Both blacks and whites had started filling the streets and wharves early that morning. Some spectators had arrived ahead of schedule in hope of glimpsing the distinguished visitors arriving for the ceremony. Among those who attended were the abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison; Supreme Court Justice Noah Swayne; Rev. Henry Ward Beecher; Theodore Tilton, the editor of the New York Independent; Lincoln’s private secretary, John G. Nicolay; the British abolitionist George Thomson; Assistant Secretary of the Navy Gustavus V. Fox; Admiral John Dahlgren; and dozens of other Navy and Army officers, including Anderson and Saxton.
But Smalls would not be transporting these men to Fort Sumter. Instead the Planter’s decks would be filled “almost to suffocation” with African American men, women, and children who just two months before had been enslaved. Now they were showing their support and gratitude to the Union, with Smalls as their captain.10
* * *
By ten o’clock that morning the steamers, decorated with flags, playing patriotic music, and loaded with passengers, were heading toward Fort Sumter, which had been all but destroyed during the war.
The Planter was the last in the line of vessels, and when she finally arrived at the fort later that morning, she had some difficulty and ran aground. Whether it was because the ship was too loaded down with people or because Smalls and the pilot were unfamiliar with the fort’s new wharf and the sandbars around it, the vessel became stuck in the mud. Two other steamers would later have to pull her out with cables. But Smalls would not let the unfortunate situation keep him from the ceremony.
Once he and the other guests stepped off the Planter, they climbed a flight of wooden steps to reach the top of the fort’s massive walls and then went down another flight to get to the parade ground. The steps were lined with an honor guard of Union soldiers, including members of the 54th Massachusetts, all of whom had fought valiantly to regain control of Sumter and had lost many friends along the way.
In the center of the parade ground was the flagpole. To create an even more patriotic atmosphere, a diamond-shaped platform had been added; it was covered with an arched canopy draped with an American flag, evergreens, and flowers. When the crowd was finally seated, the ceremony opened with the recitation of the hymn of praise “Te Deum” and the singing of “Victory at Last.” The triumphant song was followed by prayers and a reading of Anderson’s 1861 telegram to then–secretary of war Simon Cameron announcing the fall of Sumter. Brevet Brig. Gen. E. D. Townsend, adjutant general of the Army, solemnly read Anderson’s powerful words, which reminded the country of all it had endured:
Having defended Fort Sumter for thirty hours until the quarters were entirely burned, the main gates destroyed by fire, the gorge walls seriously injured, the magazine surrounded by flames and its door closed from the effects of heat, four barrels and three cartridges of powder only being available and no provisions remaining but port, I accept terms of evacuation offered by General Beauregard being on same offered by him on the eleventh inst. prior to the commencement of hostilities and marched out of the fort Sunday afternoon the fourteenth inst. with colors flying and drums beating, bringing away company and private property and saluting my flag with fifty guns.
Anderson then stepped forward to speak and was quickly overwhelmed with emotion. When he regained his composure, he gave a short but powerful speech:
By the considerate appointment of the honored Secretary of War, I am here to fulfill the cherished wish of my heart through four long years of bloody war, to restore to its proper place this dear flag, which floated here during peace, before the first act of this cruel rebellion. I thank God I have lived to see this day and to be here to perform this duty to my country. My heart is filled with gratitude to that God who has … given us blessings beyond measure. May all the world proclaim—“Glory to God in the highest! On earth peace and good will toward man!”
Anderson and his former sergeant, Peter Hart, then unfurled the tattered flag and raised it to the cheers of the audience.
As soon as the flag reached its full height, one hundred guns from Fort Sumter fired in salute. A band burst into national songs, while the forts, batteries, and vessels in the harbor fired their own salutes until the air was tinged with dark smoke.11
The moment was seared into the memories of those in attendance. As Smalls watched the flag flying over Sumter, the very place where a war that had led to his freedom had begun, he must have felt an incredible sense of pride and patriotism.
