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July 4, 2020 27 mins

The second of our 2016 episodes on Robert Smalls. After his daring and impressive escape from slavery, Smalls was considered to be contraband, which was a term used for formerly enslaved people who joined the Union. But this was the beginning of an impressive career as a free man.

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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Happy Saturday listeners. Today we are finishing our two part
Saturday classic on Robert Small's, who served in both the
South Carolina and US governments after escaping from enslavement during
the Civil War. This episode originally came out February sixteen,
and Joy Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class,

(00:25):
a production of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Tracy and I'm Holly Fry. Today we're
picking up where we left off in the story of
Robert Small's so to very very briefly recap part one.

(00:46):
He was enslaved from birth in the McKee household of Beaufort,
South Carolina, which is pronounced differently from Beaufort, North Carolina,
even though they are both named after the same person.
During the Civil War, he made a dramatic escape aboard
a boat called the Planter, directly under the noses of
the Confederate military. His escape was a boost to morale

(01:06):
and the Union and an embarrassment for the Confederacy, and
it also served to rally other enslaved persons who heard
about it. He became something of a celebrity in the
North and a spokesperson for African Americans with the Union.
At the time of his escape, Robert Smalls was only
twenty three years old. He was hailed as a hero
and the Union newspapers, while the newspapers of the Confederacy

(01:29):
alternated between strongly denouncing what he'd done and then kind
of downplaying it while simultaneously casting tons of blame on
the White soldiers then officers that had failed to stop him.
Those officers who had left the boat overnight were indeed
court martialed, although it was eventually thrown out on a technicality.
From the time they reached the Union blockade, aboard the Planter,

(01:50):
Robert Smalls and his family were free. They were considered
to be contraband, which is a term that was used
to describe formerly enslaved people who joined the Union. But
this was just the beginning of an impressive career as
a freeman. When he reached the Onward, which was one
of the ships in the Union blockade, Robert Smalls is
reported to have said to Lieutenant J. F. Nicholas, who

(02:13):
was in command, quote, I thought this ship might be
of some use to Uncle Abe. I have some guns.
The Confederates took away from Fort Sumter and the Planter
was in fact extremely useful. She was fast, and she
rode very high in the water, so she was easy
to get in and out of shallow areas while still
carrying lots of men or cargo. But that Smalls himself

(02:35):
was a huge asset to the Union as well. References
to his competence, intelligence, and resourcefulness are all over the
letters and papers of the Union officers and soldiers who
encountered him, and the words of Admiral Samuel F. DuPont
quote this man, Robert Smalls, is superior to any who
has yet come into lines, intelligent as many of them

(02:56):
have been. His information has been most interesting, and portions
of it of the utmost importance. I shall continue to
employ Robert as a pilot aboard the Planter for the
inland Waters, which he appears to be very familiar pilot.
By the way, DuPont referring to him that way was
a promotion because he was enslaved. The highest rank that

(03:17):
Smalls could hold under the Confederacy was wheelman. He would
eventually become the Planter's captain. The way that used the
word wheelman was also basically what we have to call
pilots if they're enslaved. Like he was doing a pilot's job,
but they wouldn't call him that because he was enslaved.
His familiarity with the inland waters was of huge strate

(03:40):
strategic importance to the Union. He knew where mines had
been laid, he knew which spots were likely to be
used as ambushes, he knew which routes were used by smugglers.
He basically brought with him a mental atlas of the islands,
rivers and sounds, as well as Confederate fortifications in the area.
Robert Smalls was, how be to lend all of this

(04:01):
knowledge to the Union. Doing so meant that he was
working against slavery, rather than for it, as had been
the case when he was forced to work for the Confederacy.
Robert Small's military service for the Union began pretty much immediately,
but he couldn't actually join the Union Navy. To do that,
a person had to be literate. In spite of the

(04:21):
fact that the McKay family had been pretty lenient with
him during his enslavement, they hadn't allowed him to learn
to read. So to work around this restriction regarding his literacy,
he was instead made essentially a civilian contractor for the
Army and then detailed back over to the Navy. During
the Civil War, Smalls participated in seventeen different military engagements

(04:43):
aboard the Planter, aboard an iron clad ship called the
Kia Kook, and other ships as well. But in addition
to this time in combat, thanks to the fame that
followed in the wake of his escape, he also did
a lot of diplomatic fundraising and a recruitment work for
the Union. For a example, after it took port Royal
South Carolina, the Union wanted its residents to grow cotton.

