went home to their small apartment and sat his wife down.

He told her about the plan.

He explained that they would be escaping on the planter, that they would be sailing past the Confederate forts in the middle of the night, that they would either reach freedom or die trying.

Hannah listened in silence.

When Robert finished speaking, he asked her what she thought.

He asked her if she was willing to risk everything, to gamble their lives and the lives of their children on a plan that had almost no chance of success.

Hannah looked at her husband for a long moment.

She thought about their daughter, Elizabeth, now 3 years old.

She thought about their son, Robert Jr.

, who had been born just a year earlier.

She thought about the life they would have if they stayed in Charleston, the constant fear of being separated, the knowledge that their children would grow up as slaves.

And then Hannah said something that Robert would remember for the rest of his life.

She said, “It is a risk, dear, but you and I and our little ones must be free.

I will go for where you die, I will die.

” With those words, the plan was set in motion.

Robert began looking for the right opportunity.

He needed a night when all three white officers would be away from the ship.

This was against Confederate regulations.

Standing orders required that at least one officer remain on board at all times.

But Robert had noticed that the officers often ignored this rule.

They had families in Charleston.

They had comfortable homes where their wives waited for them.

After a long day of military operations, they did not want to sleep on a cramped ship with a crew of enslaved men.

Captain Ria was particularly guilty of this.

He frequently left the ship at night to be with his family, trusting Robert and the crew to guard the vessel until morning.

Robert just had to wait for a night when all three officers decided to go ashore at the same time.

On May 12th, 1862, that night finally came.

The planter had just returned from a two-week mission to James Island, where the crew had been helping to set up artillery positions.

Everyone was tired.

The white officers wanted nothing more than to go home and sleep in their own beds.

That afternoon, Captain Relier called Robert over and told him that he and the other officers would be spending the night ashore.

This was in direct violation of Confederate orders.

But Relia did not seem concerned.

He trusted Robert.

He trusted the enslaved crew that had served him faithfully for months.

He had no idea that he was about to hand Robert Smalls the opportunity of a lifetime.

Before leaving, Relier granted Robert permission to have the crews families visit the ship that evening.

This was something that was occasionally allowed, a small privilege that helped keep the enslaved workers content.

Robert thanked the captain and watched as the three white officers walked down the gang plank and disappeared into the city.

He would never see them again.

As soon as the officers were gone, Robert called the crew together.

The moment had arrived.

They had talked about this plan for months, but now it was real.

Now they had to actually do it.

Robert went over the details one more time.

The families were coming to visit, ostensibly to spend the evening on the ship before leaving by curfew, but instead of leaving, they would hide aboard another steamer that was docked at the North Atlantic Warf.

Robert and the crew would then sail the planter to pick them up, and together they would all make their escape.

The timing had to be perfect.

They had to leave early enough to pass through the harbor before dawn when the guards would be able to see them clearly, but late enough that the white officers would not come back to check on the ship.

Robert set the departure time for 3:0 in the morning.

The families began arriving as darkness fell over Charleston.

Hannah came with Elizabeth and Robert Jr.

carrying a small bundle of belongings.

She looked calm, but Robert could see the fear in her eyes.

She knew what they were about to attempt.

She knew that by sunrise they would either be free or dead.

The other crewman’s families arrived as well.

There were four women in total, including Hannah.

There were three other men, possibly relatives or friends of the crew who had been brought into the plan.

And there were the children, little ones who had no idea what was happening, who thought they were just visiting their fathers on the ship.

Robert gathered everyone together and explained the plan one final time.

Some of the women were hearing it for the first time.

They had known their husbands wanted to escape, but they had not known the details.

Now they learned that they would be sailing past Fort Sumpter, the most heavily fortified position in the Confederacy.

Now they learned that if a single guard became suspicious, cannons would tear the ship apart in seconds.

There were tears.

There were whispered prayers, but no one refused to go.

They were all willing to die for freedom.

Around midnight, three of the crewmen pretended to escort the families back home.

Instead, they circled around through the dark streets of Charleston and made their way to the North Atlantic Wararf.

There, a small steamer called the ETA was docked for the night.

The families crept aboard and hid themselves in the shadows, waiting for the planter to come and get them.

The hours crept by with agonizing slowness.

Every sound made them jump.

