August 6, 2025 • 34 mins
Enslaved on a plantation in South Carolina, Robert Blake had little chance for freedom. Then came a surprise battle, a bold choice, and a new mission in life: serving in the U.S. Navy. Robert’s heroism would make him the first Black sailor to receive the Medal of Honor. But what happened next is… a total mystery.
Episode bibliography:
Reidy, Joseph P. “Black Men in Navy Blue During the Civil War.” Navy and Marine, 2001.
https://www.navyandmarine.org/ondeck/1862blackinblue.htm
Jowdy, Laura. “Who Was Robert Blake? The Mystery of a Black Medal of Honor Recipient.” Congressional Medal of Honor Society, March 6, 2025 https://www.cmohs.org/news-events/medal-of-honor-recipient-profile/who-was-robert-blake-the-mystery-of-a-black-medal-of-honor-recipient/.
Frazier, Herb. “Little-known Civil War hero once enslaved on South Santee.” Charleston City Paper, June 2, 2023.
https://charlestoncitypaper.com/2023/06/02/little-known-civil-war-hero-once-enslaved-on-south-santee/.
“Whatever Happened to Robert Blake and the Battle of Legareville, SC.” Civil War Traveler (Blog), January 5, 2024.
https://civilwartraveler.blog/2024/01/05/whatever-happened-to-robert-blake-and-the-battle-of-legareville/
The Frog of History. “The First African American Medal of Honor Recipient is Missing.” YouTube video. June 27, 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7aYHT8va5uM&t=233s
Quarstein, John V. “Ben Butler and the Contrabands.” The Mariners Museum and Park, May 28, 2021. https://www.marinersmuseum.org/2021/05/ben-butler-and-the-contrabands/
National Archives. “Black Soldiers in the U.S. Military During the Civil War.” National Archives and Records Administration, October 4, 2023.
https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/blacks-civil-war#:~:text=The%20black%20troops%2C%20however%2C%20faced,more%20harshly%20than%20white%20captives
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
The men of the gunboat USS Marblehead woke up to
the sound of cannon fire. It was blasting across the bow,
splintering the wood of their ship. It was early Christmas morning,
eighteen sixty three. The Marblehead was a Union Navy vessel
(00:31):
patrolling the slow moving Stono River in South Carolina, just
south of Charleston. The ship worked its way past the
tidal marshlands, past rice plantations and tiny towns, scanning for
rebel activity. The men on the ship had no idea
(00:52):
that Confederate forces were hiding waiting. They had secretly placed
guns in the forest near the shore. Now those guns
were pointed right at the Marblehead, firing their artillery, blowing
holes in the ship and the ship's men. The Union
(01:13):
sailors ran up from their cabins below decks, some of
them still in their night shirts. They sprinted to their
battle stations. In their midst was a young man named
Robert Blake. He raced back and forth to the hold
of the ship, bringing boxes of gunpowder to one of
the main guns. The Marblehead's rifles boomed and shook, sending
(01:38):
fire to shore. The rebel forces returned fire sailors fell
wounded to the ship's deck. It was a bloody scene.
More than anyone aboard, Robert knew that they had to
keep the Confederate forces at bay, not just to save
their ship, but because Robert understood something else. If he
(02:03):
was captured, some of those Confederate soldiers might recognize him
an enslaved man who had escaped from a plantation not
that far away, the kind of man those Confederates hated
most of all.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
I'm Jr.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
Martinez and this is Medal of Honor Stories of Courage.
The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration in
the United States, awarded for gallantry and bravery and combat
at the risk of life, above and beyond the call
of duty. Each candidate must be approved all the way
up the chain of command, from the supervisory officer in
(02:46):
the field to.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
The White House.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
This show is about those heroes, what they did, what
it meant, and what their stories tell us about the
nature of courage and sacrifice. Today we'll explore the story
of Robert Blake, the first black sailor to receive the
Medal of Honor.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
Blake served in a cool and brave manner.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
According to his commanding officer, but that doesn't make him
an anomaly on that ship.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
Or any other Union vessel.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
He was one of many black sailors to serve honorably
during the Civil War. They were a force that helped
change the trajectory of the whole conflict. But they are
also a group that we know very little about. At
a time that was dangerous for any formally enslaved person
(03:39):
in the South, these black sailors took on even more risk,
and they did it to fight for a country they
believed could be better, would be better, not just for them,
but for everyone who came after. I'm gonna preface this
(04:12):
episode by saying we don't know all that much about
Robert Blake, which means two things. First, there's a little
speculation involved, a bit more than we usually have in
an episode. Second, it's kind of like a detective story.
So we found a detective. We'll meet him in a bit.
(04:36):
Let's start with what we know for sure. Robert Blake
was enslaved at the Oak Grove plantation in South Carolina.