(05:05):
They needed cotton for the war effort, but most of
the people living there had until the arrival of the
Union been enslaved on a cotton plantation. Continuing to grow
cotton felt like doing the same thing for a different master,
so a lot of people had planted food crops instead.
Smalls was sent in to negotiate. He was familiar with
the people in the area, and he was bilingual, able

(05:27):
to speak both English and Gula. Gola is an English
based creole that draws from several West African languages and
is spoken to the Sea islands of South Carolina and Georgia.
Smalls was able to negotiate a temporary compromised that allowed
the growing of both cotton and food crops. His powers
of persuasion were directed at the Union government as well.

(05:49):
As we mentioned in the previous installment of this story,
General David Hunter had on a couple of occasions tried
to free all of the enslaved persons in places where
he was in command, and the Federal government had on
both occasions shut this down, arguing that it was up
to Congress or the President and slavery, not a general
acting off on his own. In August eighteen sixty two,

(06:12):
Hunter met with Smalls on the subject of recruiting African
Americans into the Union military. Although Hunter had been encouraging
the acceptance of enslaved persons who reached Union lines into
military service in areas that were under his command, this
was not official military policy. Hunter made arrangements for Smalls
to go to Washington, d c. Traveling with Reverend Mansfield French,

(06:34):
to speak with the Secretary of War and when Stanton
and with other members of Lincoln's cabinet, Smalls met with
the Secretary of War in August twenty Then he met
with the Secretary of the Treasury and After that, he
and Reverend French met directly with Abraham Lincoln. Others, including
Frederick Douglas, had already advised the President to encourage the
recruitment of black soldiers into the Union Army. Smalls advised

(06:58):
the same and said that he would recruit ten thousand
men himself if the President allowed it. Ultimately, the President
and the Secretary of War authorized the enlistment of black
troops into the Union Army on August sixty two. Robert
Smalls added recruiting black troops into the rest of his
military work. He's reported to have recruited five thousand people,

(07:20):
but I didn't really find documentation of how that number
was calculated. And he did all of this wartime work
while the South had placed a four thousand dollar bounty
on him, along with an eight hundred dollar bounty on
his wife or children. Smalls continued his military service after
the Civil War, becoming a major general of the South

(07:41):
Carolina Militia. He also moved into political service, which is
what we will talk about after a brief word from
a sponsor. So before we get into Robert Small's time
in the South Carolina legislature, we need to set the

(08:02):
stage a little bit with what happened after the end
of the Civil War, because his political career directly parallels
other events in US history. The two biggest, most obvious
things that probably come to mind about the end of
the Civil War are that the states that had succeeded
rejoined the Union and slavery was abolished. But it wasn't
just as simple as the war is over, so we're

(08:23):
one country again, and also there's no more slavery. There
needed to be a plan for the former Confederate states
to demonstrate their loyalty to the United States, and they're
also needed to be a plan to address the social, political,
and economic inequality that stemmed from the institution of slavery,
and to try to rebuild the damage to the nation
and its infrastructure that had been caused by the war itself.

(08:44):
These plans and the years through which they played out
became known as Reconstruction. There is way too much reconstruction
history to cover in one episode or even ten episodes,
so this is an extremely basic overview. The grand idea
behind reconstruction was to rebuild and unify the nation and
to offset the inherent disadvantages that African Americans faced because

(09:07):
of the institution of slavery, but a lot went wrong. First,
there was significant back and forth between President Lincoln and
Congress about what the plan should be. Lincoln's plan boiled
down to the state's abolishing slavery and ten percent of
their eligible voters swearing an oath of allegiance. Congress felt
like this was not enough and passed the Wade Davis Bill,

(09:30):
which set a significantly higher bar for readmission, one that
the President felt was too high, so he refused to
sign it. A much bigger issue was that when Abraham Lincoln,
a Republican, had run for re election in eighteen sixty four,
he had selected Democrat Andrew Johnson of Tennessee is his
running mate, and the hope that it would bring him
the support of Democrats and perhaps voters with pro Confederate leanings,

(09:54):
along with other strategies. This worked, and Lincoln was re
elected by a landslide, but that meant that when a
Braham Lincoln was assassinated, Johnson became president. The same traits
that had led some voters to support Johnson's vice presidency
also led him to undermine some of the most important
elements of reconstruction. He granted an amnesty that affected numerous

(10:16):
ex Confederates, many of whom were then elected to the
new governments of the Southern States. He set standards for
readmission to the Union that didn't do much to address
the issues Congress was trying to fix. He vetoed civil
rights legislation, although Congress adopted it over his veto. He
ultimately declared that the Union was restored, even though many