Every footstep on the warf might be a patrol coming to discover them.

The children had to be kept quiet, their small voices muffled against their mother’s bodies.

Hannah held Elizabeth and Robert Jr.

close, feeling their warmth, praying that this would not be the last night she ever held them.

Back on the planter, Robert was making final preparations.

The ship’s boilers needed time to build up steam, but he could not start them too early or the smoke would attract attention.

He had to time everything perfectly.

As the clock approached 3:00 in the morning, Robert gave the order to fire up the engines.

Slowly, quietly, the crew began shoveling coal into the furnaces.

Smoke began to rise from the planters smoke stack, but in the darkness, it was invisible against the night sky.

Robert went to the pilot house and put on Captain Railair’s uniform coat and his distinctive straw hat.

He studied himself in the glass.

In the shadows, he could pass for the captain.

He had the same build.

He knew Releier’s mannerisms, the way he stood, the way he crossed his arms when he was watching the harbor.

Robert had been studying the captain for months, preparing for exactly this moment.

At approximately 3:00 in the morning on May 13th, 1862, Robert Smalls took the helm of the CSS planter and began the most audacious escape in the history of American slavery.

He eased the ship away from the warf, careful to make no sudden movements, no unusual sounds.

The engine throbbed beneath his feet.

The paddle wheels began to turn, churning the dark water of Charleston Harbor.

Robert steered the ship backward into the channel and then turned southeast heading toward the open sea.

As he passed the Confederate headquarters where General Ripley was sleeping, Robert held his breath.

If anyone looked out the window, they would see the planter moving through the harbor in the middle of the night, but the headquarters remained dark.

No alarm was raised.

Robert exhaled and continued on.

The first stop was the North Atlantic Warf where the families were hiding.

Robert brought the planter alongside the ETA and signaled for the families to come aboard.

In the darkness, shadowy figures scrambled across the gap between the two ships.

Hannah emerged from the shadows, carrying Robert Junior in her arms with Elizabeth clinging to her skirts.

The other women and children followed.

Within minutes, everyone was aboard the planter.

16 souls in total.

Nine men, five women, three children.

All of them escaped slaves.

All of them betting their lives on Robert Smalls and his impossible plan.

Robert checked his pocket watch.

It was 3:25 in the morning.

They were behind schedule.

The sun would rise in about 3 hours.

They had to clear the harbor before dawn before the guards could see their faces clearly.

Before anyone realized that the man in the pilot house was not Captain Reier.

Robert pushed the engine to full speed.

The planter accelerated through the dark water, its paddle wheels churning, its smoke stack belching a plume of black smoke into the night sky.

Ahead lay five Confederate checkpoints.

Five opportunities for the plan to fail.

five chances to be blown out of the water by cannons that could reduce the planter to splinters in seconds.

Robert Smalls was about to find out if his months of preparation had been enough.

The first checkpoint was Fort Johnson, a fortification on James Island that guarded the southern approach to the harbor.

Robert could see the dark outline of the fort against the slightly lighter sky.

He could see the sentries moving on the walls.

He knew they were watching the planter approach.

He reached for the ship’s whistle and blew the signal he had memorized months ago.

Two long blasts, one short.

The sound echoed across the water.

Robert held his breath.

If the signal was wrong, if the guards were suspicious, they would open fire immediately.

Seconds passed.

They felt like hours.

And then the guard waved them through.

The planter continued on.

The next checkpoint was Castle Pinkney, a small fort on a tiny island in the middle of the harbor.

Robert gave the signal.

The guards waved them through.

Then came Fort Ripley, a battery on the mainland.

Signal, wave, continue.

With each checkpoint they passed, Robert felt the tension building.

The most dangerous part was still ahead.

Fort Sumpter, the symbol of Confederate resistance, the place where the Civil War had begun, the most heavily fortified position in the entire South.

If the guards at Fort Sumpter became suspicious, nothing could save them.

The cannons of Fort Sumpter could sink a ship in seconds, and there would be no escape.

It was 4:15 in the morning when the planter approached Fort Sumpter.

The massive walls of the fort loomed out of the darkness like a sleeping giant.

Robert could see the cannons pointing out from the embraasers.

Could imagine the soldiers sleeping in their barracks, the guards pacing along the walls.

He reached for the whistle and blew the signal.

Two long blasts, one short.

