Though Reynolds’ methods of collecting the cotton and his other activities were suspect, he was handling the job, and Chase turned his attention to the desperate men, women, and children at Port Royal. He tapped Edward L. Pierce, a Boston attorney who had worked with former slaves at Fort Monroe under Hunter, to report on the condition of the newly freed people and to propose a plan for organizing their labor and supporting their needs.
Pierce studied almost two hundred plantations in the Beaufort District and discussed his ideas with Sherman and Du Pont as well as Rev. Mansfield French. French, a fifty-one-year-old Methodist minister from New York, was a passionate abolitionist with a small frame and a thin, angular face that gave him a severe look. French had been sent to Port Royal by the New York–based American Missionary Association to see what could be done to help those in need. As a friend of Chase’s, French had received a special commission that allowed him to go to Port Royal while it was under strict military control.
With the help of these three men, Pierce developed a plan that he believed would give the newly freed blacks work while also preparing them for freedom. The plan required hiring superintendents to oversee the plantations and provide “paternal discipline.” Without using corporal punishment, the superintendents would “require a proper amount of labor, cleanliness, sobriety and better habits of life, and generally promote the moral and intellectual culture of the wards.” Workers would be paid and provided with food, shelter, and medical care. Pierce’s plan included bringing Christian missionaries to Port Royal to dispense food and clothing, assign housing, and teach people to read and write.
It was a massive undertaking, but Chase and Lincoln believed in Pierce’s plan and approved it in February 1862, three months before Smalls’ escape. It was the first large-scale government effort to help former slaves. The revolutionary program would become known as the Port Royal Experiment. Smalls’ family and tens of thousands of former slaves would eventually benefit from it and the many donations from philanthropic groups in the North that helped fund it.
With the experiment under way, many blacks in need of housing were placed in camps of about six hundred people each on Hilton Head and Port Royal islands. Others continued to live in their old slave quarters, making do with what little they had. The men were hired to work in the fields and to serve as police officers in the camps, while the women were paid to do laundry and sell food to the troops. All were making money for the first time in their lives. Many of the adults as well as the children were also attending the schools that the missionaries had set up and were learning to read and write.
The Port Royal Experiment was proving successful, but it was not without problems. The military, cotton collectors, and missionaries worked together but they did not always get along. Religious disagreements broke out between the various groups of missionaries, who were dubbed Gideon’s Band, while arguments often flared about how to use the available resources. Nothing like the Port Royal Experiment had ever been tried, however, and that difficulties would arise was inevitable, particularly given the many competing agendas.10
* * *
By the time Smalls escaped from Charleston in May 1862, Reverend French, like many of the missionaries and military officials in Port Royal, was stunned by the number of former slaves who arrived daily. They were hungry, exhausted, and often sick. In June he wrote, “What we shall do for the thousands now coming and destined to follow, I know not. My heart sickens at the prospect of want. But the people welcome any amount of suffering, so they gain their liberty.”11
French was looking for a solution when word of Smalls’ daring feat spread, and he decided that Smalls could be a great asset to the Port Royal Experiment. First, though, French would have to convince the military to let Smalls leave his position as a pilot and participate in his plan.
On May 30, 1862, just two and a half weeks after Smalls’ escape, French visited Hunter, who by then had replaced Sherman. Hunter was at his headquarters on Hilton Head and happened to be meeting with Du Pont when French arrived. Du Pont had come to see Hunter after hearing that he “had received a pretty sharp rebuke” from Lincoln regarding his unauthorized proclamation freeing the enslaved people of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. It was the perfect opportunity for French to share his idea.
French told the two officers he wanted to take Smalls, the rest of the crew, and the Planter to New York. He would arrange for the men to speak at Cooper Union, a privately funded college, about their harrowing experience while escaping Confederate Charleston. French imagined the men would draw large, well-funded crowds who would willingly give money to help the former slaves at Port Royal after listening to their story.
The decision was Du Pont’s as Smalls was working for the Navy and would need Du Pont’s permission to leave his new position. French probably had not even discussed the idea with Smalls or any of the other crew members before he approached Du Pont.
Despite Du Pont’s support for the Port Royal Experiment, he would not give French the answer he wanted. He feared that by showcasing these men, French would be taking advantage of them. Du Pont respected and valued Smalls and the entire crew and wanted to do what he could to protect them. Instead of agreeing to French’s idea, Du Pont sarcastically joked that French could make more money by having Smalls appear at P. T. Barnum’s American Museum in New York.12
The year before, Barnum had briefly hired William Tillman, a free African American sailor who was a steward on the merchant schooner S. J. Waring, to tell his riveting tale of escape. Tillman’s vessel had been captured in July 1861 by a Confederate privateer, the Jefferson Davis. Rather than allow the captors to sell him into slavery in Charleston, Tillman had killed three of them with an axe, commandeered the ship, and sailed to New York. The gripping story made the papers, and Tillman was celebrated as a hero. His story had garnered so much attention that Barnum, never one to miss an opportunity to make more money, immediately asked Tillman to speak at the museum. He even had Tillman display the axe he supposedly had used to kill his captors. It was classic Barnum behavior: the more sensational the story, the better. The New York Herald wrote, “The only good thing which can be said about this man show is that it allows Tillman to make a little money.”13
With his quip about Barnum hanging in the air, Du Pont then told French he could “neither spare the Planter nor Robert” and refused to let Smalls go. The matter was settled, at least for the moment.14
* * *
Smalls’ value to the Navy clearly was growing, which must have influenced Du Pont’s decision. The intelligence Smalls had given Du Pont about the abandoned batteries at Cole’s Island had already provided an important victory for the Union.
