February 15, 2016 • 27 mins
Robert Smalls was born into slavery in Beaufort, South Carolina in 1839. He escaped from enslavement during the U.S. Civil War, in a particularly dramatic fashion.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class dot Com. Hello,
and welcome to the podcast I'm Trade. Maybe I have
a story that spans a lot of United States history.
We're going to talk about Robert Small's, who was enslaved
(00:22):
in South Carolina and then escape from enslavement during the
United States Civil War in a particularly dramatic fashion. His
escape is really only the beginning of the story, though
from there he went on to serve in both houses
of the South Carolina Legislature as well as in the
United States House of Representatives. On top of having carried
out this heroic escape and then gone on to serve
(00:44):
in both the South Carolina and federal governments. You can
look at Robert Small's and his life as sort of
a microcosm of the world that he lived in because
of when and how he lived. His story is like
an overview of slavery in the American South and the
Civil War and re instruction and the rise of Jim Crow.
It's this enormous arc of American history that plays out
(01:05):
through one person's life. So for that reason, we're going
to look at this story in two parts, the first
covering Robert Small's childhood, his young, adulthood and his escape,
and then Part two will get into his Civil War
service to his postwar years in political life, and his
legacy today. Robert Smalls was born on April five, eight
thirty nine, in Beaufort, South Carolina. His mother was named
(01:29):
Lydia Polite, and she was enslaved in the household of
the McKee family, where she worked as a nanny. She
had been owned by the McKee family since birth and
had worked in the McKee home since she was about
ten years old. Prior to that, she had been working
as a field hand when she was in her forties.
When Robert was born, he had one older brother who
was more than twenty years his senior. I want to
(01:51):
take a brief moment to say that if you were
from virtually anywhere besides South Carolina, and you know of
a place spelled b e a U f O RT,
probably you say it Beaufort, please do not write to
us say said it wrong. In South Carolina. For some reason,
it is Beaufort, even though most of these places that
most other people say Beaufort are named after the same
(02:14):
person who pronounced it Beaufort. I have no explanation for
why this pronunciation in South Carolina is different. Also unknown,
actually is the identity of Robert's father. Historians and biographers
have suggested several different candidates, but there's no real evidence
to support any of them. The most commonly suggested potential
(02:36):
father is Henry McKee, the patriarch of the McKee family
at the time. Much of this speculation is because Lydia
and Henry lived on the same property for many years,
including the years that surrounded Robert's birth, but Lydia actually
helped raise Henry, and none of the other women that
Henry owned are supposed to have had a child by him,
so even though he's sort of the most popular theorized father,
(03:00):
we don't actually know. And regardless, Henry McKee and the
rest of the McKee household treated Lydia and her son
with a degree of leniency and benevolence, including Lydia being
able to keep and raise him herself. Robert grew up
playing with Henry McKee's own children, since he and his
mother worked in the house rather than in the fields.
(03:21):
Their positions also came with certain privileges. Mother and son
were allowed to attend church and to visit Lydia's family
who were enslaved on the nearby Ashdale Plantation, a Sea
Island cotton plantation, and that was where Lydia herself had
worked before being moved to the house. However, even though
by all accounts Robert and his mother were treated with
(03:43):
some kindness and flexibility, Robert and his mother were still enslaved.
They had no prospects were becoming free. By this point,
slavery in the United States had evolved into an institution
that was both hereditary and tied to race. Unless enslaved
people were that free by their owners, managed to purchase
themselves or managed to escape, they were held in bondage
(04:05):
for life, and any children who were born to any
enslaved person were enslaved as well. Henry McKee had inherited
Lydia from his father, and then Robert had been enslaved
from birth. So we're not talking about how they were
treated relatively kindly as a way to excuse the fact
that that enslavement was going on. Like that's the thing
(04:26):
that people bring up on the internet elite a lot,
like not all slave owners were awful. That doesn't excuse
the fact that they were enslaved for life with no
potential to be free. Because the institution of slavery in
the United States had become tied to race, a collection
of laws and social attitudes developed that were also based
(04:48):
on race, and they affected virtually all black people, whether
or not they were or ever had been enslaved. For example,
a number of fugitive slave laws allowed for the capture
and return of escaped slaves to their owners, and since
slavery was tied to race, all black people in the
United States were at a risk of being targeted by
(05:08):
these laws, regardless of whether they had ever been enslaved. Overwhelmingly,
free people of African descent were also explicitly denied a
number of legal rights and protections, including the right to vote.
So because his owners treated him comparatively gently in his childhood,
and because his mother's work in the house meant that
(05:29):
they were both afforded more privileges than many other slaves,
the young Robert Smalls was not really conscious of a
lot of these a lot of these realities. His mother,
on the other hand, absolutely was. She was afraid that
Robert would grow into manhood when white society would view
him as being inherently threatening. Without understanding the realities of
(05:49):
enslavement and the risks that were inherent in having black skin,
especially in a slave state. She knew that if he
was sold to another family, one that might not be
as flexible or treat him as kindly. Without understanding these realities,
his well being and even his life could be in danger.
So as part of his education, she would take him
(06:10):
to Ashdale Plantation, where her family was still enslaved, to
see and experience what the lives of field hands were like.
The McKee family had long allowed Lydia to visit her
family at the plantation, and, probably unaware of her motive here,
they allowed her to take Robert with her when she visited.