The sound seemed impossibly loud in the silence of the pre-dawn harbor.

Robert crossed his arms in the exact way that Captain Relier always crossed his arms.

He tilted his head the way Ria tilted his head.

In the shadows of the pilot house, wearing the captain’s uniform and straw hat.

He was indistinguishable from the white man who usually commanded this ship.

The guards at Fort Sumpter watched the planter approach.

They heard the signal.

They saw the familiar silhouette, the captain standing in his usual pose.

Everything looked normal.

Everything looked routine.

The planter passed through Fort Sumpter’s checkpoint like it had done a hundred times before.

And then it was gone, steaming out toward the open sea, leaving the Confederate defenses behind.

Behind him, Robert could hear the passengers beginning to celebrate.

Some of the men were laughing.

Some of the women were crying.

The children were confused, but caught up in the excitement of the adults.

They had made it.

They had passed through the most dangerous point of the journey.

But Robert did not celebrate.

He knew they were not safe yet.

They were still within range of the Confederate guns.

If anyone at Fort Sumpter realized what had happened, if anyone figured out that the planter had been stolen, the cannons would open fire before they could reach the Union fleet.

Robert kept the ship at full speed, racing toward the distant line of Union warships that he could just barely see on the horizon.

Every second that passed put more distance between them and the Confederate guns.

Every second brought them closer to freedom.

And then, just as the eastern sky began to lighten with the first hint of dawn, the alarm was raised at Fort Sumpter.

Someone had figured it out.

Someone had realized that the planter was not on a routine mission, that it was heading straight for the Union blockade, that it had been stolen by the enslaved crew.

But it was too late.

The planter was out of range.

The Confederate cannons could not reach them.

Robert Smalls had done the impossible.

He had stolen a Confederate warship right out of Charleston Harbor, right under the noses of the guards, right past the most heavily fortified military position in the South.

Now he just had to convince the Union Navy not to blow him out of the water.

The Union warships were getting closer.

Robert could see them clearly now, their dark hulls rising from the gray water, their masts reaching toward the lightning sky.

The USS Onward was the nearest vessel, a sailing ship armed with cannons that could destroy the planter in a single broadside.

Robert knew that from the onwards perspective, they were seeing a Confederate warship approaching at full speed.

They were seeing an enemy vessel that could be launching an attack, could be carrying explosives, could be attempting to break through the blockade.

The Union sailors would be running to their battle stations right now.

They would be loading their cannons.

They would be preparing to open fire on the approaching ship.

Robert had escaped the Confederate guns only to face the Union guns.

He had to act fast.

Robert turned to his crew and gave an order that must have seemed strange after everything they had just been through.

He told them to lower the Confederate flags.

The South Carolina state flag and the stars and bars of the Confederacy had been flying from the planters masts, part of the disguise that had allowed them to pass through the checkpoints.

Now those flags would get them killed.

Robert ordered them taken down immediately, and in their place, he ordered something else to be raised.

A white bed sheet.

Hannah had brought it from their apartment in Charleston, packed among the few belongings she had carried aboard.

She had known they would need a symbol of surrender, a way to tell the Union ships that they were not enemies.

Now that bed sheet became the most important piece of fabric in the world.

The crews scrambled to attach it to the mast.

The white fabric caught the morning breeze and unfurled against the gray sky.

It was a flag of truce, a flag of peace, a flag that said, “Please do not shoot us.

” On board the USS Onward, Acting Volunteer Lieutenant John Frederick Nichols was watching the approaching vessel through his spy glass.

He had seen the Confederate flags come down.

He had seen the white flag go up, but he was suspicious.

This could be a trick.

Confederate ships had tried deceptions before, attempting to get close to Union vessels before opening fire.

Nicholls was not about to let his guard down.

He ordered his crew to open the gunports to prepare the cannons for firing.

If this Confederate ship tried anything, they would blow it out of the water.

The Onwards cannons were aimed directly at the planter.

One wrong move and everyone aboard would die.

Robert could see the gunports opening on the onward.

He could see the black mouths of the cannons pointing at him.

He had come so far, had risked so much, and now his life depended on what happened in the next few seconds.

The planter continued to approach, the white flag flapping desperately in the wind.

Robert held his course steady.

He did not slow down.

He did not try to turn away.

