This is an I-Heart podcast.

This is our American stories, and we tell stories about everything here on this show, as you well know, including lots of stories about history.

And all of our history stories are brought to us

by the great folks at Hillsdale College,

where you can go to learn all the things that matter in life,

all the things that are beautiful in life.

If you can't get to Hillsdale,

Hillsdale will come to you with their free and terrific online courses.

Their Constitution 101 course, the best storytelling about a founding document, the Constitution

that I've ever seen.

Go to hillsdale.edu to find it.

That's hillsdale.edu.

Our next story comes to us from a man who's simply known as the history guy.

His videos are watched by hundreds

of thousands of people of all ages on YouTube, and he's been telling stories regularly here

on our American stories. Here's the history guy with the tale of an escaped slave-turned-turned

legend named Robert Smalls.

Robert Smalls was born into slavery in 1839 in Beaufort, South Carolina.

His mother was a slave and his father's not known, although it may well have been his owner, Henry McKee.

As a youth, McKee rented Robert

out as a laborer, with McKee receiving the pay. Robert was fond of the sea, and so started taking

work at the Charleston docks, first as a stevedore unloading ships and working the docks,

...