* * *
While many of the dignitaries capped the day with a banquet at the Charleston Hotel, Smalls spent the evening entertaining visitors from the North on the steamer Oceanus with the story of his escape.12 Days later Smalls and everyone else in Charleston would learn that Lincoln had been shot by a well-known actor and Confederate sympathizer, John Wilkes Booth, at Ford’s Theater in Washington on the night of the Sumter celebration.13
Lincoln had been rushed to the Petersen boardinghouse across the street from the theater, but the doctors could do little other than keep him comfortable until he died early the next morning. His wife, Mary, his 22-year-old son, Robert, the cabinet, and members of Congress were at the boardinghouse through the night.
Just six days after Lee surrendered to Grant, effectively ending the war that had torn the country and countless families apart, Lincoln was dead. His vice president, Andrew Johnson, was sworn in as the country’s seventeenth president hours later. The change in command would have lasting repercussions for the country and especially for African Americans.
Johnson was lucky to still be alive that morning. Booth had enlisted the help of his co-conspirators to kill Johnson as well as Secretary of State William Seward and General Grant. The attacks were to take place while Booth shot Lincoln. Booth and his men had hoped that by killing the president and the top officials in his administration, they would throw the government into chaos and give the Confederates a chance to rally.
This, however, was not Booth’s original plan. Booth and his co-conspirators had first plotted to kidnap Lincoln in March and then take him to Richmond and ransom him for Confederate prisoners of war. They canceled their mission only because Lincoln had changed his itinerary.
Booth was still planning to kidnap the president until he joined a jubilant crowd of hundreds who had gathered at the White House on the evening of April 11 to hear Lincoln’s reaction to Lee’s surrender. Lincoln stood on the second-floor balcony of the North Portico of the White House and began by saying, “We meet this evening, not in sorrow, but in gladness of heart. The evacuation of Petersburg and Richmond, and the surrender of the principal insurgent army, give hope of a righteous and speedy peace whose joyous expression can not be restrained.”14 He then spoke of the difficult task ahead of the country, reconstruction, and emphasized the importance of working together.
It was not the victory speech the public had been clamoring to hear for two days. Instead the president spoke again of reuniting the country. But then he made news by coming out in favor of black suffrage for “the very intelligent, and on those who serve our cause as soldiers.” It was the first time Lincoln had publicly declared his support for the right of blacks to vote. Despite the significant limitations Lincoln placed on his endorsement, it was a bold and important step in empowering African Americans. The announcement would also seal his fate.15
When Booth heard Lincoln say those words, he turned to fellow conspirator Lewis Powell and said, “That means nigger citizenship. Now, by God, I’ll put him through. That is the last speech he will ever make.”
Three days later Booth carried out his threat to murder Lincoln. The other three targets, however, survived.
The nation was in sorrow. For the many African Americans who viewed Lincoln as their liberator, his death was particularly difficult. In speaking of Lincoln’s death a few months later, Frederick Douglass said,
The colored people, through all, believed in Abraham Lincoln, even when, at times, he seemed to smite them, they still belie
ved in him thoroughly. They saw him not in regard to certain words, which may have occasionally dropped from him, but they believed in him as a whole, in his great statesmanship and manhood. They saw themselves being gradually lifted to freedom; under his rule they saw millions of their brethren declared free.16
As a formerly enslaved man who had met Lincoln, Smalls was among those deeply affected by his murder. Lincoln’s death impacted Smalls so greatly that later that summer he served as a South Carolina officer for a committee to help organize the Colored People’s Educational Monument Association, a group led by Henry Highland Garnet, a leading African American political activist. The group hoped to build a national monument dedicated to Lincoln that would also serve as a school for former slaves and would be funded by donations from both blacks and whites.17
While fund-raising efforts for the project were under way, the white-run Western Sanitary Commission, a volunteer war relief agency based in St. Louis, Missouri, oversaw the efforts to build the competing Freedmen’s Memorial Monument. Also called the Emancipation Memorial, it depicted a standing Lincoln holding the Emancipation Proclamation in one hand while holding his other hand above a shirtless, kneeling black man whose broken shackles lay nearby. Despite its heavy paternalism, the more traditional monument was ultimately built. It would take years to finish, but it was finally dedicated in Lincoln Park on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., in 1876.18
Not everyone mourned Lincoln’s death. Some white Southerners who viewed Lincoln as a dictator celebrated his murder. The Charleston diarist Mary Boykin Chesnut wrote, “The death of Lincoln—I call that a warning to tyrants. He will not be the last president put to death in the capital, though he is the first.” The Chattanooga Daily Rebel shared Chesnut’s view: “Abe has gone to answer before the bar of God for the innocent blood which he has permitted to be shed and his efforts to enslave a free people.”19 The “enslaved people” in this case were Southern whites.