She would also take him to the auction site to
(06:30):
see children, sometimes much younger than set himself, being bought
and sold. She'd also take him to the whipping post
in Bufort, where enslaved people were publicly whipped as a punishment,
to witness what happened to them there. In one case,
an enslaved woman who was being publicly whipped turned out,
unbeknownst to him, to be his friends Susan. While this
(06:51):
did certainly educate Smalls about the reality of slavery, it
also understandably made him really angry. A number of writers
historians describe his middle childhood as quote defiance. The curfew
for slaves was at sundown, and a bell would ring
every night to signal that it was time for the
enslaved people to all be at home. Smalls resented this curfew,
(07:14):
especially when he was out playing with white children who
didn't have to go home, so he started breaking curfew,
along with many of the other rules that governed the
minutia of the slaves lives. By the time his age
reached double digits, he was winding up in Beaufort jail
fairly often, with his owner having to bail him out.
Small's mother once again feared for his safety, so in
(07:37):
eighteen fifty one, she asked that he'd be sent away
from Beaufort and instead rented out in Charleston. Renting out
an enslaved person's labor it was a pretty common practice
since it allowed owners to continue to profit from their
slaves labor even if they personally didn't have any work
for them to do right then. So McKee agreed, and
going to Charleston was a huge change in Small's life,
(08:00):
and the huge opportunity and We're going to talk about
the how and why of that after we pause for
a brief word from a sponsor. Going to Charleston gave
Robert Small's a lot more freedom of movement than he
had had in Bufort, as well as a lot more
opportunity to learn and to work. The black population of Charleston,
which included both free and enslaved people, often outnumbered its
(08:20):
white population, and its economy supported a lot of different
types of work. There were schools for free black children,
which Smalls couldn't personally attend, but he could learn from
people who went there. He was also able to attend
church and to participate in community organizations. He also joined
several secret charities that were meant to help Charleston's enslaved
(08:40):
population work toward freedom. His first jobs were suited to
his youth. He lit lamps, he waited in bus tables
at a restaurant, and he did odd jobs along the waterfront.
He also made a little extra money by buying cheap
tobacco and candy and reselling them for a higher price. Eventually,
he went to work with a man named John Simmons,
(09:01):
where he started getting extremely valuable experience in all sorts
of jobs and trades related to the water. He learned
to be a stevedore, a sailmaker, a rigger, and a sailor.
He became an expert at navigating the complex waterways around
the South Carolina and Georgia coasts. Eventually he was making
sixteen dollars a month, a dollar of which he was
(09:22):
allowed to keep when he turned the rest of his
pay back over to Henry McKee. When Smalls was sixteen,
he meant Hannah Jones, who was aged thirty who worked
as a hotel mate in Charleston. She was being hired
out to the hotel by her owners, the Kingman family.
She had two daughters, Clara and Charlotte, whose father is unknown,
(09:42):
and they all lived together behind the Kingman family home.
Soon Robert and Hannah were spending most of their free
hours together, which was mostly Saturday nights and then on
Sundays when they went to church. Within a couple of years,
Robert and Hannah wanted to get married, and they also
wanted to live together as white couples and free black
couples were allowed to do. Enslaved people, on the other hand,
(10:04):
were generally required to live in quarters provided by their owners,
which were usually separate regardless of their marital status, so
before getting married, they first got permission from the Kingman's
and the McKees to live together as a couple. That
was actually the easy part, and both sets of owners agreed,
But the harder part is that Robert and Hannah didn't
(10:24):
just want to live together in slave quarters behind somebody's house.
They wanted to live together in their own home. So
they each also had to get their owners to agree
to allow them to do extra work beyond what they
were hired out to do, and then keep some of
the profits so that they could afford the rent and
living expenses that would come with their own place. Eventually
both owners agreed, the couple was married at the McKee
(10:48):
home on December fifty six, with Henry McKee pronouncing them married.
When they returned to Charleston, they lived over some stables,
and Robert arranged to pay the rent and ex change
for keeping the stables clean, meaning they got to keep
the money they had negotiated with the mckeys and the
Kingman's as needed for their rent. Even though living above
(11:08):
the stables gave them a greater amount of independence and
autonomy than most enslaved couples, their marriage did not offer
them any personal or legal protections. Marriages between enslaved people
basically had no legal standing. Smalls knew that if they chose,
the Kingman's could sell Hannah somewhere else, or they could
hire her labor away from Charleston. The possibility of her
(11:31):
being sold or otherwise moved away from him became increasingly
threatening as they had children together over the next few years.
So Robert first asked his owner if he might have
permission to buy his wife and children, and once that
was secured, in spite of the fact that it was
illegal for slaves to own other slaves, he asked the
Kingman's if he could buy Hannah and their children, and Mr.
(11:54):
Kingman said yes for eight hundred dollars. Smalls only had
one hundred dollars Kingman agreed to accept as a down payment.
From that point on, Smalls and his wife put all
their resources into saving up the additional seven hundred dollars.
They never actually had to pay it, though. On April
eighteen sixty two, fifteen enslaved persons commandeered a barge that
(12:18):
belonged to the Confederate Quartermaster Department and they managed to
sail that barge to a Union ship. It's possible but uncertain,
that Smalls had heard about this and it inspired him
to take his own action. It's also possible that he
had heard about Major General David Hunter of the Union Army, who,
in addition to making several attempts to just free all
enslaved persons in the territory that he commanded, also ordered
(12:41):
that any black person who could reach the Union line
be considered free and accepted into military service. Regardless of
Smalls soon made a similar escape himself. Robert Small's escape
from slavery took place during the United States Civil War.
This war had been brewing for decades before it actually began.
