This may also have been when they boldly decided as a group that if a Confederate vessel attacked and they were not killed immediately, they would hold hands and jump overboard to drown themselves.38 One way or the other, they would all be free, as would their children. They simply refused to go back to slavery.
Once the women had regained their composure, the men prepared to move them and the children to another vessel nearby. They could not remain on the Planter until the escape. If they were spotted still on the ship after curfew, they would arouse immediate suspicion. The crew also had to make sure that anyone watching saw the women leave as if they were going home.
Even if Smalls had been able to stow the women and children aboard the vessel without anyone noticing, he could not risk one of them making a sound that would draw attention to the Planter. At least one sentinel was watching the area around Southern Wharf that night, and he was backed up by twenty guards within hailing distance.
Three crew members accompanied the women and children on foot to the Etiwan, which was tied up at the North Atlantic Wharf. Like the Southern Wharf, this wharf was located along the Cooper River, but it was several blocks north and more removed from the watchful eyes of the Confederate guards around General Ripley’s headquarters. With the help of at least one member of the Etiwan’s crew, thought to be Chisholm, the group boarded the steamer, where they would stay hidden inside until the Planter arrived to pick them up.
Meanwhile, Smalls and the others on the Planter could only wait. Time passed slowly as they wondered what the next few hours would bring. They could not leave the wharf until the early hours of the morning. Doing so would allow them to pass Fort Sumter at first light, which was around four o’clock. If they arrived any earlier, they might raise questions about why they were on the water in the dark. If they left any later, someone on shore might discover that no white officers were on board.
Finally, around three o’clock in the morning, the crew began preparations for leaving. They added wood to the fires, which they had banked when they moored the steamer earlier in the evening, and anxiously waited for the water in the boilers to heat. They would get under way as soon as they had enough steam.
Once again, events did not unfold as Smalls had planned, and the men’s initial excitement quickly turned to concern. Perhaps in their eagerness they had failed to recognize that the wind had picked up and would quickly carry over the city any smoke generated by their fire, possibly drawing attention to the wharf. By the time they realized what was happening, it was too late to stop it. “I feared that people would think there was a fire near the wharf,” Smalls said.39 His concern was warranted: five months earlier Charleston had seen one of the worst fires in its history, and people were still on edge.
The men watched the smoke waft into the night sky, but all they could do was wait anxiously to see if anyone came to investigate. They almost certainly tried to craft a believable excuse for leaving so early with no white officers on board, although there was probably nothing credible they could have said that would have saved them from arrest.
The minutes ticked by, and the men braced themselves for disaster, but no suspicious guards or curious citizens appeared. Relieved, they returned to their duties.
When Smalls judged the time was right, he ordered the steamer to leave. The fog was now thinning, and the crew raised two flags. One was the first official Confederate flag, known as the Stars and Bars, and the other was South Carolina’s blue-and-white state flag, which displayed a Palmetto tree and a crescent. Both would help the ship maintain its cover as a Confederate vessel.
Smalls, acting as captain, and Allston, serving as wheelman, moved to the pilothouse of the Planter.40 Once inside, Smalls donned Relyea’s straw hat.
As the flags flapped in the wind, the rest of the men untied the Planter’s moorings, and the ship soon backed away from the wharf, using its whistles to signal it was preparing for a normal day’s duties.41
The Confederate guard stationed about fifty yards away from the Planter saw the ship was leaving, and even moved closer to watch her, but he assumed the vessel’s officers were in command and never raised an alarm. A police detective also saw that the ship was leaving and made the same assumption.42 Luck seemed to be on Smalls’ side, at least for now.
The Planter’s next task was to stop at the North Atlantic Wharf to pick up Smalls’ family and the others. Apparently no one noticed that the steamer was moving away from the entrance to the harbor, which would have been its usual destination. That behavior alone should have raised suspicions.
