Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from How Stuff Works.com

Hello and welcome to the Modcast. I'm Tracy B. Wilton and I'm Holly Fry.

Today we're picking up where we left off in the story of Robert Smalls, so two very very briefly recap part one.

He was enslaved from birth in the McKee household of Beaufort South Carolina, which is pronounced differently from Beaufort North Carolina, even though they are both deemed after the same person.

During the Civil War, he made a dramatic escape aboard a boat called the planter directly under the noses of the Confederate military.

His escape was a boost to morale in the Union and an embarrassment for the Confederacy, and it also served to rally other enslaved persons who heard about it.

He became something of a celebrity in the North and a spokesperson for African Americans with the Union.

At the time of his escape, Robert Smalls was only 23 years old. He was hailed as a hero in the Union newspapers, while the newspapers of the Confederacy alternated between strongly denouncing what he'd done and then kind of downplaying it while simultaneously casting tons of blame on the white soldiers, then officers that had failed to stop him.

Those officers who had left the boat overnight were indeed court-martialed, although it was eventually thrown out on a technicality.

From the time they reached the Union blockade aboard the planter, Robert Smalls and his family were free.

They were considered to be contraband, which is a term that was used to describe formerly enslaved people who joined the Union.

But this was just the beginning of an impressive career as a free man.

When he reached the onward, which was one of the ships in the Union blockade, Robert Smalls is reported to have said to Lieutenant J.F. Nicholas, who was in command, quote,

I thought this ship might be of some use to Uncle Abe. I have some guns the Confederates took away from Fort Sumter. And the planter was, in fact, extremely useful. She was fast, and she rode very high in the water, so she was easy to get in and out of shallow areas while still carrying lots of men or cargo.

But Smalls himself was a huge asset to the Union as well. References to his competence, intelligence, and resourcefulness are all over the letters and papers of the Union officers and soldiers who encountered him.

In the words of Admiral Samuel F. DuPont, quote,

This man, Robert Smalls, is superior to any who has yet come into lines, intelligent as many of them have been. His information has been most interesting and portions of it of the utmost importance. I shall continue to employ Robert as a pilot aboard the planter for the inland waters, which he appears to be very familiar.

Pilot, by the way, DuPont referring to him that way was a promotion because he was enslaved the highest rank that Smalls could hold under the Confederacy was Wheelman. He would eventually become the planter's captain.

The way that he used the word Wheelman was also basically what we have to call pilots if they're enslaved. Like he was doing a pilot's job, but they wouldn't call him that because he was enslaved.

His familiarity with the inland waters was of huge strategic importance to the Union. He knew where minds had been laid. He knew which spots were likely to be used as ambushes. He knew which routes were used by smugglers. He basically brought with him a mental atlas of the islands, rivers, and sounds as well as Confederate fortifications in the area.

Robert Smalls was happy to lend all of this knowledge to the Union, doing so meant that he was working against slavery rather than for it, as had been the case when he was forced to work for the Confederacy.

Robert Small's military service for the Union began pretty much immediately, but he couldn't actually join the Union Navy to do that a person had to be literate.

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