He simply sailed straight toward the Union warship, trusting that the white flag would be enough, trusting that the Union sailors would see that he meant no harm.

It was the longest few minutes of his life.

And then the sun rose.

The first rays of dawn broke over the horizon, casting golden light across the water.

And in that light, Lieutenant Nicholls saw something that made him lower his spy glass in astonishment.

He saw the faces of the people on the planters’s deck.

He saw that they were black.

He saw men and women and children, all of them dark-skinned, all of them waving and shouting and celebrating.

He saw a man in the pilot house wearing a captain’s uniform, and even from a distance, he could tell that man was not white.

Nicholls gave the order to hold fire.

He did not understand what was happening, but he knew that this was not an attack.

This was something else entirely.

The planter pulled alongside the onward and Robert Smalls stepped out of the pilot house.

He was still wearing Captain Reliar’s straw hat, still wearing the uniform coat, but now everyone could see his face clearly.

He was a young black man, barely 23 years old, and he had just done something that no one had ever done before.

He had stolen a Confederate warship and sailed it to freedom.

Robert looked up at Lieutenant Nichols, who was staring down at him with an expression of complete disbelief.

And then Robert Smalls spoke the words that would be reported in newspapers across the country.

The words that would make him famous.

The words that captured the audacity and the triumph of what he had just accomplished.

He said, “Good morning, sir.

I have brought you some of the old United States guns, sir, that were for Fort Sumpter, sir.

” Lieutenant Nichols was speechless.

He looked at the Confederate flags that had been lowered, at the white bed sheet flapping from the mast, at the 16 black men, women, and children crowding the deck of the planter.

He looked at the cannons mounted on the ship, at the cargo of weapons and ammunition in the hold.

He looked at Robert Smalls standing there with a calm confidence that seemed impossible given what he had just done.

Nicholls had been blockading Charleston Harbor for months, watching the Confederate defenses from a distance, wondering how the Union would ever break through.

And now, a young slave had just handed him one of the Confederacy’s own ships, complete with weapons, ammunition, and invaluable military intelligence.

Nicholls invited Robert aboard the Onward, and began to hear the full story of what had happened that night.

Robert told him everything.

He told him about the plan, about the signals, about passing through the checkpoints in the darkness.

He told him about Captain Ria’s straw hat and uniform, about crossing his arms in the captain’s distinctive pose, about fooling the guards at Fort Sumpter.

He told him about the mines that had been laid in the harbor channels, their exact locations memorized from months of helping to place them.

He told him about the military installations he had visited on the planter, the troop numbers, the artillery positions, the defensive preparations.

Robert Smalls was not just an escaped slave.

He was a gold mine of military intelligence.

He knew more about Charleston’s defenses than almost anyone in the Confederate army.

And he was giving all of that information to the Union freely and willingly because he wanted the North to win.

He wanted the Confederacy to fall.

He wanted slavery to end.

Nicholls immediately forwarded the planter and a report on Robert’s actions to his commanding officer, Captain EG Parrot.

Parrot was equally astonished.

He examined the ship and its cargo, counting the cannons and ammunition that Robert had delivered.

In addition to the planters’s own light guns, there were four heavy artillery pieces that had been loaded aboard at Koh’s Island along with 200 lb of ammunition.

These were weapons that had been intended for Fort Sumpter.

Weapons that would have been used to kill Union soldiers.

Now they were in Union hands.

But the most valuable cargo was not the weapons.

It was Robert Smalls himself.

Parrot forwarded everything to flag officer Samuel Francis Dupont, the commander of the South Atlantic blockading squadron.

Dupont was a veteran naval officer, a man who had spent his entire career at sea.

He had commanded ships in peace time and in war.

He had seen many brave men and many remarkable deeds.

But he had never seen anything like Robert Smalls.

Dupont interviewed Robert personally, listening as the young man described the Confederate defenses in detail.

Robert drew maps from memory showing the locations of forts and batteries, the positions of artillery, the channels that were safe, and the channels that were mined.

He provided information about troop movements, supply lines, command structures.

He answered every question with precision and clarity, demonstrating an intelligence and a memory that amazed the seasoned naval commander.

DuPont wrote to the Secretary of the Navy in Washington, describing Robert as superior to any who have come into our lines, intelligent as many of them have been.