Others who cheered at the news of Lincoln’s death were those who thought he had been too lenient with the South. George Julian, a Radical Republican congressman from Indiana, confided in his diary that the Radicals’ “hostility towards Lincoln’s policy of conciliation and contempt for his weakness were undisguised; and the universal feeling among radical men here is that his death is a god-send.”20
Charleston did not learn of Lincoln’s death until April 18, when the steamer Fulton arrived in Port Royal that day with the April 15 New York dailies.21 Soon after the news spread, stores, offices, and private homes displayed American flags draped in black and at half-staff.
Many of Charleston’s leading citizens who had supported the Confederacy were returning to the city and were eager to show how distraught they were at Lincoln’s death. They gathered at a public hall a few days later to “express their sentiments on the demise of the President of the United States.” Among them was Ferguson, the former owner of the Planter.22 It is hard to imagine that Ferguson was distressed about Lincoln’s murder, given that Ferguson had made a fortune leasing his steamers to the Confederacy and had used them to run the blockade.
Others questioned whether these men were sincere and suspected they were making an effort to avoid repercussions from their past support of the Confederacy by assuring the Union that they had changed their allegiance. One man who attended the meeting wrote to a reporter, “It was entirely a secessionist, blockade-running, slave trading affair … These men, it must be admitted, compose the aristocracy of the city, but yet they are all secessionists, and require to be looked after.”23
Some of these former citizens were especially eager to win over the occupying Union forces. On May 8, six of them, including Ferguson, wrote to the Union officer in command of Charleston, Col. W. M. Gurney of the 127th New York Infantry Volunteers. In what appears to have been a blatant attempt at winning his favor and regaining status, they requested permission on behalf of the citizens of Charleston to use a local hall to “initiate a movement” of peace. They wrote, “The aim of every citizen of South Carolina should now be directed towards the speedy restoration of PEACE; obedience to the laws, both Federal and State.”
These men were hardly alone in their efforts. All across the South, former Confederates were trying to figure out how they could regain their power. With President Johnson now in charge, they would soon have help.
Colonel Gurney seemed to fall for the ploy and granted them permission for the meeting.24 But it did not go as the organizers had hoped. When whites gathered at the hall, they were surprised to find about 150 African Americans waiting to take part in the proceedings. The group argued they had the right to vote and be consulted in any public meeting.
A Union lieutenant named Bodine stepped into the dispute and forced the blacks to leave. Gurney, however, learned what Bodine had done and was furious. He told the group of African Americans that they could return, and he had Bodine arrested. Enraged, many of the whites walked out.
Coincidentally, Salmon P. Chase, who had resigned as Secretary of the Treasury in 1864 to become chief justice of the Supreme Court, arrived in Charleston the day after the clash. He was participating in a tour of the South and hoped to convince Southerners of the importance of allowing blacks to vote.
