Smalls, Robert, 1839-1915

<p>Legislator, congressman. Smalls was born in Beaufort on April 5, 1839, the son of Lydia Smalls, a house slave, and possibly her master, Henry McKee, or a slave named Robert Smalls. In 1851 McKee hired out twelve-year-old Smalls as a laborer in Charleston. Smalls worked as a waiter, a lamplighter, a stevedore, and eventually a ship rigger and sailor on coastal vessels. On December 24, 1856, Smalls married Hannah Jones, a slave woman fourteen years his senior. The couple had three children. After the 1883 death of his first wife, Smalls married Annie Elizabeth Wigg on April 9, 1890. They had one child.</p>

<p>At the start of the Civil War, Smalls was employed as a pilot on the cotton steamer Planter, which was impressed into Confederate service as an armed courier. Early on the morning of May 13, 1862, in the absence of the vessel’s white officers, Smalls led the takeover of the Planter by its slave crew, sailed past the harbor’s formidable defenses, and surrendered the vessel to the Federal blockading force. The daring act made Smalls famous, and the information he provided on Confederate defenses was valuable in planning Union operations. Congress voted prize money to the crew for their deed, with Smalls receiving $1,500.</p>

<p>As Smalls was a knowledgeable pilot, his services were in demand. On December 1, 1863, he was piloting the Planter near Secessionville when severe enemy fire caused the white captain to abandon his post. Smalls brought the vessel out of danger and was awarded with an army contract as captain of the Planter. He was the first black man to command a ship in U.S. service and remained captain of the Planter until it was sold in 1866. By his own count, Smalls was involved in seventeen military engagements during the war.</p>

SMALLS, Robert, a Representative from South Carolina; born in Beaufort, S.C., April 5, 1839; moved to Charleston, S.C., in 1851; appointed pilot in the United States Navy and served throughout the Civil War; member of the State constitutional convention in 1868; served in the State house of representatives, 1868-1870; member of the State senate 1870-1874; delegate to the Republican National Convention in 1872 and 1876; elected as a Republican to the Forty-fourth and Forty-fifth Congresses (March 4, 1875-March 3, 1879); unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1878 to the Forty-sixth Congress; successfully contested the election of George D. Tillman to the Forty-seventh Congress and served from July 19, 1882, to March 3, 1883; unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1882; elected to the Forty-eighth Congress to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Edmund W.M. Mackey; reelected to the Forty-ninth Congress and served from March 18, 1884, to March 3, 1887; unsuccessful for reelection in 1886 to the Fiftieth Congress; collector of the port of Beaufort, S.C., 1897-1913; died in Beaufort, S.C., February 22, 1915; interment in the Tabernacle Baptist Church Cemetery.

<p>Robert Smalls (April 5, 1839 – February 23, 1915) was an American politician, publisher, businessman, and naval pilot. Born into slavery in Beaufort, South Carolina, he freed himself, his crew, and their families during the American Civil War by commandeering a Confederate transport ship, CSS Planter, in Charleston harbor, on May 13, 1862, and sailing it from Confederate-controlled waters of the harbor to the U.S. blockade that surrounded it. He then piloted the ship to the Union-controlled enclave in Beaufort-Port Royal-Hilton Head area, where it became a Union warship. His example and persuasion helped convince President Abraham Lincoln to accept African-American soldiers into the Union Army.</p>

<p>After the American Civil War he returned to Beaufort and became a politician, winning election as a Republican to the South Carolina Legislature and the United States House of Representatives during the Reconstruction era. Smalls authored state legislation providing for South Carolina to have the first free and compulsory public school system in the United States. He founded the Republican Party of South Carolina. Smalls was the last Republican to represent South Carolina's 5th congressional district until 2011.</p>

<p>Robert Smalls was born in 1839 to Lydia Polite, a woman enslaved by Henry McKee. She gave birth to him in a cabin behind McKee's house, at 511 Prince Street in Beaufort, South Carolina. He grew up in the city under the influence of the Lowcountry Gullah culture of his mother. His mother lived as a servant in the house but grew up in the fields. Robert was favored over other slaves, so his mother worried that he might grow up not understanding the plight of field slaves, and asked for him to be made to work in the fields and to witness whipping.</p>

<p>When he was 12, at the request of his mother, Smalls' master sent him to Charleston to hire out as a laborer for one dollar a week, with the rest of the wage being paid to his master. The youth first worked in a hotel, then became a lamplighter on Charleston's streets. In his teen years, his love of the sea led him to find work on Charleston's docks and wharves. Smalls worked as a longshoreman, a rigger, a sail maker, and eventually worked his way up to become a wheelman, more or less a helmsman, though slaves were not permitted that title. As a result, he was very knowledgeable about Charleston harbor.</p>

<p>An escaped slave and a Civil War hero, Robert Smalls served five terms in the U.S. House, representing a South Carolina district described as a “black paradise” because of its abundant political opportunities for freedmen. Overcoming the state Democratic Party’s repeated attempts to remove that “blemish” from its goal of white supremacy, Smalls endured violent elections and a short jail term to achieve internal improvements for coastal South Carolina and to fight for his black constituents in the face of growing disfranchisement. “My race needs no special defense, for the past history of them in this country proves them to be equal of any people anywhere,” Smalls asserted. “All they need is an equal chance in the battle of life.”</p>

<p>Robert Smalls was born a slave on April 5, 1839, in Beaufort, South Carolina. His mother, Lydia Polite, was a slave who worked as a nanny, and the identity of Robert Smalls’s father is not known. Owned by John McKee, he worked in his master’s house throughout his youth and, in 1851, moved to the McKees’ Charleston home. Smalls was hired out on the waterfront as a lamplighter, stevedore foreman, sail maker, rigger, and sailor, and became an expert navigator of the South Carolina and Georgia coasts. In 1856, he married Hannah Jones, a slave who worked as a hotel maid in Charleston. The couple had two daughters: Elizabeth and Sarah. A third child, Robert, Jr., died of smallpox as a toddler. The Smalls lived separately from their owners, but sent their masters most of their income.</p>

<p>During the Civil War, the Confederate Army conscripted Robert Smalls into service aboard the <i>Planter</i>, an ammunitions transport ship that had once been a cotton steamer. On May 13, 1862, a black crew captained by Smalls hijacked the well–stocked ship and turned it over to the Union Navy. Smalls became a northern celebrity.6 His escape was symbolic of the Union cause, and the publication of his name and former enslaved status in northern propaganda proved demoralizing for the South.7 Smalls spent the remainder of the war balancing his role as a spokesperson for African Americans with his service in the Union Armed Forces. Piloting both the <i>Planter</i>, which was re–outfitted as a troop transport, and later the ironclad <i>Keokuk</i>, Smalls used his intimate knowledge of the South Carolina Sea Islands to advance the Union military campaign in nearly 17 engagements.</p>