In the dark early hours of May 13, 1862, a Confederate steamer slipped away from a wharf in Charleston Harbor. The man at the center of the plan wore the captain’s coat and a straw hat. He was not the captain. He was Robert Smalls, an enslaved 23-year-old, and he was steering his family toward freedom.
His story is one of the boldest escapes in American history. It is also a story about what one person can build after the storm has passed.
Born into a hard world
Robert Smalls was born on April 5, 1839, in Beaufort, South Carolina. According to the National Park Service, he and his mother, Lydia Polite, were enslaved by Henry McKee in a house on Prince Street in Beaufort.
When Robert was about 12, he was sent to Charleston and hired out. Britannica notes that he worked as a hotel waiter, a hack driver and a rigger. Over time he came to know the harbor’s waters well. Around 1856 he married Hannah Jones, though the state did not legally recognize the marriage of enslaved people.
He knew that his wife and children could be sold away from him at any time. That fear shaped everything that came next.
The night on the Planter
When the Civil War began, Smalls was put to work on the Planter, a 147-foot sidewheel steamer leased to the Confederate Army to carry guns and supplies. On the afternoon of May 12, 1862, the white officers went ashore for the night. The enslaved crew decided this was the moment.
The National Park Service describes how the crew fired the boilers and stopped at another wharf to pick up their families. Hannah was there with the children: Clara, Elizabeth and little Robert Jr. In all, about sixteen people were aboard.
The ship had to pass Confederate forts, including Fort Sumter. Smalls posed as the captain, and the crew gave the right signals at each checkpoint. The sentries let them through.
Even the Union fleet was a danger. The crew of the USS Onward thought the steamer was attacking and readied its guns. The freedom seekers quickly raised a white bedsheet as a sign of surrender. A congressional report later said plainly that “failure and detection would have been certain death.”
“He maketh the storm a calm, so that the waves thereof are still. Then are they glad because they be quiet; so he bringeth them unto their desired haven.”
Psalm 107:29-30 (KJV)
From pilot to captain
Smalls did not simply walk away into a new life. He handed over the ship, its guns and papers, and shared what he knew about Confederate defenses. According to the South Carolina Encyclopedia, Congress voted prize money to the crew, and Smalls received $1,500.
He went on to serve as a pilot for Union vessels. In 1863 he was aboard the ironclad USS Keokuk when it was badly hit during an attack on Fort Sumter. Later he was given command of the Planter itself. He is widely described as the first Black man to command a ship in U.S. service.
In 1864, he bought the very Beaufort house where he had once been enslaved, using his prize money. That same year, a Philadelphia streetcar removed him because he was Black. He helped lead a boycott, and by 1867 the city’s transit system was desegregated.
A voice for his neighbors
After the war, Smalls turned to public service. He was a delegate to South Carolina’s 1868 constitutional convention, where he pushed for public education. He served in the state House and Senate, and then served five terms in the U.S. House of Representatives between 1875 and 1887.
Storms kept coming. In 1877 he was convicted of taking a bribe, a case Britannica and the South Carolina Encyclopedia both describe as politically motivated. He was pardoned. In 1895, as one of only six Black delegates to a new state convention, he spoke against plans to take away Black citizens’ right to vote. He lost that fight, but he did not stay silent.
Smalls later served for many years as customs collector for the port of Beaufort. He died at his Beaufort home in February 1915 and is buried there.
What his life teaches families
- Prepare for the moment. Smalls spent years learning the harbor. When the door opened, he was ready.
- Protect the people you love. His escape was about his family, not just himself.
- Freedom is a beginning. He spent the rest of his life opening doors for others, especially through schools.
- Keep speaking up. Losing a vote did not make him give up his voice.
Share his story at dinner this week, and ask your children what “brave” looks like when you are afraid.
Whose courage has carried your family through a storm, and what did you learn from them?
Sources: National Park Service, “Robert Smalls”; National Park Service, “The Planter” (updated June 2, 2025); National Park Service, “The Planter: A Strike for Freedom”; Britannica, “Robert Smalls”; South Carolina Encyclopedia, “Smalls, Robert” (updated Aug 23, 2022); KJV Psalm 107:29-30
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