The crew soon reached the North Atlantic Wharf and had no trouble approaching the pier. “The boat moved so slowly up to her place we did not have to throw a plank or tie a rope,” Smalls said.43
Shortly after the Planter arrived, three men, five women, and three children quietly exited the Etiwan.44
All had gone as planned, and they were now together. With sixteen people on board, and the women and children belowdecks, the Planter resumed her way south toward Confederate Fort Johnson, leaving Charleston and their lives as slaves behind them.
Each rotation of the paddle wheels brought the group closer to realizing their dream, but they could not go too fast. Smalls kept a normal, steady pace to maintain the impression that the ship was going about its regular business.
After roughly two tense miles, the ship neared Fort Johnson, which sat on the northern end of James Island. A fort had been on that site since 1708, and it had been rebuilt several times over the years. When Confederate forces occupied it in December 1860, just days after the Union major Robert Anderson’s move to Fort Sumter triggered the siege, they found that the Union had been using Fort Johnson for storage. The Confederates had quickly built up the fort, and it now had two batteries, each with two 10-inch mortars and an earthwork containing three guns. It was from Fort Johnson’s east mortar battery that the Confederates had fired the first shots in the Civil War.45
As the Planter passed the well-armed fort, the crew scanned the batteries for any sign that their plan had been discovered. After a harrowing few minutes, they passed it without arousing any suspicions and continued east about one mile toward Fort Sumter and the main ship channel. Their early success must have helped settle their nerves, but their biggest challenges were still ahead.
Soon after they passed Fort Johnson, they spotted a guard boat patrolling the harbor, but it seemed to take no notice of them.46 They had traveled far enough now that they could go faster without raising any alarms. As soon as they had passed the guard boat, Smalls rang for more steam. “We gave it to him down in the engine-room, knowing that the crisis had come, but not able to tell just where we were,” Gourdine said. “John and I were alone down there. When the call came for a full head of steam I was taken so weak that I could hardly stand, and when I looked at John his face was the color of wood ashes. We were both as scared as rabbits in front of a dog, and it was the same with all others except Robert Smalls. If he lost his nerve for a single minute no one noticed it.”
As the Planter picked up speed and steamed toward Fort Sumter, it passed several more boats. The first was a gunboat at anchor. Despite the potential danger, Smalls remained calm and simply saluted the gunboat with a whistle. A few minutes later, the Planter also passed a brig with two barges behind her. Smalls continued to play his part as Captain Relyea and casually shouted a greeting to the brig’s pilot.47
At about 4:15 A.M., the Planter finally neared the formidable Fort Sumter, whose massive walls towered ominously about fifty feet above the water. The five-sided stronghold had been built on an artificial island after the War of 1812, part of a substantial effort to strengthen the country’s coastal defenses. Ongoing construction had been halted in December 1860, however, and about 10 percent of the fort remained unfinished. Confederate forces had occupied the incomplete fort since April 1861 and had been heavily fortifying it.
Fort Sumter was less than a mile from Fort Moultrie on Sullivan’s Island
and overlooked the narrow main ship channel, which was usually marked with buoys. The channel was the only one that ships of any size could use to enter or leave the harbor. To restrict access the Confederates had constructed a floating log boom across the channel but left a narrow gap near Fort Sumter to allow blockade runners to slip through. Any vessel entering this gap had to pass directly under Sumter’s powerful cannon.48
Those on board the Planter were terrified. They were about to pass the massive fort and its powerful guns. Adding to their concerns over being discovered was the possibility that another ship might stop them and ask them to run an errand, as occasionally happened. If they refused to stop, those at the fort would quickly realize something was amiss.
The only one not outwardly affected by fear was Smalls. “When we drew near the fort every man but Robert Smalls felt his knees giving way and the women began crying and praying again,” Gourdine said.49
As the Planter approached the fort, Smalls, wearing Relyea’s straw hat, pulled the whistle cord, offering “two long blows and a short one.” It was the Confederate signal required to pass, which Smalls knew from earlier trips as a member of the Planter’s crew.