As tide turned against slavery in the Northern States, the
(13:03):
Northern States began abolishing slavery, passing laws to prevent the
return of escaped slaves to the states where they had
been held in bondage, and otherwise trying to pressure the
remaining slave states into abolishing the practice as well. The
slave states dissatisfaction with all this increased dramatically in eighteen fifty,
when California, a free state, was admitted into the Union
(13:25):
without a corresponding slave state to preserve the balance of
power and Congress. This slave state free state pairing is
something that we talked about recently in our episode on
the Honey War. Every state admitted after eighteen fifty was
also free, and each new free statement that the slave
states had less and less power and faced greater and
greater risk of Congress taking action to abolish slavery entirely.
(13:48):
Slaveholding states had been threatening to seceed from the Union
for decades. A number of compromises, including the Missouri Compromise
we also discussed when we talked about the Honey War,
had kept the Union to gather temporarily, But as the
eighteen sixty presidential election approached, the prevailing wisdom was that
the election of a Republican president would guarantee that slaveholding
(14:09):
states would begin to break away from the United States.
That Republican president was Abraham Lincoln, elected on November sixth,
eighteen sixty. On December twenty of that year, South Carolina
became the first state to secede. In its Declaration of
Causes of Secession, South Carolina outlined its reasons for leaving
the Union after citing the Declaration of Independence and stressing
(14:33):
repeatedly that the Revolutionary War led to each former colony
becoming a quote free, sovereign and independent state. The declaration
of causes went on to read, quote an increasing hostility
on the part of the non slaveholding states to the
institution of slavery has led to a disregard of their obligations,
and the laws of the general government have ceased to
(14:55):
affect the objects of the Constitution. South Carolina's Declaration of
Causes then raises objections to several other states passing laws
that fugitive slaves would not be returned from there to
their slaveholding states of origin. By the time Lincoln was
inaugurated on February first, eighteen sixty one, six more states
had succeeded. Three of them issued their own declarations of causes,
(15:18):
all of which make extensive references to the issue of slavery,
the refusal of non slaveholding states to return escape slaves
to their former owners, and efforts took her tail or
abolished slavery. The first shots of the United States Civil
War were fired on April twelfth, eighteen sixty one, at
Fort Sumter, a then federal fort in Charleston Harbor, where
(15:40):
Confederate General P. G. T. Beauregard opened fire on the fort.
The fort's commander, Major Robert Anderson, surrendered after two days.
With the nation now actively at war, more States seceded
from the Union and joined the Confederacy. Later that year,
the Confederacy least a wooden steamer named the Planter, from
(16:00):
owner John Ferguson, who had been using it to carry
cotton along the Peade River in South Carolina. The Confederate
Navy also conscripted its enslaved crew, One of them was
it's wheelman, Robert Small's. Once under the control of the
Confederate military, the Planter shifted from hauling cotton to carrying
(16:20):
supplies between various fortifications around Charleston, as well as laying
mines then referred to as torpedoes in the waterways. Often
these supplies consisted of munitions and ordinance. The Planter itself
was also armed with a cannon and a howitzer. On thirteenth,
eighteen sixty two, in addition to its own armaments, the
(16:41):
Planter was carrying four guns and a gun carriage. The
guns were bound for Charleston's middle Ground battery at Fort
Ripley and the carriage for Fort Sumter. While working aboard
the Planter, small then twenty three, had proven himself to
be extremely reliable and trustworthy, so much so that on
the night of the thirteenth, the three white officers who
(17:01):
were who were assigned to the Planter, Captain C. J. Ralia,
Pilot Samuel H. Smith, and Engineer Zerik Pitcher, left it
with no white officer aboard. They went into Charleston for
the night, probably to socialize or to visit family. This
is actually grounds for court martial. For a couple of weeks,
the smallest had been putting together a plan that would
(17:22):
allow him to take advantage of just such an opportunity.
This was not the first time that the officers had
gone ashore overnight, so at about three am, he donned
the captain's jacket and his big straw hat, adopted his
usual posture, set a prayer, and moved the Planter out
of the wharf, which laid directly across from the headquarters
of Confederate Brigadier General Roswell Ripley. From there they proceeded
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to the North Atlantic Wharf, where his wife and children,
along with several other enslaved people, were concealed aboard another
boat called the Edawah. Once everyone hidden in the Edawah
was aboard the Planter and their number total nine men,
five women, and three children. Their goal was to reach
the Union blockade, ten ships arranged off the coast to
(18:08):
prevent the Confederacy from using the Atlantic Ocean for things
like trade or troop movements. To do so, they had
to run up the South Carolina flag and Confederate colors,
then successfully make their way past five different Confederate sentry stations.
This required sounding the correct signals and responding correctly to
signals from the outposts, plus nobody could notice that there
(18:30):
were no white people on this boat. You'll see a
lot of like memes floating around the internet about Robert
Smalls and how awesome he was, and a lot of
them claimed that he read a code book in order
to do this, but at this point he was not
actually literate, so it's more likely that he had observed
what the officers were doing and memorized what they were doing,
(18:52):
and then recalled all of that flawlessly during this escape.
The last outpost that they had to get past was
Fort Sumter itself. In theory, they could have given the
Fort a wide berth and maybe avoided this one last
exchange of coded signals, but Smalls really wanted it to
look like they were just the normal ship doing something
(19:13):
completely routine, albeit at an extremely early hour, for as
long as possible. Exchanging that last set of signals with
Fort Sumter was not the most dangerous part of this escape, though.
Once they received the okay to continue, they had to
get out of range of the Fort's guns before striking
their Confederate colors. If they struck the colors too soon,
(19:34):
they would be shot and sunk by the Confederacy, But
if they waited too late, the ships in the blockade
would probably think they were on a ramming course, so
they would be shot and sunk by the Union instead.