It was located on the South Santee River, just six
or seven miles from the Atlantic coast. Oak Grove was
actually one of three plantations owned by a man named
Arthur Middleton Blake. He came from a long line.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
Of plantation owners.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
His family had been enslaving people for more than one
hundred years. The name Oak Grove I make it seem
like some idyllic setting, but the reality was very different.
There were deadly mosquito born illnesses like malaria and yellow fever,
poisonous snakes, alligators. But if the environment was inhospitable, the
(05:26):
work was even worse because these were rice plantations and
cultivating rice was backbreaking, dangerous work. It was done by
hundreds of enslaved people of African descent, toiling without a
break day after brutal day. And that's where our hero
(05:50):
Robert Blake was born. And to add to the confusion,
he wasn't the only Robert Blake who lived at Oak Grove.
Many enslaved people born there were given the last name Blake.
It was a way to show who their slaveholder was.
Our Robert Blake, the Medal of Honor recipient, was most
(06:11):
likely born around eighteen forty. The fact that he made
it through childhood was a miracle. On rice plantations, more
than half of black children did not survive to age fifteen.
Like other enslaved children, he wouldn't have had any kind
of formal education. Enslaved children were often separated from their parents.
(06:36):
Maybe this was true of Robert. It's impossible to know,
but what is pretty certain is that as soon as
he was able to work, he would have been out
in the rice fields, digging and planting and harvesting from
sun up to sundown. And then, in eighteen sixty one,
(07:00):
shots were fired just forty miles away at Fort Sumter,
and the Civil War began. For Robert and the rest
of the residents of Oak Grove, the world they knew
was about to massively change. For one thing, Arthur Middleton Blake,
the owner of Oak Grove, fled the United States. He
(07:24):
left for England a week after Fort Sumter fell in
April of eighteen sixty one. The next key thing that happened,
the Union decided to set up a blockade to keep
trade ships from entering or leaving the Confederate States. This
had two purposes, to prevent the rebels from getting supplies
(07:47):
like ammunition, and to keep them from trade with Europe,
cutting off their source of income. But while the Union
wanted to create a blockade. The Confederates were equally set
on breaking it. Rebel blockade runners would find holes in
the Union naval lines, then they would zip through them
(08:07):
in small boats loaded with goods for waiting European ships.
So the Union Navy set up bases in Confederate territory
to stop those blockade runners. In South Carolina, they went
to Port Royal, close to Charleston, an area that they
called the Low Country. It had a ton of plantations,
(08:29):
including Arthur Blake's. Now you have to imagine that the
enslaved people on Blake's plantation knew something big was up.
The war was suddenly so close. They must have looked
at the Union ships on the horizon and thought, is
our world about to change?
Speaker 1 (08:50):
Do we dare to hope?
Speaker 2 (08:54):
Most of the local plantation owners fled to England like
Arthur did, or further inland where it was safer, Which
makes you wonder did those owners really think that the
people that enslaved would just stay there, keep tending to
the rice, wait patiently for the war to end, and
(09:15):
they're enslavers to return. Okay, brief history refresher here. There's
something called the Fugitive Slave Act. It meant anyone. Even
Union soldiers were ordered by law to return escape enslave
people to their owners, and in the earliest days of
(09:36):
the war, Union soldiers in the South followed that law
and returned runaway slaves. But then something sort of incredible happened.
A Union general in Virginia decided, I'm not playing by
that rule anymore. He refused to return three escaped enslaved
(09:57):
men to their Confederate slaveholder. He figured that a Virginia
had seceded from the Union, so federal laws like the
Fugitive Slave Act no longer applied, and b just like
anything else the Union army might seize from the enemy,
those escaped slaves were contraband, so there was no point
(10:20):
in slaveholders asking for them back. The Union army would
hang on to them and give them freedom. Thanks word
traveled fast. Soon enslave people across the South were escaping
and joining Union troops wherever they could find them. This
(10:40):
generated a ton of good press and goodwill in the North.
Pretty soon the whole point of the conflict began to change.
It became a war to free the slaves, which brings
us back to Oak Grove Plantation. By June of eighteen
sixty two and had become a posting for a regiment
(11:02):
of Confederate soldiers. Since it was on the Santee River,
it was a perfect spot for blockade runners to sneak
their cargo past the Union naval fleet. Naturally, the Navy
wanted to stop this kind of activity, so they had
ships from the base at Port Royal patrolling the coastline
(11:22):
and rivers, and on June twenty fifth, three Union ships
steam past Oak Grove. The Confederate troops were heading, but
they couldn't help themselves. They fired on the last ship
and the convoy. There were marines on those Union ships,
and you know marines, they were very happy to get
(11:44):
off the boats and bring the fight to land. As
the Union ships returned fire, a group of sixty marines
and sailors got into rowboats and came ashore. They raced
to a Confederate battery, a gun position in the woods,
but when they got there it had been deserted. The
rebels shooters had fled. Then the Union troops went to
(12:08):
the plantation itself. They discovered a cache of weapons and
proved that the spot had been used by blockade runners,
so they burned the house, the mill, and a reported
one hundred thousand bushels of rice. The enslaved people of
Oak Grove watched the fire burn Arthur Blake's property. They
(12:31):
saw the Union men in their sharp navy blue uniforms,
and they realized now is the time to escape. So
four hundred of them, pretty much everyone enslaved at Oak Grove,
grabbed what they could. They raced to the Union ships,
(12:52):
and in their midst was a young man named Robert Blake.