On May 31 Du Pont reported to Secretary Welles that Union gunboats had taken possession of the Stono River, which would serve as a staging area for the long-awaited attack on Charleston. He credited Smalls with providing the information that led to the mission’s success. Du Pont wrote,
From information derived chiefly from the contraband pilot Robert Smalls, I had reason to believe that the rebels had abandoned their batteries and accordingly directed Commander Marchand, the senior officer of Charleston, to make a reconnaissance to ascertain the truth of the report. This was done on the 19th instant and, the information proving correct, I ordered the gunboats on the next day … to cross the bar.
He went on to write, “This important base of operations, the Stono, has thus been secured for further operations by the Army against Charleston of which General Hunter proposes to take advantage.”15
Although the Confederates in Charleston were furious that the Union had been able to occupy the Stono River, they were not surprised. They had anticipated that someone aboard the Planter would give this critical information to the Union and that the Union would quickly use it to its advantage. One soldier reported in a letter to his wife the day after the steamer was taken: “The negro pilot aboard of the boat is thoroughly acquainted with every channel or creek
heading to Charleston, and knows also that we are for the present utterly undefended on the Stono … Gen’l Gist has ordered the whole of his command to be in immediate readiness for an attack.”16
Their suspicions of a pending attack were confirmed a week later when the Charleston Daily Courier reported seeing the Union “reconnoitering the river, sounding and bringing out the channel so as to give the gunboats a clear and certain route, when ready to enter.”17 The city braced for the attack, which came quickly.
Hunter had already been planning to attack Charleston, but Smalls’ new information gave him a far better chance of succeeding. Using the Stono to transport his troops, Hunter landed sixty-six hundred Union men on the southeastern end of James Island in early June. Hunter intended to march across the island and take Fort Johnson. By capturing Fort Johnson he would cut off Fort Sumter and Fort Moultrie and control the inner harbor. His intention was to force the Confederates to evacuate Charleston.
Pemberton, who was in charge of Charleston’s defenses, realized the Union’s strategy, sent three batteries of men to James Island, and ordered the building of more earthworks.
After facing several skirmishes in the ten days after he landed his men, Hunter knew he needed more troops before he could make a successful attack. He left James Island to return to Hilton Head on June 12, leaving Brig. Gen. Henry W. Benham in command. But before he left, Hunter told Benham not to proceed with an assault until reinforcements arrived or he had been given authorization to do so.
Benham, who had a reputation for being obstinate and insubordinate, nevertheless attacked the Tower Battery at Secessionville on James Island just a few days later. The Confederate fort had just been built in anticipation of the Union’s move. Bordered by marsh on each side, the fort possessed nine guns and was defended by about five hundred men.
The undermanned Union began its first wave of attack at four o’clock in the morning, but it immediately faced difficulties. The harsh terrain hampered the soldiers’ progress, especially in the dark, and eventually caused the second wave of soldiers to run into the first. Eventually about two thousand Confederate reinforcements arrived at the fort, adding significantly to the firepower against the Union. After several hours of battle and three failed attacks, the Union troops were forced to retreat. They had suffered 689 casualties, with 107 killed, compared with 207 Confederate casualties, with 52 dead.
Hunter was angry when he learned what Benham had done and immediately had Benham relieved of command and arrested. Benham’s commission as a brigadier general was revoked later that summer. (Lincoln would help restore Benham’s commission in 1863, and Benham spent the rest of the war leading the engineer brigade in the Army of the Potomac.)
Had Benham followed Hunter’s orders, it is quite possible that the Union could have captured Fort Johnson and forced the evacuation of Charleston. The Union could then have established a base for operations into the interior and perhaps ended the war years sooner. Because of the Union’s failure at Secessionville, its chance of taking Charleston had vanished, despite the key strategic information Smalls had provided.18
* * *
Smalls’ efforts on behalf of the Union had made him a celebrity, a status he would come to relish. In the summer of 1862 he was nearly as well-known as Frederick Douglass. Newspapers had continued to report on Smalls’ bold escape on the Planter while also covering the announcement that Smalls would be awarded prize money for turning over the vessel and the guns. The papers also published Du Pont’s dispatches about how Smalls’ information had led to the occupation of the Stono River. His name seemed to be everywhere.
But along with the fame and accolades came an increase in danger as authorities in Charleston put out a reward of at least two thousand dollars for his capture.19 This was a threat Smalls would have to learn to live with as he continued to serve the Union by piloting vessels in Confederate waters.