They had actually made no plans for what to do
if they wound up being captured. If it came down
to it, they were ready to fight back against the
Confederacy with the armaments that were aboard the ship, and
(19:55):
to blow up the ship's boiler if necessary, even though
that would mean the deaths of we went on board. Basically,
the only things that they considered to be acceptable outcomes
in this escape were escaping or death. Being enslaved again
not on the list. At sunrise, as they approached the
Union ship onward, Robert Smalls and his men took down
(20:16):
their Confederate flag and they ran up a white sheet
it was possibly stolen from the hotel where his wife worked,
and the Union gladly accepted their surrender and took possession
of the planter. This meant that Robert Smalls, his family,
and their friends who had escaped with them were now free.
And we're going to talk about what happened after that, because,
like we said, this is really the beginning of a
(20:38):
much longer story and we're going to talk about that
in our next episode. Yeah, he basically just stole a
Confederate ship out from under the nose of the Confederacy
and handed it over to the Union. Was like, Hi, guys,
I brought you this boat. Well, and we might get
emails about the wordship versus boat that just we know,
don't bother. Well, and I just I love this story
(21:03):
because it's just the whole thing took such ingenuity and
like craftiness at every turn that you you just cannot
help but be wowed by it. It also shows how
difficult and dangerous and rare it actually was, or enslaved
people to escape. I mean at this point, this was
(21:24):
during the Civil War, there were perhaps more opportunities for
people to escape, just because there was so much more
chaosks going on, and there were Union troops who were
actively interested in helping people to escape to freedom. But
one of the things that that people sort of misbelieve
about enslavement and about the Civil War is that there
(21:46):
was just an enormous, enormous influx of of of enslaved
people who were successfully escaping all the time. And one
of the reasons for that is that most of the
first person knowledge that we have about enslaved and especially
like in the United States the institution of slavery is
from people who did successfully escape and then went on
(22:09):
to write a slave narrative. And this is like a
tiny it's not a it's not an accurate sample of
all enslaved people. It's like the slave narratives that we
have came from the people who were able to escape
and then we're able either able to learn to read
and write, or we're able to find someone to help
them write um right down their story. And it's not
(22:33):
an actually representative sample of all of the enslaved people
in the United States. So, uh, still an awesome story. Um,
and it's it's very intriguing to me how because he
was from South Carolina and because of when he was
born and where he lived and what he did, so
(22:53):
much of his life parallels the arc of United States
history that ran through these decades. It's a good one.
Do you also have some listener mail for us? Do
I have one short one that I'm going to read
along with one that's slightly longer. Uh. They are about
our Honeywar podcast. And for the short one is from
Ryan and Ryan says, Hi, Holly and Tracy writing about
(23:15):
the boundary lines dispute for the Honeywar episode. You thought
it was funny and it is that they would go
through all the trouble to re measure and then use
the original. Anyways, as a civil engineering student, we are
required to take a surveying class. In said class, we
learned that even currently a surveyor is always right, regardless
of if they actually are the lines of measurements they
(23:37):
take are legally correct and binding. Kind of funny, just
a fun to a fun tidbit if you didn't know.
I love the podcast. Ryan Thanks Ryan, I did not
know that, but it makes total sense. Basically, even if
the survey is wrong, the survey is right. Uh. The
other one is from Amanda. Amanda says, Hi, Tracy and Holly,
thanks for such a great podcast. I'm without a radio
(23:58):
in the car, so I listened to the podcast downloaded
on my iPhone to and from work. Sometimes I sit
in the car and wait till the podcast is over
before going into the building. That actually, I'm gonna take
a break from the letter. That pleases me a lot
because that's the thing the NPR likes to brag about.
So I feel like we're in good company with causing
people to have drive away moments. I recently listened to
(24:19):
the honey Wars podcast and it reminded me of a
more recent episode in Town that is fraught with similar
childishness presented in the town squabwal Note. I'm in Newmarket, Ontario,
about forty five minutes north of Toronto, Canada, in the
small town twenty four thousand of East Willhelmbury, just north
of Newmarket. The then mayor decided to get his chainsaw
(24:41):
and trim the trees that blocked his view in the
mayoral office. At town Hall. He got a little carry
away and trams trees on the neighboring property, which is
the historic site of the Sharon Temple, built more than
a hundred and seventy five years ago. The trees were
planted around the same time, more than a hundred seventy
five years ago. He did such a botch job the
(25:03):
trees eventually had to be removed because they were deemed unsafe.
That incident was known as the Sharon Temple tree massacre.
Just saying childishness from state parentheses city officials is not
something of the past. And then the uh and then
Amanda sent lots of links to articles about this incident.
Thank you, Okay, I will confess that often I pick
(25:28):
things in the podcast that, even if we don't specifically
say it on the podcast, are things that still happened today.
So uh so I was glad to get this more
current example. UM. Thank you so much, Amanda, and thank
you so much Ryan for your emails. If you would
like to write to us, we were a history podcast
(25:48):
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bit more about what we've talked about today, come to
our parent company's website, which is how stuff Works dot com.
(26:11):
Put the word escape into the search bar. You will
find an article that is called breaking out a Dozen
Great Escapes, which does not talk about this particular one
that we discussed today, but that does talk about some
of history's other extremely dramatic and ingenious escapes. You can
also come to our website, which is missed in history
dot com, and you will find show notes for all
(26:31):
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dot do you do you
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class dot Com. Hello,
and welcome to the podcast I'm Trade. Maybe I have
a story that spans a lot of United States history.