As I mentioned earlier, we know so little about Robert
Blake that we needed the help of a detective.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
He's Joseph p.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
Ready, Professor Emeritus at Howard University. He is the expert
on the experiences of black men in the Navy during
the Civil War. And yet even he thinks Robert Blake
is a mystery. There's so much we don't know.
Speaker 3 (13:32):
We don't know he was married, and if she had
any children, I'm what have you.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
Here's what we can tell you about Robert Blake. He
stood five feet five and had a dark complexion, But
we're not so sure about his exact age. But Professor
Reedy checked the records on this.
Speaker 3 (13:52):
Now, when he shows up on a muster Rod. He's
listed as age twenty two. That seems to be the
sensible age that he was.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
Robert, along with hundreds of other enslaved people, left Oak
Grove as the plantation burned. They got on one of
those three Union ships. They were taken to a refugee
camp near the naval base in Port Royal. It was
called North Island. Refugee camps for escaped slaves had popped
(14:20):
up everywhere the Union troops were. They were nicknamed contraband camps.
They were away for communities to stay together, to take
care of one another, raise crops, and get jobs, pay jobs,
probably for the first time ever. Of course, the contraband
(14:41):
camps were still deep in Confederate territory, so they weren't
really safe.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
In July of eighteen sixty two, Union.
Speaker 2 (14:51):
Commanders learned that five hundred rebels were preparing to attack
North Island quote with the intention of destroying the contraband
which number seven hundred men, women and children. But it
was far far better than life on a plantation, and
it showed people that the Navy and the Union wasn't
(15:14):
just a way to escape slavery. It was the basis
for a whole new life and a whole new cause.
Speaker 3 (15:21):
It didn't take long to realize that, especially on coastal
areas or along the river banks, that US naval vessel
potentially were a place of refuge, and that presented an
opportunity for them to say, we will do whatever we
can to help defeat the slaveholder's rebellion.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
In the meantime, the Navy looked at the men in
the contraband camps and thought we would love their help.
Speaker 3 (15:50):
One of the officials and Lincoln's administration realized that African
Americans were fleeing slavery and seeking refuge upon naval vessel.
They realized here was the stores of manpower that they
could put the good use.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
So they started recruiting them to join. This wasn't an
entirely surprising turn of events for starters. The Navy had
long allowed black men to enlist, and they weren't even
segregated like they were in the army back then. They
couldn't be because of the cramp quarters on the ships.
(16:28):
At first, their numbers were small, like five percent, but
as the war heated up, so did enlistments.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
By the summer of.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
Eighteen sixty two, when we meet Robert, it was more
like fifteen percent. In fact, more than eighteen thousand black
men served in the Union Navy during the Civil War.
Many came from up north and had always been free.
They were allowed to work their way up the ranks,
(16:59):
from boy the lowest, to signal quartermaster. But the newer conscripts,
the formerly enslaved ones, were given a new designation, not boy,
but contraband. Unfortunately, these new sailors were treated as if
they were less intelligent and even less strong. They were weak,
(17:24):
the reasoning went, because they'd been worked almost to death
on the plantations. But that was by no means true.
One Union commander said, quote, they fought energetically, bravely, none
more so they felt that they were working on the
deliverance of their own race. Giving black men the chance
(17:49):
to fight for the Union felt like a path towards
civil rights. The famous statesman Frederick Douglass wrote, quote, Let
the black man get an eagle on his button, and
a musket on his shoulders, and bullets in his pockets,
and there is no power on earth or under the
earth that can deny that he has earned the right
(18:12):
to citizenship. In the United States, we've seen this so
many times before in this series, from Mary Walker to
Macario Gotta Sea, people seeing their military service as a
way to become more fully part of America with all
of its rights, from voting to citizenship to freedom itself.
(18:37):
The Union Navy used that pitch as they walk through
the Contraband camp in.