(10:37):
of the rebelling states hadn't actually done one or more
of the very basic things that they were expected to
do to be readmitted to the Union. As a side note,
Johnson was also the first president to be impeached for
dismissing Edwin Stanton, Secretary of War, which violated the Tenure
of Office Act. And to be clear, there were strides
made to try to bring about equality after the Civil

(10:58):
War between eighteens. In eighteen seventy four and fifteenth amendments
to the U. S Constitution, which are known as the
Reconstruction Amendments, were ratified. The thirteenth abolished slavery. The fourteenth,
which we have talked about in a lot of episodes
on this show, gave all citizens due process and equal
protection under the law. In the fifteenth gave all male

(11:20):
citizens the right to vote, regardless of quote, race, color,
or previous condition of servitude. In eighteen sixty five, the
Freedman's Bureau was also established with the hope of providing education,
medical care, and assistance with labor contracts to previously enslaved persons,
but none of this was as broad, far reaching, or

(11:41):
effective as Congress had hoped At the conclusion of the war.
Sometimes people talk about the failure of reconstruction, but really
reconstruction was never given a chance to succeed. The election
of former Confederate leaders to Southern state governments led to
those governments actively working against recons struction. Many passed explicitly

(12:02):
discriminatory laws and policies. Almost immediately, as early as no
Member of eighteen sixty five, governments and former Confederate states
were passing black codes, which eventually evolved into Jim Crow
laws which denied African Americans basic legal rights and protections.
All of this was playing out as Robert Smalls became

(12:22):
a community and political leader, first in Baufort and then
in South Carolina after the war. Small as his wife
and their two surviving children returned to Beaufort, he had
been awarded fifteen hundred dollars for the capture of the
planter for quote rescuing her from the enemies of the government.
He had also saved a lot of his pay, as
well as other financial awards that he got from various

(12:45):
aspects of his service. He used six hundred and fifty
dollars of this money to buy the former McKee home
which would which had since been sold to another family
at a tax auction. From there, he used some of
his money to help establish business his and to help
other black families established businesses of their own. He acquired

(13:05):
land and property, and he helped build a black owned
railroad in Charleston. He also used some of his new
found wealth to assist his former owners, who had been
financially ruined by the war. He purchased a small house
for the mckeys, and he helped their children find jobs.
After Henry McKee died, Small Smalls had Mrs McKee cared
for in his own home. So I want to be

(13:28):
clear here. This turnabout does not somehow negate the fact
that the mckeys had owned Robert Smalls and his mother
and other people as property, and it doesn't erase the
institution of slavery as a whole, but Small's compassionate treatment
of the mckeyes and the other white citizens of Baufort
did wind up earning him the respect of many in
the white community. Robert Smalls also did a lot of

(13:51):
work in the area of education. He had begun educating
himself through private tutors during the war. Back in Bufort,
he resumed the practice, hiring a tutor, waking up at
five am every morning to study for two hours before
the rest of his day began. This desire to educate
himself carried over to a desire to educate his children
and the black community of South Carolina as a whole.

(14:14):
He helped form the Beaufort County School Board in February
eighteen sixty seven, and was immediately elected chair. The school
board then purchased property and established a school. It's unsurprising
given that after this much community involvement. After the war,
Smalls also moved into political leadership. In eighteen sixty seven,
he helped found the Republican Party in South Carolina, and

(14:37):
he was a delegate at seven different Republican national conventions.
Along with many other black civic leaders, he made huge
strides in getting South Carolina's black citizens, which at this
point outnumbered its white citizens, registered to vote. He was
elected to be a delegate at South Carolina's Constitutional Convention
in eighteen sixty seven. When the Constitutional Convention, which was

(15:00):
one of the requirements for South Carolina to rejoin the Union,
was convened in eighteen sixty eight, seventy six of its
one twenty four delegates were black. Smalls was appointed to
the Finance Committee, and he also proposed a resolution to
set up free public schools that were available to everyone.
This resolution ultimately led to the first public schools in

(15:21):
South Carolina. That same year, he was elected to a
two year term in the South Carolina House of Representatives.
That year, the majority of representatives in the South Carolina
General Assembly were black, and there were nine black and
twenty four white senators in the state Senate. In fact,
during reconstruction, South Carolina had more black citizens holding public
law office than any other state. South Carolina also had

(15:44):
more black representation in the United States Congress during reconstruction
than any other state as well. At the end of
his term in the House of Representatives, Smalls was elected
to the South Carolina State Senate, where he served two terms,
continuing to focus on education, economic opportunity, and investigation of
alleged corruption in the Republican Party. From there, Small's next

(16:07):
stop with the United States federal government, which we will
talk about after another brief sponsor break. In eighteen seventy four,
Robert Smalls was elected to the United States House of Representatives,
representing a majority black district that included Beaufort County, South Carolina.