We're going to talk about Robert Small's, who was enslaved
(00:22):
in South Carolina and then escape from enslavement during the
United States Civil War in a particularly dramatic fashion. His
escape is really only the beginning of the story, though
from there he went on to serve in both houses
of the South Carolina Legislature as well as in the
United States House of Representatives. On top of having carried
out this heroic escape and then gone on to serve
(00:44):
in both the South Carolina and federal governments. You can
look at Robert Small's and his life as sort of
a microcosm of the world that he lived in because
of when and how he lived. His story is like
an overview of slavery in the American South and the
Civil War and re instruction and the rise of Jim Crow.
It's this enormous arc of American history that plays out
(01:05):
through one person's life. So for that reason, we're going
to look at this story in two parts, the first
covering Robert Small's childhood, his young, adulthood and his escape,
and then Part two will get into his Civil War
service to his postwar years in political life, and his
legacy today. Robert Smalls was born on April five, eight
thirty nine, in Beaufort, South Carolina. His mother was named
(01:29):
Lydia Polite, and she was enslaved in the household of
the McKee family, where she worked as a nanny. She
had been owned by the McKee family since birth and
had worked in the McKee home since she was about
ten years old. Prior to that, she had been working
as a field hand when she was in her forties.
When Robert was born, he had one older brother who
was more than twenty years his senior. I want to
(01:51):
take a brief moment to say that if you were
from virtually anywhere besides South Carolina, and you know of
a place spelled b e a U f O RT,
probably you say it Beaufort, please do not write to
us say said it wrong. In South Carolina. For some reason,
it is Beaufort, even though most of these places that
most other people say Beaufort are named after the same
(02:14):
person who pronounced it Beaufort. I have no explanation for
why this pronunciation in South Carolina is different. Also unknown,
actually is the identity of Robert's father. Historians and biographers
have suggested several different candidates, but there's no real evidence
to support any of them. The most commonly suggested potential
(02:36):
father is Henry McKee, the patriarch of the McKee family
at the time. Much of this speculation is because Lydia
and Henry lived on the same property for many years,
including the years that surrounded Robert's birth, but Lydia actually
helped raise Henry, and none of the other women that
Henry owned are supposed to have had a child by him,
so even though he's sort of the most popular theorized father,
(03:00):
we don't actually know. And regardless, Henry McKee and the
rest of the McKee household treated Lydia and her son
with a degree of leniency and benevolence, including Lydia being
able to keep and raise him herself. Robert grew up
playing with Henry McKee's own children, since he and his
mother worked in the house rather than in the fields.
(03:21):
Their positions also came with certain privileges. Mother and son
were allowed to attend church and to visit Lydia's family
who were enslaved on the nearby Ashdale Plantation, a Sea
Island cotton plantation, and that was where Lydia herself had
worked before being moved to the house. However, even though
by all accounts Robert and his mother were treated with
(03:43):
some kindness and flexibility, Robert and his mother were still enslaved.
They had no prospects were becoming free. By this point,
slavery in the United States had evolved into an institution
that was both hereditary and tied to race. Unless enslaved
people were that free by their owners, managed to purchase
themselves or managed to escape, they were held in bondage
(04:05):
for life, and any children who were born to any
enslaved person were enslaved as well. Henry McKee had inherited
Lydia from his father, and then Robert had been enslaved
from birth. So we're not talking about how they were
treated relatively kindly as a way to excuse the fact
that that enslavement was going on. Like that's the thing
(04:26):
that people bring up on the internet elite a lot,
like not all slave owners were awful. That doesn't excuse
the fact that they were enslaved for life with no
potential to be free. Because the institution of slavery in
the United States had become tied to race, a collection
of laws and social attitudes developed that were also based
(04:48):
on race, and they affected virtually all black people, whether
or not they were or ever had been enslaved. For example,
a number of fugitive slave laws allowed for the capture
and return of escaped slaves to their owners, and since
slavery was tied to race, all black people in the
United States were at a risk of being targeted by
(05:08):
these laws, regardless of whether they had ever been enslaved. Overwhelmingly,
free people of African descent were also explicitly denied a
number of legal rights and protections, including the right to vote.
So because his owners treated him comparatively gently in his childhood,
and because his mother's work in the house meant that
(05:29):
they were both afforded more privileges than many other slaves,
the young Robert Smalls was not really conscious of a
lot of these a lot of these realities. His mother,
on the other hand, absolutely was. She was afraid that
Robert would grow into manhood when white society would view
him as being inherently threatening. Without understanding the realities of
(05:49):
enslavement and the risks that were inherent in having black skin,
especially in a slave state. She knew that if he
was sold to another family, one that might not be
as flexible or treat him as kindly. Without understanding these realities,
his well being and even his life could be in danger.
So as part of his education, she would take him
(06:10):
to Ashdale Plantation, where her family was still enslaved, to
see and experience what the lives of field hands were like.
The McKee family had long allowed Lydia to visit her
family at the plantation, and, probably unaware of her motive here,
they allowed her to take Robert with her when she visited.
She would also take him to the auction site to
(06:30):
see children, sometimes much younger than set himself, being bought
and sold. She'd also take him to the whipping post
in Bufort, where enslaved people were publicly whipped as a punishment,
to witness what happened to them there. In one case,
an enslaved woman who was being publicly whipped turned out,
unbeknownst to him, to be his friends Susan. While this
(06:51):
did certainly educate Smalls about the reality of slavery, it
also understandably made him really angry. A number of writers
historians describe his middle childhood as quote defiance. The curfew
for slaves was at sundown, and a bell would ring
every night to signal that it was time for the
enslaved people to all be at home. Smalls resented this curfew,
(07:14):
especially when he was out playing with white children who
didn't have to go home, so he started breaking curfew,
along with many of the other rules that governed the
minutia of the slaves lives. By the time his age
reached double digits, he was winding up in Beaufort jail
fairly often, with his owner having to bail him out.
