For Smalls, official freedom was finally at hand. Henry McKee was a member of the Confederate military, which meant the legislation clearly freed Smalls. But many formerly enslaved people behind Union lines, possibly including Hannah and the children, would have had difficulty producing legal proof that their one-time owners were helping the Confederacy against the United States. For these African Americans freedom would not officially come until Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863.
* * *
Smalls continued his duties as a pilot until August 1862, when Reverend French approached Du Pont again. French wanted to know if Du Pont had changed his mind about allowing Smalls to speak on behalf of the Port Royal Experiment in the North. It had been almost three months since French had first approached Du Pont with the idea, and Smalls’ fame had only grown since then. French had abandoned the idea of bringing the other men and the Planter to New York, but now he was even more convinced that Smalls could help bring attention to the needs of the people participating in the Port Royal Experiment and help raise money to support it.
Du Pont, who thought highly of not just Smalls but also Smalls’ wife, Hannah, was still hesitant to allow Smalls to go. He wrote, “[French] wants through Smalls to excite interest for the race and also through his wife, who is a very superior blacky but much older than her husband. I told him that I did not like much those kind of things—it was on the Barnum principle, etc.—but assented.” Despite his misgivings, Du Pont probably agreed because he thought Smalls wanted to go, and Du Pont wanted to support him.
When Du Pont spoke to Smalls about it, he was surprised to find that Smalls was willing to go with French if only Du Pont would let him keep his position as a pilot working for the Navy. Du Pont wrote, “I took for granted of course that Robert Smalls wanted to go, but he came to know if he was going to lose his place here as pilot in the Planter, and confirmed all I thought of this man as being the most superior Negro I had ever known.” Du Pont told Smalls that as long as he returned in one month, he would remain a pilot. Smalls’ characteristically likeable reply was that he would make sure French had him back in three weeks.
Du Pont then offered Smalls some well-intentioned though patronizing advice. Du Pont wrote, “I said, ‘Robert, you have seen how the Navy officers have treated you—they have made no fuss about you, kept you in your place, given you work, and are kind in their feelings, and if you remain as you are now and don’t get spoiled by the abolitionist they will always be your friends.’” Smalls replied with his customary grace and charm: “Admiral, that’s the very point—it is because I know this that I have come to see you today; my best friends are in the Navy and on board of this ship.”
Du Pont remained concerned that the attention would change Smalls, a man he so greatly admired. The rear admiral wrote, “They will ruin him, however; it is a pity.”26 Although Du Pont seemed to genuinely care about Smalls, the Navy man may have been concerned that Smalls would become more interested in furthering his own story than the Union cause. Du Pont wanted him as a pilot, not a celebrity.
On August 20, 1862, Reverend French and Smalls began their journey north. The National Freedmen’s Relief Association, a group that French had helped found, sponsored the trip. The two men took the sidewheel steamer McClellan from Port Royal to Fort Monroe, Virginia, arriving three days later. The New York Herald’s correspondent at Fort Monroe wrote of their arrival and explained their mission, which he anticipated would be quite successful for French. The reporter seems to have shared Du Pont’s initial concerns that Smalls might be exploited, which Du Pont had expressed with shorthand—the “Barnum principle.” The correspondent told New York readers:
Mr. French, the apostle of the Gideonites in South Carolina, also came in the McClellan, accompanied by one of his sable brothers, Robt. Smalls. Brothers French and Smalls are understood to be on a starring tour in the Northern cities for the special pecuniary advantage of the white brother, and the general reputation of the brothers of the darker skin … It is fondly expected that specie will fall in bounteous showers into the lap of Brother French … Brother Smalls is to exhibit himself to the gaping multitude for a consideration … and will relate his experience in Dixie … making altogether a very interesting and moral entertainment.27
In addition to rousing support and raising money for the Port Royal Experiment, Smalls and French were tasked with an important diplomatic mission. The assignment was on behalf of Brig. Gen. Rufus Saxton and would have far-reaching consequences.
Secretary of War Edwin Stanton had appointed Saxton, thirty-eight, as the military governor of the Department of the South, of which Hunter was the military commander, in April 1862, one month before Smalls had seized the Planter. The balding Saxton, who had deep-set eyes and a sharp nose, was a deeply devoted abolitionist from Massachusetts who had served as quartermaster general under Brig. Gen. Thomas Sherman at Port Royal the previous fall. Saxton had arrived in Port Royal as a bachelor but had fallen in love with Matilda Thompson, a missionary from Philadelphia. The two would be married the following year.28
From his headquarters in Beaufort, Saxton was in charge of all the residents of Port Royal, including the formerly enslaved people and the missionaries helping them. By August 1862 Saxton desperately needed troops to help him continue his work with the Port Royal Experiment and wanted Smalls and French to deliver a letter to Stanton asking for permission to enlist black soldiers. Saxton wrote the letter on August 16: “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.” Saxton was careful to use the term laborers rather than soldiers, although he also was asking that the men be uniformed and armed. He argued that adding these men would allow the former slaves to protect themselves and their families from attacks by Confederates, assist in the fields, and offer help “in the event of any emergency.” Both Du Pont and Hunter backed Saxton’s carefully worded request.29
Hunter, of course, had already tried repeatedly to persuade Congress to enlist black soldiers, particularly those he had already added to his own unsanctioned regiment. By August, however, he was no longer in a position to make his own appeal. Any concern about Hunter’s recruitment of black troops in May 1862 had initially been overshadowed by his unauthorized emancipation proclamation of the enslaved people in the Department of the South and the country’s reaction to it. On June 9, that abruptly changed when U.S. Rep. Charles Wickliffe of Kentucky, a border state, introduced a resolution in the House of Representatives demanding answers from Stanton about the status of Hunter’s rumored black regiment. Wickliffe, who was concerned that Hunter’s actions would set a precedent for using African American soldiers, had privately written to Stanton several times to ask whether a regiment had been created but had received no answer. Wickliffe had finally decided to take official action and introduced his resolution.