(16:30):
Between eighteen seventy five and eighteen eighty six, he served
five non consecutive terms in the House of Representatives. He
continued to work towards the social and economic interests of
South Carolina, especially it's black citizens. He advocated for a
Navy base to be built in Port Royal, South Carolina,
which wound up becoming a significant contributor to the state's economy.

(16:50):
He also championed a bill that required the federal government
to return land that had been confiscated for nonpayment of taxes,
which allowed residents of South Carolina and many other states
to buy the land at a low cost. This measure
led to black citizens of Beaufort County owning most of
the land there in eighteen seventy six, one more time,

(17:11):
eighteen seventy six, Robert Smalls proposed an amendment to an
army reorganization bill which would have integrated the United States
Armed Forces. Although his efforts weren't successful, they did demonstrate
that people were genuinely attempting to desegregate the United States
Armed Forces long long before President Truman signed Executive Order

(17:32):
one in nineteen forty eight. However, during these same years,
an intense, violent backlash against reconstruction was growing more pronounced
and severe in many Southern states. The white supremacist organization
the Ku Klux Klan, had been established in eighteen sixty six,
and by eighteen seventy it had really spread throughout the South.

(17:53):
In eighteen seventy six, armed white men killed several black
members of the militia near Hamburg, South carol Lineup, and
that same year elections in South Carolina were overrun with
violence and voter intimidation in an effort to remove black
officials from power. In eighteen seventy seven, Republican Rutherford be

(18:14):
Hayes took office as President of the United States after
an incredibly long and controversial presidential election. His opponent, Democrat
Samuel J. Tilden, had won the popular vote, but when
it came to awarding electoral votes, the results reported by
the Republican and Democratic parties and three different states did
not match up. Consequently, it was up to Congress to

(18:36):
decide how to allot the electoral votes from these states.
In the end, a compromise was reached. Rutherford B. Hayes
would become president, but as Commander in chief of the Army,
he would have to issue the order to withdraw federal troops,
which had been part of the reconstruction effort from the South.
By this point, a lot of the early strides towards
equality that had been made during the earlier years of

(18:59):
reconstruction had already been erased, as states had passed black
codes and other discriminatory laws. State and local governments that
had briefly become a lot closer to reflecting the racial
makeup of their constituents didn't anymore. Voter intimidation and violence
against black citizens at the hand of white citizens were
really on the rise. Governments all over the South returned

(19:22):
to being mostly too entirely white, with many of the
white government leaders having ties to the former Confederacy. A
lot of people feel like this withdrawal of the federal
troops was really the final nail in the coffin of reconstruction,
and it was against this backdrop that in eighteen seventy seven,
Robert Smalls was accused, tried, and convicted of accepting a bribe.

(19:46):
The case boiled down to a man named Joseph Woodriff,
who claimed that he had bribed Smalls with five thousand
dollars on January nineteenth, eighteen seventy three. A key piece
of evidence was a check dated the nineteenth which was
made out to quote cash or bearer and not to
Robert Smalls. Another was a handwritten note written in pencil,

(20:07):
dated the eighteenth, the day before the check, with no
signatures on it. In spite of the fact that none
of what we just said really adds up, and the
fact that there were a lot of other inconsistencies and
unreliable witness testimonies involved in this trial, Smalls was found guilty.
The conviction was upheld on appeal, but he was later pardoned,
although the South Carolina press continued to use the issue

(20:29):
against him for the next two years. At this point,
most historians agree that this was really an effort to
try to keep Smalls out of office and not a
crime that he had committed at any point, even though
he was running in an overwhelmingly black Republican congressional district.
Smalls lost in the race for d u s House
in eighteen seventy eight to white Democrat George Tillman. He

(20:51):
continued to work within the Republican Party in the face
of ongoing harassment and threats and intimidation. He lost to
Tilban again in eighteen eighty. Although the results of the
eighteen eighty election were heavily contested, in the House of
Representatives ultimately decided to seat Smalls instead. More than eighteen
months into the two year term, in eighteen eighty two,

(21:13):
Smalls withdrew from the race in favor of another Republican candidate,
in part because his own political support from voters hadn't
yet recovered from the bribery charge. Robert Small's wife, Hannah,
died in eighteen eighty three. Smalls later married a woman
named Annie Wigg, and they had a son together, who
they named William Robert. Annie died a few years into
their marriage. In eighteen eighty four, Robert Smalls ran against