Small's mother once again feared for his safety, so in
(07:37):
eighteen fifty one, she asked that he'd be sent away
from Beaufort and instead rented out in Charleston. Renting out
an enslaved person's labor it was a pretty common practice
since it allowed owners to continue to profit from their
slaves labor even if they personally didn't have any work
for them to do right then. So McKee agreed, and
going to Charleston was a huge change in Small's life,
(08:00):
and the huge opportunity and We're going to talk about
the how and why of that after we pause for
a brief word from a sponsor. Going to Charleston gave
Robert Small's a lot more freedom of movement than he
had had in Bufort, as well as a lot more
opportunity to learn and to work. The black population of Charleston,
which included both free and enslaved people, often outnumbered its
(08:20):
white population, and its economy supported a lot of different
types of work. There were schools for free black children,
which Smalls couldn't personally attend, but he could learn from
people who went there. He was also able to attend
church and to participate in community organizations. He also joined
several secret charities that were meant to help Charleston's enslaved
(08:40):
population work toward freedom. His first jobs were suited to
his youth. He lit lamps, he waited in bus tables
at a restaurant, and he did odd jobs along the waterfront.
He also made a little extra money by buying cheap
tobacco and candy and reselling them for a higher price. Eventually,
he went to work with a man named John Simmons,
(09:01):
where he started getting extremely valuable experience in all sorts
of jobs and trades related to the water. He learned
to be a stevedore, a sailmaker, a rigger, and a sailor.
He became an expert at navigating the complex waterways around
the South Carolina and Georgia coasts. Eventually he was making
sixteen dollars a month, a dollar of which he was
(09:22):
allowed to keep when he turned the rest of his
pay back over to Henry McKee. When Smalls was sixteen,
he meant Hannah Jones, who was aged thirty who worked
as a hotel mate in Charleston. She was being hired
out to the hotel by her owners, the Kingman family.
She had two daughters, Clara and Charlotte, whose father is unknown,
(09:42):
and they all lived together behind the Kingman family home.
Soon Robert and Hannah were spending most of their free
hours together, which was mostly Saturday nights and then on
Sundays when they went to church. Within a couple of years,
Robert and Hannah wanted to get married, and they also
wanted to live together as white couples and free black
couples were allowed to do. Enslaved people, on the other hand,
(10:04):
were generally required to live in quarters provided by their owners,
which were usually separate regardless of their marital status, so
before getting married, they first got permission from the Kingman's
and the McKees to live together as a couple. That
was actually the easy part, and both sets of owners agreed,
But the harder part is that Robert and Hannah didn't
(10:24):
just want to live together in slave quarters behind somebody's house.
They wanted to live together in their own home. So
they each also had to get their owners to agree
to allow them to do extra work beyond what they
were hired out to do, and then keep some of
the profits so that they could afford the rent and
living expenses that would come with their own place. Eventually
both owners agreed, the couple was married at the McKee
(10:48):
home on December fifty six, with Henry McKee pronouncing them married.
When they returned to Charleston, they lived over some stables,
and Robert arranged to pay the rent and ex change
for keeping the stables clean, meaning they got to keep
the money they had negotiated with the mckeys and the
Kingman's as needed for their rent. Even though living above
(11:08):
the stables gave them a greater amount of independence and
autonomy than most enslaved couples, their marriage did not offer
them any personal or legal protections. Marriages between enslaved people
basically had no legal standing. Smalls knew that if they chose,
the Kingman's could sell Hannah somewhere else, or they could
hire her labor away from Charleston. The possibility of her
(11:31):
being sold or otherwise moved away from him became increasingly
threatening as they had children together over the next few years.
So Robert first asked his owner if he might have
permission to buy his wife and children, and once that
was secured, in spite of the fact that it was
illegal for slaves to own other slaves, he asked the
Kingman's if he could buy Hannah and their children, and Mr.
(11:54):
Kingman said yes for eight hundred dollars. Smalls only had
one hundred dollars Kingman agreed to accept as a down payment.
From that point on, Smalls and his wife put all
their resources into saving up the additional seven hundred dollars.
They never actually had to pay it, though. On April
eighteen sixty two, fifteen enslaved persons commandeered a barge that
(12:18):
belonged to the Confederate Quartermaster Department and they managed to
sail that barge to a Union ship. It's possible but uncertain,
that Smalls had heard about this and it inspired him
to take his own action. It's also possible that he
had heard about Major General David Hunter of the Union Army, who,
in addition to making several attempts to just free all
enslaved persons in the territory that he commanded, also ordered
(12:41):
that any black person who could reach the Union line
be considered free and accepted into military service. Regardless of
Smalls soon made a similar escape himself. Robert Small's escape
from slavery took place during the United States Civil War.
This war had been brewing for decades before it actually began.
As tide turned against slavery in the Northern States, the
(13:03):
Northern States began abolishing slavery, passing laws to prevent the
return of escaped slaves to the states where they had
been held in bondage, and otherwise trying to pressure the
remaining slave states into abolishing the practice as well. The
slave states dissatisfaction with all this increased dramatically in eighteen fifty,
when California, a free state, was admitted into the Union
(13:25):
without a corresponding slave state to preserve the balance of
power and Congress. This slave state free state pairing is
something that we talked about recently in our episode on
the Honey War. Every state admitted after eighteen fifty was
also free, and each new free statement that the slave
states had less and less power and faced greater and
greater risk of Congress taking action to abolish slavery entirely.
