The Former Slave Who Stole a Confederate Ship to Achieve His Family's Freedom

As darkness enveloped the waters of Charleston Harbor, Robert Smalls realized that he would have no better chance to escape slavery than that morning.

It was May 13, 1862, and Smalls did not hesitate, springing into action to execute his plan to seize the CSS Planter, a Confederate military cargo transport ship. One year after the first shots of the Civil War were fired at nearby Fort Sumter, the Planter’s three white officers went ashore for the night, leaving the eight enslaved Black crew members, including Smalls, inexplicably unattended. What happened next is the stuff of Civil War legend.

“[The Planter’s captain, Charles Relyea], like many whites in the South, and even the North, simply did not think that enslaved men would be capable of pulling off a mission as dangerous and difficult as commandeering a Confederate vessel,” historian Cate Lineberry wrote in “Be Free or Die: The Amazing Story of Robert Smalls’ Escape from Slavery to Union Hero.”

From the first moments of his life on April 5, 1839, in Beaufort, South Carolina (70 miles southwest of Charleston), Smalls was born into slavery. Kept mostly in the house (perhaps because of the rumor that his owner might also be his father), he did not see firsthand the harsher realities of slavery until his mother arranged for him to witness slaves being gruesomely beaten.

Profoundly affected by those indelible images, Smalls lashed out. He was jailed several times before his mother again intervened, arranging with his owner to send Robert, then 12 years old, to Charleston -- where his owner eventually put him to work on the docks. As Smalls grew into a young man, so did his knowledge of Charleston Harbor, which proved priceless during his daring escape a decade later.

By that time, Smalls had a wife and two children. Trying to ensure that slavery would not separate his family, he offered to buy their freedom but could not afford the price of $800 (equivalent to nearly $25,000 today). Smalls was forced to find another way, which he did on that fateful night in May 1862.

“When Smalls told his wife, Hannah, his plan to escape, she said, ‘It is a risk, dear, but you and I, and our little ones must be free. I will go, for where you die, I will die,’” Lineberry wrote.

After the Planter’s white officers departed for the night, Smalls informed the other slaves of his plan; the ship was heavily armed with 200 rounds of ammunition and several weapons, including a 32-pound pivot gun, a 24-pound howitzer and a gun damaged in the attack on Fort Sumter. Although only in his early 20s, Smalls was an expert navigator, and with other Confederate ships lurking nearby, his skills would be tested like never before if he were to reach the Union ships -- which had been accepting runaway slaves since September 1861 -- forming a blockade outside the harbor.

No one could blame the slaves for being scared -- after all, detection could have meant death -- and it is believed that two of them did not go along with Smalls’ plan for fear of their lives, the Navy report showed. The others forged ahead, with Smalls putting on Capt. Relyea’s hat and coat to disguise his identity. As the Planter pulled away from the dock, the South Carolina and Confederate flags were raised to further obscure the Black crew members’ motives.

After stopping to pick up Smalls’ wife and children, among others, the slaves on the Planter -- now totaling 16 -- approached southern forces at forts Sumter and Moultrie shortly before 3:30 a.m.. Following normal protocol, Smalls blew the ship’s whistle, and believing the Planter to be a guard ship, southern guards allowed her to pass without incident.

Then as the Planter accelerated toward the Union blockade, Smalls ordered the replacement of the state and Confederate flags with a white bedsheet. Freedom drew ever closer.

“As she neared us, we looked in vain for the face of a white man,” according to an eyewitness’ recollection in historian James M. McPherson’s “The Negro’s Civil War.” “When they discovered that we would not fire on them, there was a rush of contrabands out on her deck, some dancing, some singing, whistling, jumping; and others stood looking towards Fort Sumter, and muttering all sorts of maledictions against it. …

“As the steamer came near, and under the stern of the [USS] Onward, one of the Colored men stepped forward, and taking off his hat, shouted, ‘Good morning, sir! I’ve brought you some of the old United States guns, sir!”

That man was Smalls, exuberantly celebrating the success of his plan. After a long, nerve-racking night, he and the other slaves were finally free, but this was not the last bold move that Smalls would make.

A few months after escaping, Smalls -- who went on to serve five terms in the U.S. Congress -- urged President Abraham Lincoln to allow Black men to join the Union in its fight against the Confederacy. That meeting is largely credited with War Secretary Edwin Stanton’s order to enlist 5,000 Black service members; by the end of the Civil War, roughly 179,000 Black men had served in the Army. Another 19,000 fought in the Navy, including Smalls, who rose to pilot the Planter and thus became the first Black captain of a U.S. ship in December 1863.

Smalls’ legacy and impact on the U.S. military did not end there. The Army commissioned the Major General Robert Smalls -- the first time the service named a vessel after an African American -- in 2007. More recently, as part of the Pentagon’s efforts to remove Confederate names from military bases and property, the Navy renamed the USS Chancellorsville; the Ticonderoga-class, guided-missile cruiser became the USS Robert Smalls in 2023.

“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,” Smalls said. “All they need is an equal chance in the battle of life.”

Smalls died in 1915 at the age of 75 in the house that he bought with the money Congress awarded him and his crew for handing over the Planter -- the same home in which he and his mother were once held as slaves.

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