“While I breathe, I hope,” the most well-known of South Carolina’s two mottos, must have resonated deeply in the hearts and minds of enslaved Blacks as the first bombs exploded over Charleston Harbor. It was here, at 4:30 a.m. on April 12, 1861, that the Civil War began. Until then, the enslaved, who made up most of Charleston’s population, had found little reason for hope. They were held in bondage, forced to labor long hours with no pay, provided inadequate food and shelter, and under threat of physical abuse or even death at the slightest provocation. The blasts that lit up the night sky represented the first real chance for them to realize their collective dream to breathe free.

Among them was Robert Smalls, an intelligent young man who would not be willing to simply wait. If not for this intelligence, none of us may have ever known his name. And, I believe, without his resourcefulness and skillful leadership, the Civil War may have ended very differently.

The great escape

Smalls found himself in the unique situation of having the opportunity and the skills to escape, but embarking on such a perilous journey could amount to a suicide mission. Yet his desire for freedom remained so strong, he developed the will to take that chance.

By June 1861, the Confederates had pressed the Planter and its crew into service because [the steamer] could easily maneuver shallow intercoastal waterways, delivering supplies to bases along the coast. The Confederates employed three white men to oversee the Planter and its enslaved crew. These overseers regularly went into Charleston, leaving the crew unsupervised. Enjoying one of these moments free from scrutiny, the five-foot-five, stocky Smalls playfully picked up the captain’s distinctive floppy hat and pranced around the ship, imitating his mannerisms. Laughing at the performance, one of his crewmates remarked that Smalls bore a strong resemblance to the white captain.

Inspired, Smalls hatched a plan to make their escape the next time their supervisors took an unauthorized excursion into Charleston. He prepared Hannah [his wife] for the dangers ahead, telling her that if his plan failed, the punishment would be death. Hannah replied without hesitation, “I will go, for where you die, I will die.”

The opportunity came on May 12, 1862. The captain and his colleagues departed the ship for their night out. Smalls knew they would not return until the next morning, and he had no intention of being there to greet them. He and the other enslaved crew members sent for their families and waited until 3 a.m. to set the plan in motion. As the ship’s pilot, Smalls took charge and ordered the crew to light the fires that fueled the steamship. Half an hour later, in the pre-dawn darkness, the Planter eased its way out into Charleston Harbor on its perilous voyage.

Smalls stood authoritatively behind the ship’s wheel, wearing the captain’s uniform and his signature floppy hat, focused on the mission ahead. Before the sun rose, the Planter had to travel past five Confederate checkpoints to protect their identities under the cover of darkness.

With the Planter’s cargo of guns and ammunition loaded for delivery to Fort Ripley, Smalls maneuvered the ship past the first four guard stations with relative ease. But as the ship headed toward Fort Sumter, the Confederates’ first line of defense in Charleston Harbor, Smalls steeled himself for closer scrutiny: At the point of passage, he had to steer uncomfortably close to the Confederate watchtower to avoid suspicion. 

The Planter approached Fort Sumter at 4:15 a.m. After the 36-hour bombardment that had launched the war just 13 months earlier, Fort Sumter’s five-feet-thick and five-feet-high masonry walls stood menacingly, protecting the prized “cradle of the Confederacy.” Cool under pressure, Smalls steered the boat as though nothing was unusual, remaining in the pilothouse with his arms crossed as he had watched the captain do many times before. He then gave the correct signal on the horn, one he’d long since memorized: three shrill blasts and one hissing sound. After an agonizingly long pause, the sentry at the fort signaled back for the ship to continue onward, shouting to the “captain,” “Blow the damned Yankees to hell!” Smalls responded, “Aye, aye!” and sailed on toward the open waters of the Atlantic Ocean — and straight toward the Union blockade.

Before the Confederates could register the ship’s trajectory, the Planter picked up speed and was soon out of firing range. Hannah had brought along a white bedsheet, and the crew quickly replaced the Confederate flag that flew above the mast with the white flag of surrender. Smalls later acknowledged this moment worried him the most. He knew Confederate protocol, but he couldn’t anticipate how the Union would react to an enemy ship bearing down on their blockade. Smalls and his crew felt great relief when the Union Navy followed the rules of war and withheld fire as the Planter drew near.

As Smalls pulled alongside the first Union vessel, the blockade commander boarded the stolen steamship finding, to his great surprise, that enslaved men composed the entire crew. Smalls reportedly told the commander, displaying his wry sense of humor, and, I imagine, a great deal of pride, “I thought this ship might be of some use to Uncle Abe.”

Enslavement to emissary

Smalls’s trajectory, from enslavement to an emissary for his race, happened quickly. His effectiveness in this role led to a decision that would change the course of the war and ensure freedom for the millions of enslaved Blacks.

