Hi, I’m the History Guy. I have a degree in history,
and I love history. And if you love history too, this is the channel for you.
America's very excited right now about a new movie that's out that stars a black superhero,
and of course that's notable because black lead roles are really fairly uncommon in Hollywood
movies, and black superhero roles even more rare. And with no disrespect whatsoever to that film,
what I would say as the History Guy is that if you wanted to make a film about a black superhero, you
should have made a film about Robert Smalls. A man whose heroism throughout his life was so amazing,
that he deserved the title superhero if anyone ever did. And his story deserves to be remembered.
Robert Smalls was born into slavery in 1839 in Beaufort, South Carolina. His mother was a slave,
and his father is not known, although it may well have been his owner, Henry McKee.
When Robert was just 12 years old his owner, McKee, started running him out as a day laborer,
with of course McKee keeping the money. As Robert was interested in the sea he started
taking most of his work down by the Charleston docks first as a stevedore, unloading boats,
or doing dock work but eventually on the boats themselves as a sailor, a fisherman, a sail maker,
whatever would take him out to sea. And eventually he became so familiar with the coastline of South
Carolina that he became a skilled boat pilot, even though a black man in that era would not have been
called a pilot, he was probably called a wheel man. In 1856, he married a fellow slave, a hotel
maid named Hannah Smith, who had two daughters of her own, and then together they had two more
children, a daughter, and a son, who died at a young age. They were doing well enough that they
were allowed to live in a home separate from their owners, but of course most of their pay still went
to their owners. The Civil War started, literally just out front Roberts door, at Fort Sumter in
Charleston Harbor. The Confederacy recognized Roberts skill and pressed him into service as the
wheel man aboard the CSS Planter, a side wheel steamer that had been converted into an armed
dispatch boat. The Planter delivered dispatches, troops, and supplies as well as laid mines, then
called torpedoes, to protect Charleston Harbor. Robert was a trusted member of the crew, and his
piloting skills were valuable given his knowledge, given his knowledge and experience with the coast.
But like any human who is treated as property, Robert really yearned for freedom, and that was
particularly true then, because Hannah’s master had become abusive, and he was afraid that that
master was going to sell Hannah away. He wanted to buy Hannah's freedom, but he didn't have nearly
enough money, and so they had to escape. And in May of 1862, he saw his opportunity to do that.
Smalls had noticed that the Confederate officers made a habit of leaving the ship at night,
so he and the other eight slaves aboard hatched a plan. On May 12th, 1862, the Planter was docked in
Charleston, carrying a load of four cannons that were intended to add to the city's defenses. When,
in the evening the officers left the ship, Smalls and the crew took the boat,
met their families at a pre-arranged spot in the harbor, and fled to the Union blockade. This was
no simple feat had they been caught they would have all certainly been executed. The harbor
was well defended with five Confederate Harbor forts, each capable of destroying
the boat. But Smalls knew all the proper signals, and even impersonated the captain,
standing at the front of the boat. Once free of the harbor, they lowered the Confederate flag,
and put up a white sheet, hoping the ships of the Union blockade would see it. Yet they were still
nearly fired upon by the federal blockade fleet. As the captain of the armed clipper USS Onward,
seeing the Confederate gunboat ordered the guns to ready, a crewman with binoculars saw
Smalls and his compatriots waving frantically from the deck. Once the captain of the Onward
boarded the Planter, Smalls reportedly asked him if they had a Union flag that the ship could fly.
Incredibly, Smalls audacious plan had not only allowed him to steal a Confederate warship from a
well defended Harbor, and deliver it to the Union, but also to deliver nine families from slavery. No
superhero ever accomplished more. Smalls became a hero in the Union, but the Confederacy put a
$4,000 bounty on his head. His knowledge of the Charleston Harbor, and defenses was invaluable to
the Union, and ended up serving as a pilot aboard a number of Union warships, including the now, USS
Planter. Having planted mines for the Confederacy, now he helped the Union to disarm them.