(21:37):
white Confederate veteran William Elliott senior and one. At this point,
jerry mandering had guaranteed that all but one of South
Carolina's districts had a majority white population, so black representation
in the South Carolina government and in South Carolina's representatives
to the federal government had dropped dramatically. In eighteen eighty six,

(21:57):
Elliott defeated Smalls in the race of the House of Representatives.
Although he was nominated in subsequent years, Smalls did not
return to elected office after this point. In eighteen eighty nine,
he was appointed collector of customs at the port of Bufort.
In eighteen nine, South Carolina Governor Benjamin R. Tilman urged

(22:18):
the state to convene another constitutional convention to revise the
state constitution, and it did because of all the work
that had been done to gerrymander the state intimidate black
voters and get black people out of public office. Nearly
all of the delegates to this constitutional convention were white.
No black delegates were appointed to the Committee on the

(22:38):
Rights of Suffrage. It was this committee that set up
as many barriers to black citizens voting as possible without
directly contradicting the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Over the strenuous objections and counter proposals of the six
Black Republican delegates to the Constitutional Convention, South Carolina adopted

(22:58):
a new constitution, and under this constitution, in order to vote,
people had to pass a literacy test, pay a poll tax,
and own at least three hundred dollars worth of property.
Being convicted of a number of crimes, including arson, burglary,
and robbery also stripped people of the right to vote. Combined,
these stipulations in the state constitution stripped most black citizens

(23:22):
of the right to vote, which continued to be the
case until the passage of the Voting Rights Act of
nineteen sixty five. Also included in the constitution the establishment
of segregated schools. Robert Smiles continued to hold his customs
post until nineteen twelve, when he was reappointed by William
Howard Taffe, but not confirmed by the Senate. By this point,

(23:44):
his health was really poor, and the Beaufort Customs House
closed after he left. He died at the age of
seventy six in nineteen fifteen. In the nineteen forties, Camp
Robert Smalls, which was part of the Great Lakes Naval
Training Center and was created to train black Navy seamen
while the Navy was segregated, was named after him. In
nineteen seventy six, Robert Smalls Bufort Home was added to

(24:07):
the National Register of Historic Places. He was awarded the
Palmeadow Cross on May thirteenth, two thousand two, the anniversary
of his capture of the Planter, in recognition of his
service to the South Carolina Militia. An army transport ship
was christened to the Major General Robert Smalls on April
two thousand four. At various points, multiple schools in Beaufort

(24:31):
County have born Robert Small's name. Robert Small's Middle School,
which is now Robert Small's International Academy, still does in
Some of its alumni protested that its logo, which featured
a man with a face that was darker on one
side and lighter on the other, wearing what appeared to
be Revolutionary war Eric garb, didn't accurately represent who Robert

(24:51):
Smalls was. The logo was temporarily changed to a G
for Generals, which was their school mascot, but the greater
discussion was still ongoing at the time. Recorded this episode
to end with a quote for the man himself. Quote
my race needs no special defense, for the past history
of them in this country proves them to be equal
of any people anywhere. All they need is an equal

(25:13):
chance in the battle of life. That is Robert Smalls.
I had a surprisingly difficult time researching this episode because
if you can find lots of children's books about Robert
Small's in a typical public library, there are a lot
of them. There are also numerous, like rigorous academic works

(25:39):
for adults about Robert Small's and to get any of them,
I had to go to a university library, like the
public library only had the children's book levels stuff. It's
a trend that frustrates me. Like, I am glad that
there are children's books about all of these people in
these stories. That's great. And I'm glad that they're available

(26:00):
for free at the public library. That's great. But it
kind of sucks, slash really sucks when a lot of
these stories are looked at as like inspirational stories for
children rather than things for adults to study seriously. Also,
so if you are interested in learning more about Robert Smalls,

(26:22):
the two books that I had to go to a
university library to get our gull of Statesman Robert Smalls
from Slavery to Congress by Edward A. Miller and yearning
to Breathe Free Robert Smalls of South Carolina and his
family is by Andrew Billingsley, and they are both really good.

(26:42):
Thank you so much for joining us today for this
Saturday classic. If you have heard any kind of email
address or maybe a Facebook you are l during the
course of the episode, that might be obsolete. It might
be doubly obsolete because we have changed our email address again.
You can now reach us at History podcast at i
heart radio dot com um and we're all over social
media at missed in History and you can subscribe to

(27:04):
our show on Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, the I heart
Radio app, and wherever else you listen to podcasts. Stuff
you Missed in History Class is a production of I
heart Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit
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