It was one of the highest compliments a white officer could pay to a black man in 1862.

The intelligence that Robert provided had immediate military consequences.

One week after his escape on May 20th, 1862, Union forces captured Kohl’s Island and its string of batteries without firing a shot.

The Confederates had abandoned the position, but they had not had time to remove all of their equipment.

The Union captured additional weapons and supplies, all because Robert Smalls had told them exactly where to find them and exactly how to approach without triggering the Confederate defenses.

It was the first of many contributions that Robert would make to the Union War effort.

The Stoneo Inlet, which Cooh’s Island guarded, would remain in Union hands for the rest of the war, providing a base for operations against Charleston.

The news of Robert’s escape spread like wildfire through the north.

Newspapers competed to tell the story of the slave who had stolen a Confederate warship.

The New York Herald called it one of the most daring adventures since the war was commenced.

Harper’s Weekly published an illustration of Robert standing in the pilot house of the planter, looking calm and confident as he steered the ship to freedom.

Magazines and journals praised his courage, his intelligence, his coolheaded execution of an almost impossible plan.

Robert Smalls became a celebrity.

The most famous black man in America, a symbol of what enslaved people could accomplish when given the chance.

For abolitionists who had long argued that black people were just as capable as white people, Robert was living proof.

For those who doubted whether black men should be allowed to serve in the military, Robert was an answer to every objection.

But Robert was not interested in fame.

He was interested in freedom.

Not just his own freedom, which he had now secured, but the freedom of every enslaved person in the south.

He knew that the war was about slavery, even if many white northerners were reluctant to admit it.

He knew that the only way to end slavery forever was for the Union to win the war.

and he knew that the Union needed more soldiers to win.

Robert Smalls had an idea.

If the Union would allow black men to serve as soldiers, thousands of enslaved people would join the fight.

They would fight for their freedom with a ferocity that no conscript army could match.

They would provide the manpower that the Union desperately needed.

All they required was the chance.

In August 1862, Robert Smalls traveled to Washington, DC.

He had been invited to meet with government officials who wanted to hear his story firsthand.

But Robert had a higher goal in mind.

He wanted to meet with President Abraham Lincoln.

He wanted to make the case for allowing black men to serve in the Union Army.

Robert was not the only one making this argument.

Frederick Douglas, the famous abolitionist and former slave, had been lobbying for black military service since the war began.

But Robert had something that Douglas did not have.

He had just demonstrated in the most dramatic way possible what a black man could accomplish when given the opportunity.

He had stolen a Confederate warship.

He had provided invaluable military intelligence.

He had proven his courage and his loyalty beyond any doubt.

If Robert Smalls could do all of that, surely other black men could serve as soldiers.

Robert met with Secretary of War Edwin Stanton and made his case passionately.

He described the enslaved people of the South, millions of men and women who were desperate for freedom, who would fight and die for the Union if only they were given the chance.

He described his own experience, the months of planning, the terrifying night of the escape, the determination that had driven him and his crew to risk everything.

Stanton was impressed.

He had been skeptical of black military service, worried about the reaction from white soldiers and the border states that had remained loyal to the Union.

But Robert Smalls was hard to argue with.

Here was a man who had done more for the Union cause in a single night than many white officers had done in months of service.

Shortly after Robert’s visit, President Lincoln and Secretary Stanton began moving toward allowing black military service.

The Emancipation Proclamation issued in September 1862 and taking effect on January 1st, 1863 explicitly authorized the recruitment of black soldiers.

Stanton ordered the formation of black regiments starting with 5,000 former slaves.

Robert Smalls is credited with personally helping to recruit many of these soldiers, traveling through the South Carolina low country and encouraging enslaved people to join the Union cause.

By the end of the war, nearly 180,000 black men would serve in the Union Army and another 18,000 would serve in the Navy.

They would fight in major battles across the South.

They would prove their courage again and again.

And they would help to win the war that ended slavery forever.

Robert Smalls had played a crucial role in making that possible.

But Robert was not content to recruit soldiers while others did the fighting.

He wanted to serve himself.

In the fall of 1862, Robert was hired as a civilian pilot for the Union Navy.

He returned to the waters around Charleston, the same waters where he had spent years as a slave, and he began guiding Union ships through the treacherous channels.

He knew every sandbar, every current, every hidden obstacle.