An 1883 naval report noted that he participated in 17 Civil War battles, and engagements. Including
serving as a pilot aboard the ironclad USS Keokuk during the disastrous attack on Charleston, April
7th of 1863, where the ship was savaged by Fort Sumter guns. The heavily damaged ship was able to
withdraw under her own power, due in large part to Smalls considerable piloting skills. In December
of 1863, he was back aboard USS Planter, when the steamer got caught in a crossfire between Union,
and Confederate troops near Folly Island. The captain of the boat, James Nickerson, panicked
and ordered the boat to surrender. Smalls refused, knowing that he and the other black sailors would
face execution if they were captured. He took command, and was able to navigate the
boat outside the Confederate guns. For his heroism he was made captain of the Planter,
the first black man to command a United States ship. During the war, he engaged in other heroics
as well. He was instrumental in convincing Abraham Lincoln, and Secretary of War Edwin Stanton,
to allow the recruitment of black troops into the Union Army, and helped recruit former
slaves for the first volunteer South Carolina Regiment, one of the first black regiments. He
supported efforts to raise money to educate former slaves, and he himself achieved literacy. He was
voted an unofficial delegate to the Republican National Convention in 1864. Also that year,
when he was forced to give up his seat to a white passenger on a Philadelphia streetcar,
he left the car rather than sit in the open overflow platform. That small act of rebellion
helped to motivate the state of Pennsylvania to integrate public transportation, in 1867.
And Robert Smalls, whose heroics to this point I think already qualified him for superhero status,
did not end his heroics with the end of the war. Following the Civil War, the South went through a
period that was called Radical Reconstruction, spurred by the 14th and 15th Amendments which
guaranteed the right of black Americans to vote, black Americans were able to participate in the
American political process for the first time. So-called Union leagues were created, essentially
as a branch of the Republican Party, and encouraged political activism on the part of black
citizens. This facilitated a period of Republican domination of southern politics. Robert Smalls was
part of this, he was a delegate to the 1868 South Carolina Constitutional Convention, he was elected
to the State House of Representatives, and then to the state Senate. And in 1874, was elected to
the United States House of Representatives. But this was a brutal era in US politics,
where anti reconstructionists frequently used violence, and intimidation, often through shadow
organizations of the Democrats, such as the Klu Klux Klan and the South Carolina Red Shirts. 35
African American officials were murdered by such organizations during the Period of Reconstruction.
Small's life was threatened by a group of armed Red Shirts at a political rally in 1876. Over his
long political career he had to endure threats of violence false, and trumped-up charges,
and open intimidation of voters. One contemporary observer noted in her diary, “Political times are
simply frightful. Men are shot at, pounded down, trapped, and held till certain meetings are over,
and intimidated in every possible way.” Eventually Democrats won back the south,
and enacted numerous constitutional, and legal changes designed to disenfranchise the black
vote. Robert Smalls conducted his long political career during an era where serving meant risking
his life, and the mere act of a black man voting was an act of heroism, in the face of violence.
10 minutes is far too short a time to go over all the causes, and crusades of Robert Smalls.
The man who escaped slavery by audaciously stealing a Confederate warship underneath
their very noses, never backed down in the face of adversity. The young man who had to
flee slavery because he could not afford to purchase his wife's freedom, after the war,
used the money given to him by the Union as a prize for capturing the CSS Planter, to purchase
his former owner's home. The young man who was central to the Union decision to incorporate black
troops into the Union Army, eventually was made a Major General in the South Carolina militia.
In 2004, when the US Army named a massive Besson class logistic support vehicle,
the USAV Major General Robert Smalls. It became the first US army vessel to be named after an
african-american. Through it all he faced threats of violence, and discrimination. In the end,
he even had to fight for his pension. It turns out that the first black captain of a United States
ship was, because of his race, never officially commissioned. Robert Smalls served throughout
the Civil War, 17 engagements, technically as a civilian. Robert Smalls died of diabetes in 1915
at the age of 75. On his monument is a quotation from a statement he made to the South Carolina
legislature in 1895. “My race needs no special defense. Their history in this country proves
them to be the equal of any man anywhere. All they need is an equal chance, in the Battle of Life.”
I'm the History Guy and I hope you enjoyed this edition of my series, 5 minutes of history,
short snippets of forgotten history 5 to 10 minutes long. And if you did enjoy it please
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