Speaker 3 (18:41):
North Island, military and naval recruiters were suggested to the men,
you must fight for your freedom. That's the way you're
going to secure it. You're going to help the US
defeat the Confederacy, and then of course of doing that,
you will free yourselves and you will free your family.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
On the Navy asked for sixty volunteers to go to
Port Royal for duty on the USS Vermont. Robert was
one of them. Almost all of the enlisted men on
the Vermont had African ancestry, and they had originally come
from plantations up and down the coast. They worked as
(19:20):
laborers because the Vermont wasn't a warship, it was a
supply station, a warehouse for all the things that as sailor
would need, clothing, ammunition, or letters from home. It was
also the entry point for men just joining the naval service.
That's where Robert would have been trained. It had another
(19:42):
benefit to it kept him close to his community.
Speaker 4 (19:47):
The people who escaped from the Blake plantation with them,
who he would have considered a family of thought if
they were nearby when he was stationed on the Vermont.
Speaker 3 (19:58):
The possibility of interacting with that could have meant that
he had Other men could have maintained that sense of
community even while they were enabled servants.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
And in a world that had been so hard and
so painful, you can imagine how much that community might
mean to Robert. So he worked on the USS Vermont,
most likely as a longshoreman, hauling supplies onto the ship.
Not glamorous, of course, but a solid pain job that
(20:30):
only lasted about two months. Then he was assigned to
a gunship, the USS Marblehead. There he would be fighting
for his liberty and his life. Just around daybreak on
(21:03):
December twenty fifth, eighteen sixty three, the sound of cannon
fire burst through the quiet South Carolina morning. Shot after
shot came from shore, catching everyone on the crew by
total surprise. The Captain Richard W. Me the Third came
(21:24):
running up from his cabin. He was only twenty six,
a skinny guy with big sad eyes and a wispy
handlebar mustache. Mead was still wearing his night shirt and slippers,
gripping his sword in one hand and his revolver in
the other. The Marblehead was on duty in the Stono River.
(21:45):
It was part of the blockade protecting troops who were
working nearby, and it was completely unprepared for battle. For
one thing, the crew was shorthanded down to seventy men
from the usual one hundred, and the ship was partly disabled.
(22:08):
One of the boilers was being repaired, and the crew
had been getting ready to wash down the deck, so
they had pointed their largest gun inward towards the middle
of the ship, not out towards the enemy. The shots
kept coming from shore. The Confederates had headed cannons behind
(22:30):
some earthworks in the woods. They had been planning this
attack for a while. The goal was to disable the
marble Head and capture its men, that included the roughly
one hundred and fifty Union troops stationed nearby. Captain Mead
shouted for his men to assume battle stations, and Robert
(22:51):
Blake went to work. He was a powder man, sometimes
called the powder boy. His job was to carry gunpowder
from the powder magazine to the guns on the deck.
The magazine was tucked away and designed to avoid explosions
or fires by keeping the gun powder safe. So powder
(23:13):
men were usually young, small and fast. They had to
be able to squeeze between the tight spots on the
ship where the powder was kept. Mead ordered the Marblehead
to quickly move closer to the shore and to the Confederates.
That way the ship would be harder to hit. Then
(23:34):
he ordered the Marblehead's guns to be fired. As the
sailors got ready. Blast kept coming from shore. Steel and
wood fragments splintered across the deck. In the first fifteen minutes,
three Union sailors had been killed.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
Several more were wounded.
Speaker 2 (23:56):
Mead later wrote that quote the decks were slippery with blood.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
Robert was the.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
Powder man for a twenty pounder rifle. It looked like
a cannon, and it was located at the front of
the ship, out in the open, totally unprotected from enemy fire.
He would have been running back and forth from the
powder magazine to the rifle, up and down, over and over,
(24:28):
exposed to fire every time he reached the deck. Robert
had been on that boat since September. He knew, of course,
that he would face danger, and he was ready.
Speaker 3 (24:41):
It was not yet we're fighting for the freedom of
enslaved South Carolinian or all enslaved people throughout the country. No,
it was literally their family and their homes and people
that they knew and they loved, and they hoped to
spend the reck with their lives.
Speaker 2 (24:59):
With That love and commitment must have been an engine
for his courage. But there was something else sparking that
bravery as well, a knowledge of what waited for him
if they failed, if he was captured. Being a prisoner
during the Civil War was horrific. The death rate of
(25:22):
POW's was as high as thirty percent, but the fate
of men like Robert who were formerly enslaved fighting for
the Union was much much worse. The battle went on,
a sailor was cut into by a round from the
(25:43):
Confederate cannon. The men must have been screaming, screaming orders,
screaming from the pain, but according to later reports, Robert
kept us cool.
Speaker 3 (25:58):
He was fulfilling years at Zion under extremely stressful and
dangerous circumstances, and he was able to keep doing it
at a rather extraordinary pace throughout the engagement.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
Years later, me described quote the excellent manner in which
he served his gun, his coolness, intrepidity, and high spirits,
and the merry laugh with which he cheered his comrades
under the severe and galling fire of the enemy. He
seemed wholly insensible to fear. He would cut jokes with
(26:33):
his comrades as he passed along to the magazine with
his box under his arm. He showed a marked degree
of intelligence and forethought during the hottest part of the fight.