Stanton refused to acknowledge having given Hunter official permission to enlist black soldiers. The secretary of war also denied knowing how Hunter planned to use the massive amounts of clothing and weapons sent to Hunter by Stanton’s department. It was a particularly difficult assertion to believe, considering that Hunter had asked for 50,000 muskets and 10 million rounds of ammunition, as well as 50,000 bright red trousers in an effort to distinguish his black soldiers from other troops, who typically wore blue trousers. (The black troops hated the red pants, which made them easy targets for the Confederates.)
Stanton probably felt he could get away with his denial because Hunter had written him in late January to say that he, Hunter, would bear the responsibility for starting a black regiment. Hunter wrote, “Please let me have my own way on the subject of slavery. The administration will not be responsible. I alone will bear the blame; you can cen
sure me, arrest me, dismiss me, hang me if you will, but permit me to make my mark in such a way as to be remembered by friend and foe.”30
Stanton dodged the blame and forwarded Wickliffe’s demand for information about the regiment to Hunter. Unlike Stanton, Hunter was only too happy to answer the questions, which he did with force and irony. His acerbic answers reached the House in early July, a month before Saxton wrote his own request to enlist black troops, which Smalls and French would deliver to Stanton.
To the question of whether he had organized a regiment of “fugitive slaves,” Hunter boldly replied:
No regiment of “fugitive slaves” has been, or is being organized in this department. There is, however a fine regiment of loyal persons whose late masters are “fugitive rebels”—men who everywhere fly before the appearance of the National Flag, leaving their loyal and unhappy servants behind to shift, as best they can, for themselves. So far, indeed, are the loyal persons composing this regiment from seeking to evade the presence of their late owners, that they are now, one and all, endeavoring with commendable zeal to acquire the drill and discipline requisite to place them in a position to go in full and effective pursuit of their fugacious and traitorous proprietors.
In responding to whether the War Department had authorized him to organize a regiment, Hunter referenced early orders from former secretary of war Simon Cameron to Brig. Gen. Sherman, Hunter’s predecessor. These orders, Hunter argued, authorized him “to employ all loyal persons offering their services in defense of the Union and for the suppression of this rebellion in any manner I might see fit or that the circumstances might call for.” Hunter wrote, “It is the masters who have in every instance been the ‘fugitives,’ running away from loyal slaves as well as loyal soldiers; and these, as yet we have only partially been able to see—chiefly their heads over ramparts, or dodging behind trees, rifle in hand, in the extreme distance.”
Finally, to the House’s third question about whether the War Department had furnished Hunter with uniforms and weapons for the regiment, he answered that he had given them the arms and clothing. He wrote, “To me it seemed that liberty to employ men in any particular capacity implied and carried with it liberty, also to supply them with the necessary tools; and acting upon this faith, I have clothed, equipped, and armed the only loyal regiment yet raised in South Carolina, Georgia, or Florida.”
Hunter closed his letter by praising the black soldiers: “The experiment of arming the blacks, so far as I have made it, has been a complete and even marvelous success. They are sober, docile, attentive and enthusiastic, displaying great natural capabilities for acquiring the duties of the soldier. They are eager beyond all things to take the field and be led into action.” Hunter added that by fall he hoped to have an additional “48,000 to 50,000 of these hardy and devoted soldiers.”
Fits of laughter from many representatives met Hunter’s hostile yet witty reply to the House as a clerk read it aloud. Wickliffe was enraged. He was so angry that he proposed a resolution censuring Hunter for discourteous language and for insulting the House. Republicans in the House blocked the resolution and were so amused by Hunter’s letter that they put forward proposals to print more than 100,000 copies and dropped the inquiry.31
Wickliffe, however, was not the only party interested in learning more about the regiment. When Confederate president Davis learned of Hunter’s efforts and that Brig. Gen. John Phelps was also trying to raise a black regiment in Louisiana, Davis ordered Gen. Robert E. Lee to investigate. In August the Confederacy issued General Orders, No. 60, which stated that if Hunter or Phelps or any of their officers were captured, they would not “be regarded as a prisoner of war, but held in close confinement for execution as a felon at such time and place as the President shall order.”32
* * *
The truth about Hunter’s troops was more complicated than Hunter had implied in his response to the House. The men were being trained as soldiers and were performing well, but Hunter had no way of paying them. They also faced harassment by many of the white soldiers who did not want to serve side by side with black soldiers, arguing that African Americans should not be treated as their equals.
