At 3 a.m. an enslaved pilot took a Confederate steamer, sailed it past Fort Sumter in the captain's straw hat — and ended up in Congress.
On the night of 12 May 1862, the three white officers of the Confederate steamer Planter went ashore in Charleston, as was their custom, leaving the enslaved crew aboard. Around three in the morning their wheelman, Robert Smalls — 23 years old, barred by law from the title of pilot though he did the pilot's work — fired the boilers, picked up his wife, his children and the crew's families at a nearby wharf, and steamed out into the harbour wearing the captain's straw hat. At every fort he gave the right whistle signals. At Fort Sumter, about 4:30 a.m., he gave the right hand signs and waited. The fort let him pass.
At dawn he hauled down the Confederate flags, ran up a white bedsheet his wife had brought, and delivered sixteen freed people, the ship's guns and the captain's code book to the Union blockade. He had been trying to buy his family's freedom for $800, and had saved $100. Then he went home to Beaufort and spent the next fifty years trying to make that freedom hold.
From the wheelhouse to the House
The lifeline
1839
Born enslaved on 5 April in Beaufort, South Carolina, in a cabin behind his enslaver's house
1851
Sent to Charleston at 12 and hired out; works up from lamplighter to wheelman
1862
Seizes the Planter on 13 May and steers sixteen people to freedom
1868
Delegate to South Carolina's new constitution; elected to the state House
1875
Takes his seat in the U.S. Congress — the first of five terms
1915
Dies in Beaufort on 23 February, aged 75, the town where he was born a slave
By the numbers
The measure of the night
16
Enslaved people aboard the Planter — crewmen, wives and children
5
Confederate harbour forts he steamed past, Fort Sumter among them
$1,500
His prize share in 1862 — for a ship Congress later called "absurdly low" in value
5
Terms in the U.S. House of Representatives, 1875–1887
What he took, and what he built
The deeds
May 1862
The Planter delivered. With it came four loose artillery pieces, the Confederate signal book and a map of the harbour's mines; within a week his intelligence let Union forces take Coles Island without a fight.
Aug 1862
Washington, to argue for Black soldiers. Soon after his visit with Rev. Mansfield French, the War Department authorised up to 5,000 Black men to enlist at Port Royal.
Dec 1863
Command under fire. When the Planter's white captain hid in the coal bunker under shelling, Smalls took the wheel and brought her out — and was made her acting captain.
1864
Off the streetcar. Ordered to give up his seat in Philadelphia, he left the car. The insult to a war hero was cited in the debate behind Pennsylvania's 1867 law integrating public transport.
1868
Schools for every child. At the state constitutional convention he worked to make free, compulsory schooling available to all of South Carolina's children.
1895
The last stand. One of six Black delegates who fought the new state constitution written to strip Black citizens of the vote. They were outnumbered; it passed.
Celebrated, then short-changed, then remembered
Recognition
In his lifetime
The Planter was appraised so low that an 1883 House report put its fair value above $60,000
Never formally commissioned; a bill to retire him on the Navy list was halted in 1883
Convicted on a politically charged bribery charge, then pardoned in a deal
Only in 1897 did a special act grant him a $30-a-month pension
Today
The U.S. Navy renamed a guided-missile cruiser USS Robert Smalls in 2023
In 2004 he became the first African American to have a U.S. Army ship named for him
South Carolina has marked Robert Smalls Day every 13 May since 2023
His Beaufort home is a National Historic Landmark; a State House statue was authorised in 2024
The Sea Islands that made him
Beaufort, South Carolina
He grew up in Beaufort's Lowcountry Gullah world, the son of Lydia Polite, who had worked the fields and made sure her favoured son saw what field slavery was. The Union fleet took Port Royal Sound in November 1861, so when Smalls ran the Planter out of Charleston, home was already behind Union lines. After the war he bought the very house on Prince Street where he had been born enslaved — kept it when the old owners sued to win it back — and later took in his old enslaver's widow there.
511
Prince Street — born behind it enslaved, later its owner
1861
Union forces seize Port Royal Sound, freeing the Beaufort district
1890
Named collector of the Port of Beaufort, a post he held for most of 23 years
"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."
— Robert Smalls, S.C. constitutional convention, 1895