Later that summer one of Du Pont’s dispatches again mentioned Smalls, and it only furthered his fame. Shortly after Smalls’ escape, Du Pont had sent him to work under Lt. Cdr. A. C. Rhind. On June 21 the Crusader, a wooden screw gunboat commanded by Rhind, and the Planter, piloted by Smalls, transported troops from the 55th Pennsylvania Volunteers up the North Edisto River to the area near Simmon’s Bluff on Wadmalaw Sound. The Union must have suspected a Confederate encampment was in the area and sent the Crusader and the Planter to attack with support from the Army. The Union needed to keep the area clear of any artillery that might challenge its vessels.20 Before they undertook the mission, Rhind had ordered musket-proof bulwarks to be added around the Planter’s stern and machinery in an effort to protect her. It was just a matter of time before the vessel came under fire, but Rhind had not expected it to come so soon.
When the Crusader and the Planter approached Simmon’s Bluff, they suddenly came under fire emanating from rifle pits and nearby houses. The Union’s suspicions about a Confederate camp were correct. The men manning the two boats were startled by the shots, but they were not harmed. The Confederates had aimed too high, and the bullets had passed harmlessly over their heads.
In retaliation Rhind ordered the Crusader to fire. By the time the smoke cleared, the Confederates had vanished.
With the enemy gone, Rhind boarded the Planter, and Smalls expertly moved into position to allow the men on board to disembark. Rhind and the troops then went ashore and burned the Confederate camp, including the tents and cabins used by the Confederates.21
The minor engagement and Smalls’ role as the pilot of the Planter were important enough to appear in major newspapers across the country. The coverage further solidified Smalls’ new status as a national hero and continued to demonstrate to readers that black men were willing to fight.
In Boston and Philadelphia photographers sold portraits of Robert Smalls alongside photographs of the White House.22 On the front page of its August 1 issue, the Boston Evening Transcript even published a poem that celebrated Smalls:
OUR COUNTRY CALLS
Take down the rusty gun, my boys,
And Grind old Grandf’r’s sword;
To give up what he won, my boys,
Is what we can’t afford.
It shan’t be blotted out, my boys,
The Freedom traitors hate,
The “mudsills” are too stout, my boys;
The tyrants are too late.
Bring out the biggest gun, my boys,
You hear the country’s call;
We’ll do as well as one, my boys,
Whose name is Robert Smalls.
Hurrah for Robert Smalls, my boys,
Hurrah for Robert Smalls!
He broke secesh’s thrall, my boys.
And came without a call.
His bounty was the flag, my boys,
The flag that waves for all,
He sunk the rebel rag, my boys,
Hurrah for Robert Smalls!
It isn’t dross or dirt, my boys,
That we are fighting for;
It isn’t not to hurt, my boys,
The imps who made the war!
They’ve had their day of grace, my boys,
And filled their rebel cup,
It’s time to meet the case, my boys,
And turn things right side up.
Secesh is pretty tall, my boys,
But with a rake of fire,
We’ll make a sweeping raid, my boys,
And sink them in the mire.
The honest, loyal Smalls, my boys,
Shall whip the rebel great;
The flag that floats for all, my boys,
Has glory for its fate.
We’ll serve that blessed flag, my boys,
Till traitors bite the sod;
We’ll sink the rebel rag, my boys,
And them, so help us God!
Smalls was even celebrated across the Atlantic. In August the London Daily News wrote,
The exploit of Robert Smalls … is familiar to the world as one of the coole
st acts of daring in the war. Had the deed been done by a Federal rebel or officer, he would have been promoted at once, and his praises would have been sounded throughout the land … What more brilliant example of heroic devotion, readiness of mind, and adroitness of hand has any body of whites exhibited than this band of negroes?23
* * *
Although Smalls was touted as a hero, he was still likely considered a contraband, as were all formerly enslaved people within Union lines. The Confiscation Act of 1861 had allowed the Union to seize any slaves who were employed by the Confederates, but nearly a year later the status of these men and women remained unclear.
With the war taking its toll on the country, however, the opposition to emancipation was diminishing. By 1862 even conservatives in Congress, tired of the never-ending bloodshed, had started to believe that ending slavery was a military necessity to prevent the South from benefiting from slave labor. In April 1862 Congress had abolished slavery in the District of Columbia, a move that freed nearly three thousand men, women, and children. Congress paid slave owners loyal to the Union as much as $300 for each person freed, whereas once-enslaved people who chose to go to Liberia or Haiti received $100 or less to participate in a voluntary colonization plan. In June slavery had been abolished in the western territories; slave owners there received no compensation.24
On July 17, 1862, after months of debate in Congress, the status of many African Americans who had been deemed contrabands finally began to change. Lincoln approved the Second Confiscation Act, which declared that people enslaved by those in rebellion, or by those offering aid or comfort to the Confederacy, “shall be forever free of their servitude, and not again held as slaves” when they reached Union lines or were captured by Union forces. While the act did nothing to help those still enslaved in Confederate-held areas or those living in the border states, it represented a major change in national policy.25
Be Free or Die--The Amazing Story of Robert Smalls' Escape from Slavery to Union Hero Page 10