Still unwilling to give up, Hunter had put in one final request to enlist black troops, which Stanton presented at a cabinet meeting on July 21. Stanton’s decision to put the request forward probably was emboldened by passage of the Militia Act, which Lincoln had signed a few days earlier, along with the Second Confiscation Act. The Militia Act amended the law of 1795, which prevented blacks from enlisting in the Army, to now permit the use of “persons of African descent” as laborers “or any military or naval service for which they may be found competent.” Despite the broad wording, Lincoln would allow blacks to be used only as laborers, not soldiers, and would allow commanders only “to arm, for purely defensive purposes, slaves coming within their lines.” The measure added that any African American who enlisted “shall forever thereafter be free” along with “his mother and his wife and children.”33
By early August a disheartened Hunter had given up on pleading his case. In an August 10 letter to Stanton, Hunter wrote that he had disbanded his regiment. In reality Hunter had furloughed the men and kept one company on guard duty on St. Simon’s Island, Georgia, to protect the growing colony of freedmen.
The news of the supposed disbandment spread quickly. Many but not all Union soldiers celebrated. One officer in the 1st Massachusetts Cavalry wrote his father that the order “was hailed with great joy, for our troops have become more anti-Negro than I could imagine. But, for myself, I could not help feeling a strong regret at seeing the red-legged darkies march off.”
Four days later Hunter wrote Stanton that he would have to abandon more of the Sea Islands since he had been ordered to send men for Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan’s Peninsula Campaign to capture Richmond, Virginia. “Abandoning these fine islands to the enemy after having them planted and promising the negroes protection is a very sad termination to our exertions in this department. But with the diminution of my force I am left no alternative … The beautiful town of Beaufort, so necessary to our hospital purposes, will be a great loss to us.”
Hunter was so frustrated with his situation that on August 15 he asked Stanton to reassign him. “You recollect that when you sent me down here, you promised me something to do. I am well aware of the exigencies of the service, which have prevented you from fulfilling your promise. And, as there can be no chance for active service here, I beg you will give me a chance in some other direction.”
While much of this was happening, Saxton had been on duty in coastal Georgia and Florida for ten days. When he returned to Port Royal in mid-August, he learned that not only had Hunter disbanded his regiment, he was about to abandon the Sea Islands. Desperate to try to save all the work that had been accomplished on the islands, Saxton wrote a letter to Stanton on August 16.34 That was the letter he asked Smalls and Reverend French to personally deliver to Stanton in Washington, D.C.
CHAPTER 6
North and South
With Brig. Gen. Rufus Saxton’s letter in hand, Rev. Mansfield French and Robert Smalls arrived in Washington, D.C., around the last week of August 1862. They found the city overflowing with reminders of the war. Rickety wagons filled with soldiers poured into the city and jammed the streets, pitched tents covered the city’s hills and valleys, and the sound of drums boomed from almost every corner. The sick and wounded from Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan’s campaign in Virginia filled schools, hotels, churches, and private homes that had been turned into hospitals to care for the overwhelming number of patients, while formerly enslaved men and women who had fled Virginia and Maryland searched for a better life in the capital.
Many newly arrived African Americans “came with a great hope in their hearts, and with all their worldly goods on their backs,” wrote Elizabeth Keckley, a former slave who had become Mary Todd Lincoln’s dressmaker. They soon found that the North was not always what they had h
oped it would be. “Many good friends reached forth kind hands,” Keckley wrote, “but the North is not warm and impulsive. For one kind word spoken, two harsh ones were uttered; there was something repelling in the atmosphere, and the bright joyous dreams of freedom to the slave faded—were sadly altered, in the presence of that stern, practical mother, reality.”1
Smalls’ trip to Washington, however, was unlike any other former slave’s. During the next few days he and French would meet with Lincoln as well as several of his cabinet members, including Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase, and, of course, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton. The meetings must have been set up by Saxton or French, both of whom were trying to get support for the Port Royal Experiment.
It was an extraordinary time for Smalls, who just three months earlier had been enslaved and working for the Confederacy aboard the Planter. Now he was meeting with the president of the United States and some of the most senior members of the Lincoln administration. Until this trip Smalls had never traveled far from his home on the coast of South Carolina; now he was in the nation’s capital and meeting national leaders whose decisions would change the future of the country.
Details of Smalls’ meeting with Lincoln are not known, but he and French almost certainly met with the president at the White House. Mary Lincoln had just lavishly redecorated the mansion, which had been rebuilt after the British burned it during the War of 1812, but she had far exceeded her budget, much to the dismay of her husband and Congress. The now-refurbished stairways and corridors of the White House were often crammed with visitors, many of whom were office seekers hoping for a few minutes with the president.2
Be Free or Die--The Amazing Story of Robert Smalls' Escape from Slavery to Union Hero Page 11