The battle went on for an hour and a half.
Robert's gun fired seventy two times, a super high number
(26:54):
when you consider how much work it took to fire
a gun back then. But his energy didn't flag, and
by eight am the skirmish was over. The men of
the Marblehead were victorious. Three days after the battle, Mead
went ashore with his men and took the rebels guns.
(27:16):
It was the first Union naval victory in more than
two years, and Robert would get the credit he deserved.
Captain Mead was determined that Robert would be honored for
his brave actions of Christmas Day eighteen sixty three. First,
he ensured that Robert got a promotion to seamen, leaving
(27:39):
his contraband label behind him for good, and Robert, along
with three other sailors, received the Medal of Honor. The
Order for the Metal reads quote, Robert Blake, serving as
powder boy, displayed extraordinary courage, alacrity, and in colligent in
(28:00):
the discharge of his duties under trying circumstances, and merited
the admiration of all. Robert Blake would be the first
black sailor to receive the Medal of Honor. Robert reenlisted
he was on the USS Vermont, where he had started
(28:22):
the war, at least through the summer of eighteen sixty four,
and then well, our trail goes cold, Robert Blake just vanishes.
One possibility is that he stayed in South Carolina. So
many formerly enslaved people did after the war. That was
(28:44):
the place they knew, filled with the people they loved,
and record keeping back then wasn't great, particularly for black folks.
But maybe Robert didn't stay in South Carolina. Our detective
Professor Reedy points out that by now Robert was a
(29:05):
seasoned sailor.
Speaker 3 (29:07):
He had naval experienced at that point, and this is
not to say he stayed in the navy because he
apparently did not, but he could have continued to work
at the Mariner.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
According to a report that Captain Meade wrote decades after
the battle, Robert got one hundred dollars along with his medal.
That's worth more than two thousand dollars today. That's enough
money to kickstart a new life. He was still serving
on the Vermont in the summer of eighteen sixty four,
(29:41):
and the Vermont left Port Royal for the Brooklyn Navy
Yard on August two of that year. Could he have
still been on it heading to New York. We just
don't know, but I think it's an amazing idea. At
that time, there were close to a million people living
(30:03):
in New York City. He could have slipped into those
crowded streets. Or Robert could have just boarded the next
boat off to Points unknown, skimming across the ocean.
Speaker 1 (30:19):
Who knows. We have no records of him.
Speaker 2 (30:24):
It's possible that he changed his name and left Blake,
the name of his former slaveholder behind. And if you're
wondering what happened to Old Arthur Middleton Blake, here's this gem.
For years after the Civil War ended, Arthur had the
audacity to petition the government asking to be paid back
(30:46):
for the slaves who had been quote unquote taken from him,
a sum that he said amounted to at least four
hundred thousand dollars. One man on Arthur's list of property
is named Robert. He's valued at eleven hundred dollars, almost
twice the average of other enslaved people. Whether that was
(31:10):
our Robert Blake or the other Robert Blake is unclear.
In eighteen seventy five, the US Congress unequivocally rejected Arthur's petition.
Speaker 1 (31:22):
Good God, Arthur.
Speaker 2 (31:27):
Captain Mead also wondered what became of Robert, as he
later wrote, quote whatever became of him does not appear,
as there is no record of him in the books
at the Navy Department. But if he is still alive,
he is doubtless as cheery as ever. No man ever
deserved a medal of honor more truly than this gallant
(31:51):
young negro From the Captain down, every man on the
marblehead honored the ex slave Robert Blake. I personally love
the idea of Robert having a totally fresh start, a
new city, maybe even a new name, but whether he
(32:12):
left the South or not, I hope he felt that
his courage was rewarded not by the Medal of Honor,
not by the one hundred dollars, but by the hope
for a country that might deliver on its promise of life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness for everyone.
Speaker 1 (32:35):
Hope for a new version of America.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
Hope at long last for freedom.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
Medal of Honor.
Speaker 2 (33:11):
Stories of Courage is written by Meredith Robins and produced
by Meredith Rollins and Jess Shane. Our editor on this
episode is Amy Gaines McQuaid. Sound design and additional music
by Jake Gorsky. Our executive producer is Gonstanza Gayadovo. Fact
checking by Arthur Gomperts and original music by Eric Phillips.
(33:32):
Production support by Suzanne Gabber. Special thanks to the Congressional
Medal of Honor Society don't forget.
Speaker 1 (33:38):
We want to hear from you.
Speaker 2 (33:40):
Send us your personal story of courage or highlight someone
else's bravery. Email us at Medal of Honor at Pushkin
dot fm. You might hear your stories on future episodes
of Metal of Honor, or see them on our social
channels at Pushkin pods.