Union officers appreciated Smalls’s extraordinary abilities and the power of his heroism. Just three months after Smalls gained his freedom by delivering the Planter to the Union forces, Brigadier General Rufus Saxton, the military governor of the Department of the South, sent the now 24-year-old to Washington. His mission: Meet with President Abraham Lincoln and the secretary of war, Edwin Stanton, and convince them to support the enlistment of Black troops into the Union cause. A difficult mission, even for a war hero.

I can only imagine how overwhelming it was for Smalls when he arrived in the nation’s capital for the first time in August 1862. The city perched on the Potomac River had similarities with his home, namely the presence of military regiments mingling with a multitude of free Blacks. Lincoln had signed a proclamation ending slavery in Washington, D.C. in April 1862, eight months before the better-known Emancipation Proclamation took effect in Beaufort and other Confederate states. Boarding-houses had sprung up across the city to accommodate the crushing influx of people seeking to secure their freedom.

Washington looked very different during Smalls’s inaugural trip than the imposing and inspiring seat of power that it is today. The Washington Monument stood partially constructed, looking more like the Leaning Tower of Pisa than the modern-day towering obelisk. The U.S. Capitol dome was still under construction, which had continued despite the war; and the White House, minus the familiar West Wing, had just undergone very extensive and expensive renovations thanks to the First Lady. It couldn’t have escaped Smalls’s attention that the iconic structures symbolizing America’s promise of freedom had been built by enslaved laborers who toiled from sunup to sunset six days a week, earning compensation for their owners.

For someone whose life experiences resembled those of the laborers much more than those of the powerful men he had come to meet, this mission to Washington had to be intimidating. But if it was, Smalls didn’t show it.

Smalls, accompanied on this trip by Rev. Mansfield French, attended multiple meetings with cabinet members. At each one, Smalls enthralled them, recounting his courageous escape with the confidence of a seasoned storyteller. President Lincoln also met the war hero, for whom he had signed legislation earlier that year granting him a portion of the Planter’s value as a reward for its delivery to the Union. No full account exists of what one historian called “perhaps the most consequential meeting Lincoln had with an African American in the first two years of his administration,” but I envision the two raconteurs in Lincoln’s second-floor office of the White House, swapping stories and speaking earnestly about the imperative to win the war. We do know that Lincoln asked Smalls why he dared to escape on the Planter. The young man simply replied, “Freedom.”

But Smalls also had his mission in mind. He carried with him a letter from General Saxton, which read: “I very respectfully but urgently request of you authority to enroll as laborers in the employ of the Quartermaster’s Department a force not exceeding 5,000 able-bodied men from among the contrabands in this department … to be furnished with soldiers’ rations, for each class. The men to be uniformed, armed, and officered by men detailed from the Army.” Smalls offered to recruit troops personally, believing the formerly enslaved would be “better soldiers than the present ones because they will be fighting for their freedom.”

The Militia Act of 1792, which in part prohibited African Americans from bearing arms on behalf of the U.S. military, would have been a barrier to this goal. This clause had been included to mitigate white citizens’ fears that if armed, Blacks would turn the weapons on their oppressors. However, just a month before Smalls’s visit, Lincoln had signed an amended Militia Act that allowed the president to utilize free Blacks in the military for any purpose “he may judge best for the public welfare.” Still, the Lincoln administration had, up to that point, resisted enlisting African Americans. A few weeks before Smalls’s arrival, Secretary Stanton had even told an Indiana delegation that to enlist Blacks in the Union military “would turn fifty thousand bayonets from loyal Border States against us that were for us.” President Lincoln had also raised concerns that Blacks might not make good soldiers since they were untrained and untested on the battlefield.

But Smalls’s heroic story and his personal plea to recruit freedmen to the Union cause must have been powerful. Somehow, despite the previous positions taken by the Lincoln administration, Smalls returned to Port Royal with a letter from Secretary of War Stanton authorizing 5,000 Black recruits.

Emboldened by his diplomatic success, Smalls offered to join the new Black regiment, the First South Carolina Volunteer Infantry. General Saxton asked, “Why would you enlist?”

Smalls replied, “How can I expect to keep my freedom unless I fight for it?”

Still, the Union navy considered his services as the Planter’s pilot too valuable to let him fight with the army, so instead, Smalls settled on convincing others to serve. Reportedly, he ended up recruiting 5,000 Black soldiers to the Union cause.

But his triumphant mission had greater consequences. According to the National Archives, after Smalls secured permission for their enlistment, 170,000 Black soldiers joined the Union army and an additional 19,000 joined the Union navy, a formidable injection of power. Although they served only a little more than half of the four-year Civil War, 40,000 Black Union troops lost their lives. They served bravely and defied all expectations.

In 1865, President Lincoln acknowledged their extraordinary contributions, saying, “Without the military help of the Black freedmen, the war against the South could not have been won.” Indeed, in my not-so-humble opinion, no Civil War victory or hero can measure up to the consequences that flowed from Smalls’s heroic feat with the Planter and audience with Abraham Lincoln.