(13:48):
Slaveholding states had been threatening to seceed from the Union
for decades. A number of compromises, including the Missouri Compromise
we also discussed when we talked about the Honey War,
had kept the Union to gather temporarily, But as the
eighteen sixty presidential election approached, the prevailing wisdom was that
the election of a Republican president would guarantee that slaveholding
(14:09):
states would begin to break away from the United States.
That Republican president was Abraham Lincoln, elected on November sixth,
eighteen sixty. On December twenty of that year, South Carolina
became the first state to secede. In its Declaration of
Causes of Secession, South Carolina outlined its reasons for leaving
the Union after citing the Declaration of Independence and stressing
(14:33):
repeatedly that the Revolutionary War led to each former colony
becoming a quote free, sovereign and independent state. The declaration
of causes went on to read, quote an increasing hostility
on the part of the non slaveholding states to the
institution of slavery has led to a disregard of their obligations,
and the laws of the general government have ceased to
(14:55):
affect the objects of the Constitution. South Carolina's Declaration of
Causes then raises objections to several other states passing laws
that fugitive slaves would not be returned from there to
their slaveholding states of origin. By the time Lincoln was
inaugurated on February first, eighteen sixty one, six more states
had succeeded. Three of them issued their own declarations of causes,
(15:18):
all of which make extensive references to the issue of slavery,
the refusal of non slaveholding states to return escape slaves
to their former owners, and efforts took her tail or
abolished slavery. The first shots of the United States Civil
War were fired on April twelfth, eighteen sixty one, at
Fort Sumter, a then federal fort in Charleston Harbor, where
(15:40):
Confederate General P. G. T. Beauregard opened fire on the fort.
The fort's commander, Major Robert Anderson, surrendered after two days.
With the nation now actively at war, more States seceded
from the Union and joined the Confederacy. Later that year,
the Confederacy least a wooden steamer named the Planter, from
(16:00):
owner John Ferguson, who had been using it to carry
cotton along the Peade River in South Carolina. The Confederate
Navy also conscripted its enslaved crew, One of them was
it's wheelman, Robert Small's. Once under the control of the
Confederate military, the Planter shifted from hauling cotton to carrying
(16:20):
supplies between various fortifications around Charleston, as well as laying
mines then referred to as torpedoes in the waterways. Often
these supplies consisted of munitions and ordinance. The Planter itself
was also armed with a cannon and a howitzer. On thirteenth,
eighteen sixty two, in addition to its own armaments, the
(16:41):
Planter was carrying four guns and a gun carriage. The
guns were bound for Charleston's middle Ground battery at Fort
Ripley and the carriage for Fort Sumter. While working aboard
the Planter, small then twenty three, had proven himself to
be extremely reliable and trustworthy, so much so that on
the night of the thirteenth, the three white officers who
(17:01):
were who were assigned to the Planter, Captain C. J. Ralia,
Pilot Samuel H. Smith, and Engineer Zerik Pitcher, left it
with no white officer aboard. They went into Charleston for
the night, probably to socialize or to visit family. This
is actually grounds for court martial. For a couple of weeks,
the smallest had been putting together a plan that would
(17:22):
allow him to take advantage of just such an opportunity.
This was not the first time that the officers had
gone ashore overnight, so at about three am, he donned
the captain's jacket and his big straw hat, adopted his
usual posture, set a prayer, and moved the Planter out
of the wharf, which laid directly across from the headquarters
of Confederate Brigadier General Roswell Ripley. From there they proceeded
(17:47):
to the North Atlantic Wharf, where his wife and children,
along with several other enslaved people, were concealed aboard another
boat called the Edawah. Once everyone hidden in the Edawah
was aboard the Planter and their number total nine men,
five women, and three children. Their goal was to reach
the Union blockade, ten ships arranged off the coast to
(18:08):
prevent the Confederacy from using the Atlantic Ocean for things
like trade or troop movements. To do so, they had
to run up the South Carolina flag and Confederate colors,
then successfully make their way past five different Confederate sentry stations.
This required sounding the correct signals and responding correctly to
signals from the outposts, plus nobody could notice that there
(18:30):
were no white people on this boat. You'll see a
lot of like memes floating around the internet about Robert
Smalls and how awesome he was, and a lot of
them claimed that he read a code book in order
to do this, but at this point he was not
actually literate, so it's more likely that he had observed
what the officers were doing and memorized what they were doing,
(18:52):
and then recalled all of that flawlessly during this escape.
The last outpost that they had to get past was
Fort Sumter itself. In theory, they could have given the
Fort a wide berth and maybe avoided this one last
exchange of coded signals, but Smalls really wanted it to
look like they were just the normal ship doing something
(19:13):
completely routine, albeit at an extremely early hour, for as
long as possible. Exchanging that last set of signals with
Fort Sumter was not the most dangerous part of this escape, though.
Once they received the okay to continue, they had to
get out of range of the Fort's guns before striking
their Confederate colors. If they struck the colors too soon,
(19:34):
they would be shot and sunk by the Confederacy, But
if they waited too late, the ships in the blockade
would probably think they were on a ramming course, so
they would be shot and sunk by the Union instead.
They had actually made no plans for what to do
if they wound up being captured. If it came down
to it, they were ready to fight back against the
Confederacy with the armaments that were aboard the ship, and
(19:55):
to blow up the ship's boiler if necessary, even though
that would mean the deaths of we went on board. Basically,
the only things that they considered to be acceptable outcomes
in this escape were escaping or death. Being enslaved again
not on the list. At sunrise, as they approached the
Union ship onward, Robert Smalls and his men took down
(20:16):
their Confederate flag and they ran up a white sheet
it was possibly stolen from the hotel where his wife worked,
and the Union gladly accepted their surrender and took possession
of the planter. This meant that Robert Smalls, his family,
and their friends who had escaped with them were now free.
