It was time to seize the Planter

July 1, 2020 8:06 AM

The Thrilling Tale of How Robert Smalls Seized a Confederate Ship and Sailed it to Freedom
posted by Ragged Richard (15 comments total)

relevant Drunk History episode

also, another Civil War nautical abolition adventure: Great American badass Harriet Tubman led a detachment of Black Union soldiers on a naval raid in South Carolina to free 800 Black slaves.
posted by bl1nk at 8:19 AM on July 1, 2020 [9 favorites]

I'm always amazed that this story hasn't been made into a movie already. Apparently it's now going to be.
posted by smcameron at 8:22 AM on July 1, 2020 [11 favorites]

There's also a recent Criminal episode where this is discussed. It features his great-great-grandson.
posted by spikeleemajortomdickandharryconnickjrmints at 8:28 AM on July 1, 2020 [3 favorites]

awesome! this is so ripe to be made into a movie, glad someone is doing it.
posted by supermedusa at 8:29 AM on July 1, 2020

I was curious about what happened to Robert Smalls after he escaped. The entire wikipedia article is worth a read, but in a nutshell he piloted the Planter and other Union ships during the Civil War, bought his former master's house after the war, owned and edited a newspaper (he had been illiterate prior to the war), and served in the US House of Representatives.
posted by HiddenInput at 8:54 AM on July 1, 2020 [21 favorites]

I had known the bare bones of the story, but it really is thrillingly told here, with lots of atmosphere and detail.

My first thought was, “This is the guy there should be a monument to.” And there is!
posted by The Underpants Monster at 9:08 AM on July 1, 2020 [4 favorites]

HiddenInput, thanks for including that link and summary. I was coming to say something similar.

Navy Times also notes that he not only freed himself, fellow Black crewmen, and his family, he brought intelligence on the Confederates, and supplies.

He was a hero in the North. Congress passed a bill, signed by President Abraham Lincoln,that awarded a generous purse to Smalls and his crew.

The Union press editorialized on Smalls’ gallantry. The New York Times declared Smalls’ theft of Planter “one of the most heroic acts of the war.” Frank Leslie’s Weekly Illustrated Newspaper agreed, dubbing Smalls and his crew “Heroes in Ebony.”

Even in the Confederate South Smalls’ exploits were recognized, however grudgingly.

Emma H. Holmes of Camden, South Carolina, for example, wrote in her diary that the dash to freedom had been “most Disgraceful,” although she conceded that it was “one of the boldest and most daring things of the war.”

Navy Times also describes how Smalls was "reunited" with the Planter, now in Union control:

Soon reunited with Planter, which had been converted to an army supply and transport ship under the command of a Capt. Nickerson, Smalls assumed his pilot duties and resumed more ordinary missions.

But that routine was shattered on Dec. 1, 1863, when Planter came under intense fire from Confederate artillery.

Nickerson, convinced that there was no way out, ordered Smalls to surrender the ship.

Smalls refused, arguing that while the Rebels would treat the captain, a white man, with respect, the rest of the crew — runaway slaves — would likely suffer a fate worse than death.

Panic-stricken, the captain rushed below to hide.

Smalls took command and, despite continuous shelling, steered his famous vessel out of the range of the Confederate guns.

For that valiant act,he was promoted to captain — the first black man to command a ship in the service of the United States.

As HiddenInput noted, Smalls went on to serve five terms in the U.S. House, representing South Carolina (History.House.gov), before white men effectively re-segregated the South. Again, from Navy Times:

In 1895, despite his best efforts at the South Carolina Constitutional Convention, he and several of his colleagues failed to block the “Jim Crow” legislation that disenfranchised most of South Carolina’s black men.

Perhaps his best-remembered words come from that losing battle: “My race needs no special defense,for the past history of them in this country proves them to be the equal of any people anywhere. All they need is an equal chance in the battle of life.”

It would be another seven decades — marked by the murderous terrorism of the Ku Klux Klan and the South Carolina Red Shirts, organizations committed to denying blacks suffrage — before those voting rights would be restored.

The language in that article is not great in parts, but is a pretty good summary of Robert Smalls' life, and his various roles in the history of the country.

I included some of this previously, but as of a footnote in the story of the Golden 13, the first Black men to pass Naval Officer Corps tests. The Golden 13 had scored the highest grades that had ever been recorded in Navy history. The record still stands.

Smalls is commemorated in the naming of Camp Robert Smalls (Wikipedia), which was a United States Naval training facility, created pursuant to an order signed April 21, 1942 by Frank Knox, then Secretary of the Navy, for the purpose of training African-American seamen at a time when the USN was still segregated by race.

I can't find a record of what happened to Camp Smalls, but all descriptions are in the past tense.
posted by filthy light thief at 9:11 AM on July 1, 2020 [12 favorites]

The US Army also named a transport ship after him recently.
posted by cardboard at 9:47 AM on July 1, 2020 [3 favorites]

Reminder from the before times: Harriet Tubman (another hero who we actually should make statues of) was scheduled to be put on the $20 bills before Trump nixed the plan. I really hope this happens after Trump is out so we can see Jackson's racist face replaced with someone worth respecting on the currency.
posted by benzenedream at 10:20 AM on July 1, 2020 [13 favorites]

There are some great empty pedestals that could use filling right about now.
posted by feckless at 12:05 PM on July 1, 2020 [5 favorites]

I can't find a record of what happened to Camp Smalls, but all descriptions are in the past tense.

I found one reference that said "With the desegregation of the armed forces in 1948, Camp Robert Smalls shut down soon afterward."

Since it was inside a larger training facility (Naval Station Great Lakes, which is still the Navy's center for basic training), I'd guess that it was a pre-existing group of buildings that got segregated for housing and training Black sailors, and then got reabsorbed into the general inventory after Camp Robert Smalls "shut down".
posted by Etrigan at 1:23 PM on July 1, 2020 [2 favorites]

There's also a recent Criminal episode where this is discussed. It features his great-great-grandson.

I heard that Criminal episode and wondered why they'd cover this story. I mean, technically what Smalls did was a crime by stealing the Confederate ship. However, I'd be hard put to call slaves escaping to their freedom however way they can "criminals" outside of the Confederate perspective.
posted by fuse theorem at 1:27 PM on July 1, 2020 [3 favorites]

I hadn't heard this was going to be a movie, that's so cool. Smalls was also the subject of the Omnibus! podcast a couple of years ago, which includes his later life, including writing the legislation that created free compulsory public education in South Carolina and starting the local Beaufort newspaper.

I'm assuming the movie will focus on the ship adventure, but it would miss out on another story from the end of Smalls' life (which I can't find a better online source for than Wikipedia) of a lynch mob assembling to murder two Black men. Smalls, then 73 years old, went to the mayor and said, stop the lynching. The mayor said no. Smalls said, well, look, I've got guys dispatched all over town, waiting for a signal. Stop the lynching or we'll burn the place flat. And it stopped.
posted by jameaterblues at 6:38 PM on July 1, 2020 [9 favorites]

Not to derail from Smalls, but speaking of podcasts, if you're interested in the story of Harriet Tubman's Combahee Ferry raid mentioned up top, Uncivil won a Peabody for The Raid.
posted by jameaterblues at 9:18 PM on July 1, 2020 [2 favorites]

At least a few issues of Smalls' 1870s newspaper, the Beaufort Southern Standard, appear to have survived, but they don't seem to have yet been digitized.
posted by Not A Thing at 11:48 AM on July 2, 2020