Speaker 1 (33:59):
I'm your host j R. Martinez
Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
The men of the gunboat USS Marblehead woke up to
the sound of cannon fire. It was blasting across the bow,
splintering the wood of their ship. It was early Christmas morning,
eighteen sixty three. The Marblehead was a Union Navy vessel
(00:31):
patrolling the slow moving Stono River in South Carolina, just
south of Charleston. The ship worked its way past the
tidal marshlands, past rice plantations and tiny towns, scanning for
rebel activity. The men on the ship had no idea
(00:52):
that Confederate forces were hiding waiting. They had secretly placed
guns in the forest near the shore. Now those guns
were pointed right at the Marblehead, firing their artillery, blowing
holes in the ship and the ship's men. The Union
(01:13):
sailors ran up from their cabins below decks, some of
them still in their night shirts. They sprinted to their
battle stations. In their midst was a young man named
Robert Blake. He raced back and forth to the hold
of the ship, bringing boxes of gunpowder to one of
the main guns. The Marblehead's rifles boomed and shook, sending
(01:38):
fire to shore. The rebel forces returned fire sailors fell
wounded to the ship's deck. It was a bloody scene.
More than anyone aboard, Robert knew that they had to
keep the Confederate forces at bay, not just to save
their ship, but because Robert understood something else. If he
(02:03):
was captured, some of those Confederate soldiers might recognize him
an enslaved man who had escaped from a plantation not
that far away, the kind of man those Confederates hated
most of all.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
I'm Jr.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
Martinez and this is Medal of Honor Stories of Courage.
The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration in
the United States, awarded for gallantry and bravery and combat
at the risk of life, above and beyond the call
of duty. Each candidate must be approved all the way
up the chain of command, from the supervisory officer in
(02:46):
the field to.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
The White House.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
This show is about those heroes, what they did, what
it meant, and what their stories tell us about the
nature of courage and sacrifice. Today we'll explore the story
of Robert Blake, the first black sailor to receive the
Medal of Honor.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
Blake served in a cool and brave manner.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
According to his commanding officer, but that doesn't make him
an anomaly on that ship.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
Or any other Union vessel.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
He was one of many black sailors to serve honorably
during the Civil War. They were a force that helped
change the trajectory of the whole conflict. But they are
also a group that we know very little about. At
a time that was dangerous for any formally enslaved person
(03:39):
in the South, these black sailors took on even more risk,
and they did it to fight for a country they
believed could be better, would be better, not just for them,
but for everyone who came after. I'm gonna preface this
(04:12):
episode by saying we don't know all that much about
Robert Blake, which means two things. First, there's a little
speculation involved, a bit more than we usually have in
an episode. Second, it's kind of like a detective story.
So we found a detective. We'll meet him in a bit.
(04:36):
Let's start with what we know for sure. Robert Blake
was enslaved at the Oak Grove plantation in South Carolina.
It was located on the South Santee River, just six
or seven miles from the Atlantic coast. Oak Grove was
actually one of three plantations owned by a man named
Arthur Middleton Blake. He came from a long line.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
Of plantation owners.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
His family had been enslaving people for more than one
hundred years. The name Oak Grove I make it seem
like some idyllic setting, but the reality was very different.
There were deadly mosquito born illnesses like malaria and yellow fever,
poisonous snakes, alligators. But if the environment was inhospitable, the
(05:26):
work was even worse because these were rice plantations and
cultivating rice was backbreaking, dangerous work. It was done by
hundreds of enslaved people of African descent, toiling without a
break day after brutal day. And that's where our hero
(05:50):
Robert Blake was born. And to add to the confusion,
he wasn't the only Robert Blake who lived at Oak Grove.
Many enslaved people born there were given the last name Blake.
It was a way to show who their slaveholder was.
Our Robert Blake, the Medal of Honor recipient, was most
(06:11):
likely born around eighteen forty. The fact that he made
it through childhood was a miracle. On rice plantations, more
than half of black children did not survive to age fifteen.
Like other enslaved children, he wouldn't have had any kind
of formal education. Enslaved children were often separated from their parents.
(06:36):
Maybe this was true of Robert. It's impossible to know,
but what is pretty certain is that as soon as
he was able to work, he would have been out
in the rice fields, digging and planting and harvesting from
sun up to sundown. And then, in eighteen sixty one,
(07:00):
shots were fired just forty miles away at Fort Sumter,
and the Civil War began. For Robert and the rest
of the residents of Oak Grove, the world they knew
was about to massively change. For one thing, Arthur Middleton Blake,
the owner of Oak Grove, fled the United States. He
(07:24):
left for England a week after Fort Sumter fell in
April of eighteen sixty one. The next key thing that happened,
the Union decided to set up a blockade to keep
trade ships from entering or leaving the Confederate States. This
had two purposes, to prevent the rebels from getting supplies
(07:47):
like ammunition, and to keep them from trade with Europe,
cutting off their source of income. But while the Union
wanted to create a blockade. The Confederates were equally set
on breaking it. Rebel blockade runners would find holes in
the Union naval lines, then they would zip through them
(08:07):
in small boats loaded with goods for waiting European ships.