Chase agreed to meet with the whites, including the mayor. His very presence seems to have calmed the situation. Chase tried to answer their questions about the future, including whether blacks had the right to vote, but he stressed that his opinions were his own. He told the whites he thought it would be better for both groups if blacks had the right to vote for the new state constitution, but the group did not embrace the sentiment. Perhaps in an effort to assuage the whites’ concerns, he added that he did not know how the government would decide the issue.
Later that afternoon Chase addressed local African Americans. Accompanied by Saxton and other Union officers, Chase spoke to an audience of at least five thousand blacks and about five hundred whites at Zion Presbyterian Church in Charleston. Though the audience had greeted Chase with cheers, his listeners were soon dismayed by his words. Chase argued that for blacks to get the vote, they would have to be patient and display good behavior rather than taking any action.
Saxton, who had worked so hard on behalf of the former slaves, completely disagreed. Instead of promoting patience, Saxton asked the audience to draw up a petition for the right to vote and send it to President Johnson and Congress.25
* * *
Scenes like the ones in Charleston foretold the confusion, strife, and often violent animosity that would plague the country as the government brought the seceded states back into the Union and tried to ensure the rights of African Americans.
Lincoln’s death added to the enormous challenge. With Lincoln gone, the task of Reconstruction fell to Johnson, a former slaveholder from Tennessee who believed “white men alone must manage the South.”26
CHAPTER 11
Retaliation and Reward
For most of May and June 1865, Robert Smalls was ill, having contracted malaria in May while loading and unloading cotton as part of his duties aboard the Planter. Then Smalls suffered from another fever in June and was confined to his bed in Beaufort for more than a month as Hannah and local doctors cared for him.1 From his sickbed he followed what was happening nationally as Johnson began his presidency.
* * *
Lincoln had chosen Johnson as his running mate for the 1864 election in an effort to secure the votes of Democrats who supported the war. Johnson was a Southerner, but he had remained loyal to the Union. In fact, he was the only senator from the South to continue to serve in his position after his state, Tennessee, seceded. The Lincoln administration had taken notice, and, following Union military victories in Tennessee in 1862, Lincoln appointed Johnson military governor of the state. In this position Johnson, who owned slaves, convinced Lincoln to exempt Tennessee from the Emancipation Proclamation.
By August 1863, however, Johnson had completely changed his views on emancipation and had
freed his own slaves. He continued to believe blacks were inferior to whites, but he now viewed the end of slavery as necessary and regarded favoring its demise as likely to further his political ambitions.2
After Lincoln chose Johnson, the vice presidential candidate famously told a black audience, “I will indeed be your Moses” and “lead you through the Red Sea of war and bondage to a fairer future of liberty and peace.”3 His flowery, self-aggrandizing words would soon prove false.
On May 29, 1865, just six weeks after Lincoln’s death, Johnson announced two proclamations that revealed his plans for Reconstruction. First, Johnson offered amnesty to former Confederates who pledged to defend the Constitution and support emancipation. All property, except former slaves, would be returned to those who took the oath.4
In that regard Johnson’s Amnesty Proclamation closely resembled the one Lincoln had issued in December 1863. Johnson’s, however, included far more restrictions on those who were eligible for amnesty: excluded were rebels who owned more than $20,000 in taxable property and a host of Confederate officials. They would have to apply directly to the president for pardons.
Some believed Johnson was using this proclamation to try to punish and impoverish the South, as he had once promised to do. Others thought his main interest lay in wielding his power over the Southern gentry, which he had railed against since his poverty-stricken youth. Lending credence to this suspicion was the requirement that the wealthy personally appeal to him for pardons, which seemed to give Johnson great satisfaction. By 1866 Johnson had issued seven thousand pardons to those who had pleaded for it. These numerous pardons would allow the planter elite to regain political control in the South, something the Radical Republicans in Congress had hoped to prevent.5
Be Free or Die--The Amazing Story of Robert Smalls' Escape from Slavery to Union Hero Page 19