And we're going to talk about what happened after that, because,
like we said, this is really the beginning of a
(20:38):
much longer story and we're going to talk about that
in our next episode. Yeah, he basically just stole a
Confederate ship out from under the nose of the Confederacy
and handed it over to the Union. Was like, Hi, guys,
I brought you this boat. Well, and we might get
emails about the wordship versus boat that just we know,
don't bother. Well, and I just I love this story
(21:03):
because it's just the whole thing took such ingenuity and
like craftiness at every turn that you you just cannot
help but be wowed by it. It also shows how
difficult and dangerous and rare it actually was, or enslaved
people to escape. I mean at this point, this was
(21:24):
during the Civil War, there were perhaps more opportunities for
people to escape, just because there was so much more
chaosks going on, and there were Union troops who were
actively interested in helping people to escape to freedom. But
one of the things that that people sort of misbelieve
about enslavement and about the Civil War is that there
(21:46):
was just an enormous, enormous influx of of of enslaved
people who were successfully escaping all the time. And one
of the reasons for that is that most of the
first person knowledge that we have about enslaved and especially
like in the United States the institution of slavery is
from people who did successfully escape and then went on
(22:09):
to write a slave narrative. And this is like a
tiny it's not a it's not an accurate sample of
all enslaved people. It's like the slave narratives that we
have came from the people who were able to escape
and then we're able either able to learn to read
and write, or we're able to find someone to help
them write um right down their story. And it's not
(22:33):
an actually representative sample of all of the enslaved people
in the United States. So, uh, still an awesome story. Um,
and it's it's very intriguing to me how because he
was from South Carolina and because of when he was
born and where he lived and what he did, so
(22:53):
much of his life parallels the arc of United States
history that ran through these decades. It's a good one.
Do you also have some listener mail for us? Do
I have one short one that I'm going to read
along with one that's slightly longer. Uh. They are about
our Honeywar podcast. And for the short one is from
Ryan and Ryan says, Hi, Holly and Tracy writing about
(23:15):
the boundary lines dispute for the Honeywar episode. You thought
it was funny and it is that they would go
through all the trouble to re measure and then use
the original. Anyways, as a civil engineering student, we are
required to take a surveying class. In said class, we
learned that even currently a surveyor is always right, regardless
of if they actually are the lines of measurements they
(23:37):
take are legally correct and binding. Kind of funny, just
a fun to a fun tidbit if you didn't know.
I love the podcast. Ryan Thanks Ryan, I did not
know that, but it makes total sense. Basically, even if
the survey is wrong, the survey is right. Uh. The
other one is from Amanda. Amanda says, Hi, Tracy and Holly,
thanks for such a great podcast. I'm without a radio
(23:58):
in the car, so I listened to the podcast downloaded
on my iPhone to and from work. Sometimes I sit
in the car and wait till the podcast is over
before going into the building. That actually, I'm gonna take
a break from the letter. That pleases me a lot
because that's the thing the NPR likes to brag about.
So I feel like we're in good company with causing
people to have drive away moments. I recently listened to
(24:19):
the honey Wars podcast and it reminded me of a
more recent episode in Town that is fraught with similar
childishness presented in the town squabwal Note. I'm in Newmarket, Ontario,
about forty five minutes north of Toronto, Canada, in the
small town twenty four thousand of East Willhelmbury, just north
of Newmarket. The then mayor decided to get his chainsaw
(24:41):
and trim the trees that blocked his view in the
mayoral office. At town Hall. He got a little carry
away and trams trees on the neighboring property, which is
the historic site of the Sharon Temple, built more than
a hundred and seventy five years ago. The trees were
planted around the same time, more than a hundred seventy
five years ago. He did such a botch job the
(25:03):
trees eventually had to be removed because they were deemed unsafe.
That incident was known as the Sharon Temple tree massacre.
Just saying childishness from state parentheses city officials is not
something of the past. And then the uh and then
Amanda sent lots of links to articles about this incident.
Thank you, Okay, I will confess that often I pick
(25:28):
things in the podcast that, even if we don't specifically
say it on the podcast, are things that still happened today.
So uh so I was glad to get this more
current example. UM. Thank you so much, Amanda, and thank
you so much Ryan for your emails. If you would
like to write to us, we were a history podcast
(25:48):
at how Stuffworks dot com. You can write to us
about anything except for the pronunciation of bufort uh. We
are also on Facebook at Facebook dot com. Slash miss
in history, and we're also on Twitter and miss in
history are Umbler is miss in history dot tumbler dot com,
and or on pentest at pentrist dot com slash miss
in history. If you would like to learn a little
bit more about what we've talked about today, come to
our parent company's website, which is how stuff Works dot com.
(26:11):
Put the word escape into the search bar. You will
find an article that is called breaking out a Dozen
Great Escapes, which does not talk about this particular one
that we discussed today, but that does talk about some
of history's other extremely dramatic and ingenious escapes. You can
also come to our website, which is missed in history
dot com, and you will find show notes for all
(26:31):
of our episodes. We can read what sources we use
to research what we're talking about. You will find an
archive of every episode we have ever ever done. You
will find tips or how to look for episodes in
the archives. If you're not quite sure how to find
what you're looking for, you can do all that and
a whole lot more at how stuff works dot com
or miss in history dot com for more on this
(26:57):
and thousands of other topics. Is that how Stuff works
dot do you do you
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Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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