So the Union Navy set up bases in Confederate territory
to stop those blockade runners. In South Carolina, they went
to Port Royal, close to Charleston, an area that they
called the Low Country. It had a ton of plantations,
(08:29):
including Arthur Blake's. Now you have to imagine that the
enslaved people on Blake's plantation knew something big was up.
The war was suddenly so close. They must have looked
at the Union ships on the horizon and thought, is
our world about to change?
Speaker 1 (08:50):
Do we dare to hope?
Speaker 2 (08:54):
Most of the local plantation owners fled to England like
Arthur did, or further inland where it was safer, Which
makes you wonder did those owners really think that the
people that enslaved would just stay there, keep tending to
the rice, wait patiently for the war to end, and
(09:15):
they're enslavers to return. Okay, brief history refresher here. There's
something called the Fugitive Slave Act. It meant anyone. Even
Union soldiers were ordered by law to return escape enslave
people to their owners, and in the earliest days of
(09:36):
the war, Union soldiers in the South followed that law
and returned runaway slaves. But then something sort of incredible happened.
A Union general in Virginia decided, I'm not playing by
that rule anymore. He refused to return three escaped enslaved
(09:57):
men to their Confederate slaveholder. He figured that a Virginia
had seceded from the Union, so federal laws like the
Fugitive Slave Act no longer applied, and b just like
anything else the Union army might seize from the enemy,
those escaped slaves were contraband, so there was no point
(10:20):
in slaveholders asking for them back. The Union army would
hang on to them and give them freedom. Thanks word
traveled fast. Soon enslave people across the South were escaping
and joining Union troops wherever they could find them. This
(10:40):
generated a ton of good press and goodwill in the North.
Pretty soon the whole point of the conflict began to change.
It became a war to free the slaves, which brings
us back to Oak Grove Plantation. By June of eighteen
sixty two and had become a posting for a regiment
(11:02):
of Confederate soldiers. Since it was on the Santee River,
it was a perfect spot for blockade runners to sneak
their cargo past the Union naval fleet. Naturally, the Navy
wanted to stop this kind of activity, so they had
ships from the base at Port Royal patrolling the coastline
(11:22):
and rivers, and on June twenty fifth, three Union ships
steam past Oak Grove. The Confederate troops were heading, but
they couldn't help themselves. They fired on the last ship
and the convoy. There were marines on those Union ships,
and you know marines, they were very happy to get
(11:44):
off the boats and bring the fight to land. As
the Union ships returned fire, a group of sixty marines
and sailors got into rowboats and came ashore. They raced
to a Confederate battery, a gun position in the woods,
but when they got there it had been deserted. The
rebels shooters had fled. Then the Union troops went to
(12:08):
the plantation itself. They discovered a cache of weapons and
proved that the spot had been used by blockade runners,
so they burned the house, the mill, and a reported
one hundred thousand bushels of rice. The enslaved people of
Oak Grove watched the fire burn Arthur Blake's property. They
(12:31):
saw the Union men in their sharp navy blue uniforms,
and they realized now is the time to escape. So
four hundred of them, pretty much everyone enslaved at Oak Grove,
grabbed what they could. They raced to the Union ships,
(12:52):
and in their midst was a young man named Robert Blake.
As I mentioned earlier, we know so little about Robert
Blake that we needed the help of a detective.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
He's Joseph p.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
Ready, Professor Emeritus at Howard University. He is the expert
on the experiences of black men in the Navy during
the Civil War. And yet even he thinks Robert Blake
is a mystery. There's so much we don't know.
Speaker 3 (13:32):
We don't know he was married, and if she had
any children, I'm what have you.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
Here's what we can tell you about Robert Blake. He
stood five feet five and had a dark complexion, But
we're not so sure about his exact age. But Professor
Reedy checked the records on this.
Speaker 3 (13:52):
Now, when he shows up on a muster Rod. He's
listed as age twenty two. That seems to be the
sensible age that he was.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
Robert, along with hundreds of other enslaved people, left Oak
Grove as the plantation burned. They got on one of
those three Union ships. They were taken to a refugee
camp near the naval base in Port Royal. It was
called North Island. Refugee camps for escaped slaves had popped
(14:20):
up everywhere the Union troops were. They were nicknamed contraband camps.
They were away for communities to stay together, to take
care of one another, raise crops, and get jobs, pay jobs,
probably for the first time ever. Of course, the contraband
(14:41):
camps were still deep in Confederate territory, so they weren't
really safe.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
In July of eighteen sixty two, Union.