In response to Smalls’ signal, the sentinel on the fort’s parapet “called for the corporal guard and reported the guard-boat going out.” The soldier at the fort did not realize that the guard boat was out of commission and had mistaken the steamer for it.50 Another stroke of luck.
As the Planter passed, the sentry yelled out, “Blow the d—d Yankees to hell, or bring one of them in.” Smalls must have longed to respond with something hostile, but he stayed in character and simply replied, “Aye, aye.”51
What Smalls and the others on board the Planter did not know then was that, just as they were passing Fort Sumter, Relyea had appeared at the wharf and found his steamer was missing. He had immediately suspected what was going on, but rather than sound an alarm right away, he started asking questions. Had he notified the guards immediately, the Confederate soldiers at Sumter probably would have fired on the Planter. Instead, the ship passed the imposing fort without any trouble.
After clearing Fort Sumter, the Planter continued at its normal speed through the main ship channel. “For a half an hour we expected to hear the boom of a big gun at any instant, and when we finally got out of range and realized that we had actually escaped, there was more weeping and praying and singing of hallelujah songs,” Gourdine recalled.
It was a moment they would never forget. No matter what else happened during the next hour, they had made it past the Confederate forts.
Once the Planter was out of range of Fort Sumter’s guns, Smalls again ordered more steam and headed for the Union fleet.52
When the Planter did not turn east toward Morris Island, the Confederate guards at Fort Sumter suddenly realized she was headed toward the Union vessels stationed off Charleston Bar, a series of submerged sandbars that formed the outer limit of Charleston Harbor. The sentries tried desperately to signal the Confederate troops on Morris Island, but by the time they did, the steamer was too far away to be stopped.53
Now Smalls and the others faced the heavily armed Union warships patrolling a thirteen-mile arc outside Charleston. The group’s freedom was within reach, but they had to let the Union know they were friendly before the Northerners mistook the Planter for an enemy warship and started firing.
With steam and smoke belching from her stacks and her paddle wheels churning through the dark water, the steamer headed straight toward the closest of the Union ships, while her crew rushed to take down the Confederate and South Carolina flags and hoist a white bedsheet to signal surrender.
With the makeshift white flag now flying, Smalls could only wonder if they had signaled in time or if they would see a flash from a Union vessel and hear the thunderous roar of cannon.
Meanwhile another heavy fog had quickly rolled in, obscuring the steamer and its flag in the morning light. The crew of the Union ship they were approaching, a 174-foot, three-masted clipper ship named the Onward, was now even more unlikely to see the flag in time and might assume a Confederate ironclad was planning to ram and sink them.54
Ironclads, a new type of ship, were revolutionizing naval warfare. First built in Europe just before the Civil War, the vessels were clad in iron to protect them from cannon fire.55 Some were also equipped with underwater rams to pierce the hulls of enemy ships. In battle these iron-plated monsters could easily destroy wooden vessels like the Onward, which had dominated the seas for centuries.
Although the Planter’s silhouette did not match that of an ironclad, the Onward, blinded by the fog and dim morning light, was not going to take any chances. The Union knew that the Confederates were building ironclads in Charleston.
The Onward’s captain, acting volunteer lieutenant John Frederick Nickels of Searsport, Maine, a handsome young man with dark hair and muttonchops, decided that if there was any chance the fast-approaching vessel intended to ram his ship, his only option was to destroy it first.56 As a sailing vessel, the Onward had no chance of outrunning an ironclad and would be demolished. The nearby steamers in the Union fleet, however, could steam away and were now headed farther out to sea in an attempt to protect themselves.
Nickels ordered his men to battle stations. The cries of “All hands to quarters!” filled the ship.57 Roughly one hundred sailors, some just waking in their bunks, scrambled to obey. Nickels then commanded the crew to turn the clipper so that her port cannon were aimed at the Planter.
Smalls and his party saw the Onward’s guns being prepared and the general commotion on the vessel and braced themselves for the worst. Smalls, still in the pilothouse, must have been frantically looking for another way to signal the Union ship, while Hannah held Elizabeth and Robert, Jr., tightly, trying to comfort them as well as herself.