He knew where the Confederate mines were and how to avoid them.

He was invaluable to the Union commanders who were planning operations against Charleston.

In December 1862, Robert was assigned to the USS Crusader as a pilot.

He served on various ships over the following months, participating in naval operations along the South Carolina and Georgia coasts.

In April 1863, Robert was aboard the ironclad USS Kiokook during an assault on Fort Sumpter.

The Kiokook was one of nine ironclads that attacked the fort, hoping to break through the Confederate defenses and capture Charleston.

It was a disaster.

The Confederate guns were too strong and the ironclads were battered mercilessly.

The Kokook was hit more than 90 times and sank the following day.

Robert Smalls was wounded in the battle, but he survived.

He had come full circle.

Less than a year earlier, he had sailed past Fort Sumpter in a stolen ship, praying that the guards would not see through his disguise.

Now he had returned to attack the fort directly, fighting for the Union that had given him his freedom.

Later in 1863, Robert was assigned to the planter itself, the ship he had stolen from the Confederates.

The Union had kept the vessel in service, using it for transport and patrol duties along the coast.

Robert served first as a pilot and then as the ship’s captain.

This was an extraordinary promotion.

Robert Smalls became the first black man to command a ship in the service of the United States military.

He was not a commissioned officer, a rank that was still denied to black men at that time.

But he was the captain in every practical sense.

He commanded the crew.

He made tactical decisions.

He led the planter into battle against the forces that had once enslaved him.

Robert commanded the planter in numerous engagements over the following years.

He fought in 17 battles during the Civil War, demonstrating again and again the courage and skill that had made his escape possible.

On one occasion, the planter came under heavy fire from Confederate shore batteries.

The white captain, who was nominally in command, panicked, and tried to surrender the ship.

Robert refused.

He took command, steered the planter out of danger, and saved the ship and its crew.

For this act of bravery, Robert was promoted and given permanent command of the vessel.

The man who had stolen the planter as a slave was now its official captain as a free man.

In 1864, Robert had an experience that reminded him of how far he had come and how far America still had to go.

He was in Philadelphia traveling on official military business when he boarded a street car.

Street cars in Philadelphia were segregated.

Black passengers were required to ride on the outside platform exposed to the weather while white passengers sat inside.

Robert Smalls, the famous war hero, the man who had stolen a Confederate warship and provided invaluable intelligence to the Union, the captain of a United States military vessel, was told to stand outside because of the color of his skin.

Robert refused.

He organized a boycott of the Philadelphia street car system, rallying the black community and their white allies to protest the discriminatory policy.

The boycott was successful.

In 1867, Pennsylvania passed a law desegregating public transportation.

It was one of the first civil rights victories of the reconstruction era.

And Robert Smalls had helped to make it happen.

Even while fighting a war against the Confederacy, Robert was also fighting a war against racism in the North.

He understood that military victory was not enough.

The attitudes that had created slavery, the belief that black people were inferior and undeserving of equal rights, would persist long after the last Confederate army surrendered.

Robert Smalls was determined to fight those attitudes for the rest of his life.

As the war drew to a close in 1865, Robert turned his attention to another goal.

He wanted to go home, not to Charleston, where he had spent so many years as a hired out slave, but to Bowford, where he had been born, where his mother Lydia still lived, where the McKe plantation had shaped his earliest memories.

Bowfort had been captured by Union forces early in the war, and the white residents had fled, leaving behind their homes and their property.

The federal government had seized many of these properties for unpaid taxes and was selling them at auction.

Robert saw an opportunity that was almost too perfect to be believed.

In January 1864, Robert Smalls used his prize money from the capture of the planter to purchase a house at auction.

But this was not just any house.

This was the McKe mansion at 511 Prince Street in Bowurt.

This was the house where Robert had been born a slave.

This was the house where his mother had worked in bondage.

This was the house whose owner Henry McKe may have been Robert’s own father.

And now Robert Smalls owned it.

The man who had been property was now the property owner.

The man who had been a slave in this house was now its master.

It was the most powerful symbol imaginable of how completely the world had changed.

Robert moved his family into the McKe mansion.

Hannah and the children walked through rooms that had once been forbidden to them, slept in beds that had once belonged to the slaveolding family, lived in comfort that would have been unimaginable just a few years earlier.

