HOW GULLAH STATESMAN ROBERT SMALLS WENT FROM SLAVERY TO CONGRESS! DID YOU KNOW? (4103 hits)
A Black History Moment From Levine-Oliver Publisher, Inc.!
DID YOU KNOW?
As elite Charlestonians slept unaware in the lavish mansions of the Confederacy’s spiritual capital, a slave — a mulatto man trusted by both his owners and employers — executed a daring plot that struck at the core of the white Southern imagination.
In the early morning of Tuesday, May 13, 1862, Robert Smalls, the wheelman of the Planter, commandeered the former cotton steamer turned Confederate supply boat. His plan: to sail through the harbor, beyond Confederate fortifications, to the Union blockade — to freedom. On board were the rest of the enslaved crew and nearly a dozen other bondspeople, including Smalls’s wife and two children.
He and his co-conspirators had certainly planned their mission well. As Smalls had predicted, the Planter’s white officers, tired from a week’s absence from the city, ignored Confederate naval policy requiring that one officer stay with the ship and went ashore for the evening. Smalls also took to heart a remark made by one of his fellow crewman — “Boy, you look jes like de captain” — and donned the white skipper’s naval jacket and trademark straw hat. Aided by the disguise and the dusky light of the early morning, Smalls gambled that he could pass for the officer once the Planter reached Fort Sumter, which would have to grant the boat permission to leave the harbor.
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