Just then Nickels saw the unmistakable white flag of surrender waving from the front of the ship. He immediately ordered the gun crews, who were seconds from unleashing an assault, to stand down.58
As the steamer continued toward the Onward, those aboard the Planter began to realize their improvised flag had been seen. Their freedom was closer than ever.
The two vessels were now within hailing distance of one another, and Nickels yelled for the steamer’s name and her intent. After the men supplied the answers, the captain ordered the ship to come alongside. Whether because of their relief that the Onward had not fired or because Smalls and Allston were still quite shaken, they did not hear the captain’s command and started to go around the stern. Nickels immediately yelled, “Stop, or I will blow you out of the water!”59
The harsh words jolted them to attention, and the men maneuvered the steamer alongside the warship.
As Smalls and Allston managed the vessel, those on board the Planter realized they had actually made it to a Union ship. Some of the men began jumping, dancing, and shouting in an impromptu celebration, while others turned toward Fort Sumter and cursed it. All sixteen were free from slavery for the first time in their lives.60
Smalls then spoke triumphantly to the Onward’s captain: “Good morning, sir! I’ve brought you some of the old United States guns, sir!—that were for Fort Sumter, sir!”61
CHAPTER 2
South Carolina’s Son
Robert Smalls’ journey from enslaved man to Union hero began on April 5, 1839, in the small Southern town of Beaufort, South Carolina, when his mother, forty-three-year-old Lydia Polite, gave birth to him, alone, in her sparse slave quarters.1 Her living quarters were hidden behind an elegant white frame house that was shaded by live oaks with moss hanging like holiday tinsel. The peaceful setting gave no clue to the anguished lives of the people forced to work there as slaves. As Lydia brought her son into the world, she knew that he, too, would live a life entirely dictated by someone else.
Located on Port Royal Island, South Carolina, Beaufort is one of the numerous Sea Islands off the coasts of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. Surrounded by tidal mar
sh, the town rests on a curve of the Beaufort River, about ten miles inland. The English had chartered the scenic town in 1711, making it the second-oldest settlement in the state after Charleston.2
By the time Robert Smalls was born, Beaufort was the largest community in the area and a wealthy town that boasted several schools, a college, a jail, a vast library, and multiple churches. Steamboats announced their arrival with high-pitched whistles, bringing supplies, mail, and visitors. Beaufort also possessed a heavily stocked arsenal and a regular slave patrol that was dedicated to protecting the white population in case of a slave revolt.3 White townspeople feared a slave rebellion as much as, if not more than, any fire or plague.
At least some of this fear originated in the discovery of a plot for a major revolt in Charleston in 1822 that had left many whites in the South more terrified than ever that their slaves would rise up and slaughter them. Denmark Vesey, who had purchased his own freedom after winning a lottery, was hanged along with several dozen others for planning the massive uprising in Charleston.4 Nine years later came Nat Turner’s Rebellion in Southampton County, Virginia, that left more than fifty whites dead and helped dispel the pervasive Southern myth that the enslaved were content with their servitude. Turner and many of his co-conspirators were hanged. In the aftermath angry white mobs killed as many as two hundred blacks. Both events led to laws in the South that further restricted the lives of African Americans, whether enslaved or free.5
Beaufort’s white citizens were especially concerned with a possible slave rebellion because blacks largely outnumbered whites in the Low Country, as the coastal area of South Carolina is called. As in the rest of the region, Beaufort’s large population of enslaved people had increased sharply with the need for labor to cultivate three major cash crops: indigo, which produced a rich blue dye prized around the world; rice, particularly the Carolina Gold variety; and Sea Island cotton, which was known for its long fibers that were exceptionally soft and strong. The popularity of indigo, however, had waned by the end of the American Revolution and had largely been replaced by Sea Island cotton.
Be Free or Die--The Amazing Story of Robert Smalls' Escape from Slavery to Union Hero Page 3