Robert’s mother, Lydia, came to live with them.

The woman who had made her son watch the whippings, who had forced him to understand the true horror of slavery, now spent her final years in freedom in the very house where she had once been enslaved.

She died in 1867 knowing that her son had accomplished more than she ever could have dreamed.

But Robert’s story of the McKe house has one more chapter, and it is perhaps the most remarkable of all.

After the war ended, the McKe family was destitute.

Henry McKe had died and his widow Jane had lost everything.

She was old and sick with nowhere to go and no one to care for her.

Most former slaves would have celebrated the downfall of their former owners.

Most would have turned away, refusing to help the people who had held them in bondage.

But Robert Smalls was not most people.

When he learned of Jane McKe’s situation, he invited her to come and live in the house that he now owned.

The woman who had once owned him, who had once held the power of life and death over him and his family, spent her final years living under his roof, cared for by the man she had once considered her property.

It was an act of extraordinary grace, a gesture that spoke to the depth of Robert’s character.

He had every right to hate the McKes.

Instead, he chose compassion.

The Civil War ended in April 1865, and the period known as Reconstruction began.

For a brief shining moment, it seemed like the promise of the Declaration of Independence might finally be fulfilled.

The 13th Amendment abolished slavery.

The 14th Amendment granted citizenship to all persons born in the United States.

The 15th Amendment prohibited denying the right to vote based on race.

Black men began voting, holding office, participating in the political process for the first time in American history.

And Robert Smalls was at the forefront of this transformation.

Robert entered politics almost immediately after the war.

In 1868, he served as a delegate to the South Carolina Constitutional Convention, helping to write a new state constitution that would govern the former Confederate State.

Robert fought for provisions that would guarantee public education for all children, black and white.

He understood that education was the key to lasting change, that without knowledge, freedom was incomplete.

The new constitution included requirements for public schools, a revolutionary concept in a state that had made it illegal to teach enslaved people to read.

That same year, Robert was elected to the South Carolina House of Representatives.

He served there for 2 years before being elected to the state senate in 1870.

He was rising quickly through the political ranks, a former slave who was now making laws for the state that had once held him in bondage.

In 1874, Robert Smalls achieved something that would have been unthinkable just 15 years earlier.

He was elected to the United States House of Representatives.

The boy who had been born in a slave cabin, who had been sent to work on the docks of Charleston at age 12, who had stolen a Confederate warship and sailed it to freedom, was now a member of Congress.

He represented South Carolina’s fifth congressional district, the very region where he had spent his life.

His constituents were the people he had grown up with, black and white, former slaves and former slaveholders, all of them now citizens of a new America.

Robert served in Congress from 1875 to 1879, fighting for the rights of his constituents, advocating for civil rights legislation, trying to protect the gains that black Americans had made during reconstruction.

But reconstruction was under attack.

White supremacist groups like the Ku Klux Clan were using violence and intimidation to prevent black people from voting.

White Democrats were regaining control of southern state governments, passing laws designed to strip black citizens of their rights.

The federal government, weary of the endless conflict, was losing its will to enforce reconstruction policies.

Robert Smalls witnessed this backlash firsthand.

In 1876, he was the target of a fraudulent prosecution accused of accepting a bribe while serving in the state senate.

The charges were politically motivated, part of a broader effort to discredit black politicians and drive them from office.

Robert was convicted by an all-white jury, but the governor pardoned him as part of a deal that resolved disputed election results.

The message was clear.

The forces of white supremacy were fighting back, and they were willing to use any means necessary to regain control.

Robert lost his congressional seat in 1878 to a white Democrat, the result of voter suppression and electoral fraud.

He regained it in 1882 and served until 1883, then won again in 1884 and served until 1887.

Throughout these years, he fought against the rising tide of Jim Crow, speaking out against segregation, advocating for voting rights, trying to preserve the gains of reconstruction.

But the cause was increasingly hopeless.

By the late 1880s, white Democrats had regained control of South Carolina and most of the South.

Black voters were being systematically disenfranchised through pole taxes, literacy tests, and outright violence.

The dream of reconstruction was dying.

In 1895, Robert Smalls attended the South Carolina Constitutional Convention as a delegate.

But this convention was very different from the one he had attended in 1868.

This convention was designed to strip black citizens of their rights, to enshrine white supremacy in the state constitution, to undo everything that reconstruction had accomplished.

Robert was one of only six black delegates among 160 total.

He was 56 years old now, his hair gray, his body worn by decades of struggle.

But he still had his voice and he used it.

He delivered an impassioned speech against the provisions that would disenfranchise black voters.

He reminded the delegates of what black South Carolinians had contributed to the state, of the soldiers who had fought for the Union, of the citizens who had participated peacefully in the democratic process.

He argued that the state was better off with black citizens as full participants in society, not as secondclass citizens denied their basic rights.

Robert’s words were powerful, but they were not enough.

The convention adopted a new constitution that effectively eliminated black voting through literacy tests and other requirements.

The brief era of black political power in South Carolina was over.

Robert Smalls had lived to see the rise and fall of reconstruction, the promise of equality, and its brutal betrayal.

It must have been heartbreaking.

But Robert did not give up.

He continued to serve his community in whatever ways he could.

From 1889 to 1893, and again from 1897 to 1913, he served as the customs collector for the port of Bowurt.

It was a federal appointment protected from the whims of state politics, and it allowed Robert to maintain his position and his dignity even as Jim Crow tightened its grip on the South.

Robert Smalls died on February 23rd, 1915 at the age of 75.

He died in the McKe mansion, the house where he had been born a slave, the house he had purchased with prize money from stealing a Confederate ship, the house where he had welcomed his former owner to live out her final days.

He was buried at the Tabernacle Baptist Church in Bowfort with full military honors.

The boy who had been considered property, who had been valued in dollars and cents, who had been denied even the basic recognition of his humanity, was laid to rest as a hero, a veteran, a statesman, a symbol of what America could be at its best.

Robert Smalls’s story did not end with his death.

His legacy lived on, even during the long, dark years of Jim Crow, even when his name was forgotten by most Americans.

In 1997, the University of South Carolina founded an annual lecture series named in his honor.

In 2004, a bust of Robert Smalls was unveiled at the Tabernacle Baptist Church where he is buried.

In 2007, the US Army commissioned the USAV Major General Robert Smalls, the first Army ship named for an African-Amean.

In 2020, a statue of Robert Smalls was proposed for the South Carolina state house grounds to stand alongside the Confederate monuments that still dot the southern landscape.

But perhaps the most fitting tribute to Robert Smalls is the simple fact that his story is still being told.

More than 150 years after he stole the planter and sailed to freedom, people are still amazed by his courage, his intelligence, his determination.

His story resonates because it speaks to something fundamental about the human spirit.

Robert Smalls refused to accept the limits that society placed on him.

He refused to believe that his skin color determined his worth.

He refused to wait for someone else to give him his freedom.

He took it.

He seized it.

He earned it with his own hands and his own mind and his own incredible courage.

On the night of May 13th, 1862, 16 people sailed out of Charleston Harbor on a stolen Confederate ship.

Nine men, five women, three children.

They had nothing but their courage and their faith and their desperate longing to be free.

They faced almost certain death if they were caught.

They had to pass through five Confederate checkpoints, fooling guards who could have blown them out of the water at any moment.

They had to approach Union warships that might have fired on them before they could surrender.

Everything had to go perfectly or they would all die.

And everything did go perfectly because Robert Smalls had planned for every contingency.

Because he had spent months memorizing signals and studying defenses.

Because he had the intelligence to devise the plan and the courage to execute it.

Because he had a wife who told him that where he died, she would die.

Because he had a crew who trusted him with their lives.

Because he refused to accept that he was property.

That his children were property.

That his fate was in the hands of men who did not see him as human.

Robert Smalls proved them all wrong.

He proved that a slave could be a captain.

He proved that a piece of property could be a war hero.

He proved that a man born in bondage could serve in Congress, could own the house where he had been enslaved, could live and die as a free American citizen.

His story is not just about the past.

It is about the eternal human struggle for freedom and dignity, the refusal to accept injustice, the determination to build a better world for our children.

Robert Smalls was born a slave.

He died a free man.

and in between he changed history.

This is the story of Robert Smalls, the slave who stole a Confederate warship, the first black captain in United States military history.

The congressman from South Carolina.

The man who bought his master’s house.

The hero who never stopped fighting for freedom.

His story will be remembered forever.