Speaker 2 (14:51):
Commanders learned that five hundred rebels were preparing to attack
North Island quote with the intention of destroying the contraband
which number seven hundred men, women and children. But it
was far far better than life on a plantation, and
it showed people that the Navy and the Union wasn't
(15:14):
just a way to escape slavery. It was the basis
for a whole new life and a whole new cause.
Speaker 3 (15:21):
It didn't take long to realize that, especially on coastal
areas or along the river banks, that US naval vessel
potentially were a place of refuge, and that presented an
opportunity for them to say, we will do whatever we
can to help defeat the slaveholder's rebellion.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
In the meantime, the Navy looked at the men in
the contraband camps and thought we would love their help.
Speaker 3 (15:50):
One of the officials and Lincoln's administration realized that African
Americans were fleeing slavery and seeking refuge upon naval vessel.
They realized here was the stores of manpower that they
could put the good use.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
So they started recruiting them to join. This wasn't an
entirely surprising turn of events for starters. The Navy had
long allowed black men to enlist, and they weren't even
segregated like they were in the army back then. They
couldn't be because of the cramp quarters on the ships.
(16:28):
At first, their numbers were small, like five percent, but
as the war heated up, so did enlistments.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
By the summer of.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
Eighteen sixty two, when we meet Robert, it was more
like fifteen percent. In fact, more than eighteen thousand black
men served in the Union Navy during the Civil War.
Many came from up north and had always been free.
They were allowed to work their way up the ranks,
(16:59):
from boy the lowest, to signal quartermaster. But the newer conscripts,
the formerly enslaved ones, were given a new designation, not boy,
but contraband. Unfortunately, these new sailors were treated as if
they were less intelligent and even less strong. They were weak,
(17:24):
the reasoning went, because they'd been worked almost to death
on the plantations. But that was by no means true.
One Union commander said, quote, they fought energetically, bravely, none
more so they felt that they were working on the
deliverance of their own race. Giving black men the chance
(17:49):
to fight for the Union felt like a path towards
civil rights. The famous statesman Frederick Douglass wrote, quote, Let
the black man get an eagle on his button, and
a musket on his shoulders, and bullets in his pockets,
and there is no power on earth or under the
earth that can deny that he has earned the right
(18:12):
to citizenship. In the United States, we've seen this so
many times before in this series, from Mary Walker to
Macario Gotta Sea, people seeing their military service as a
way to become more fully part of America with all
of its rights, from voting to citizenship to freedom itself.
(18:37):
The Union Navy used that pitch as they walk through
the Contraband camp in.
Speaker 3 (18:41):
North Island, military and naval recruiters were suggested to the men,
you must fight for your freedom. That's the way you're
going to secure it. You're going to help the US
defeat the Confederacy, and then of course of doing that,
you will free yourselves and you will free your family.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
On the Navy asked for sixty volunteers to go to
Port Royal for duty on the USS Vermont. Robert was
one of them. Almost all of the enlisted men on
the Vermont had African ancestry, and they had originally come
from plantations up and down the coast. They worked as
(19:20):
laborers because the Vermont wasn't a warship, it was a
supply station, a warehouse for all the things that as sailor
would need, clothing, ammunition, or letters from home. It was
also the entry point for men just joining the naval service.
That's where Robert would have been trained. It had another
(19:42):
benefit to it kept him close to his community.
Speaker 4 (19:47):
The people who escaped from the Blake plantation with them,
who he would have considered a family of thought if
they were nearby when he was stationed on the Vermont.
Speaker 3 (19:58):
The possibility of interacting with that could have meant that
he had Other men could have maintained that sense of
community even while they were enabled servants.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
And in a world that had been so hard and
so painful, you can imagine how much that community might
mean to Robert. So he worked on the USS Vermont,
most likely as a longshoreman, hauling supplies onto the ship.
Not glamorous, of course, but a solid pain job that
(20:30):
only lasted about two months. Then he was assigned to
a gunship, the USS Marblehead. There he would be fighting
for his liberty and his life. Just around daybreak on
(21:03):
December twenty fifth, eighteen sixty three, the sound of cannon
fire burst through the quiet South Carolina morning. Shot after
shot came from shore, catching everyone on the crew by
total surprise. The Captain Richard W. Me the Third came
(21:24):
running up from his cabin. He was only twenty six,
a skinny guy with big sad eyes and a wispy
handlebar mustache. Mead was still wearing his night shirt and slippers,
gripping his sword in one hand and his revolver in
the other. The Marblehead was on duty in the Stono River.
(21:45):
It was part of the blockade protecting troops who were
working nearby, and it was completely unprepared for battle. For
one thing, the crew was shorthanded down to seventy men
from the usual one hundred, and the ship was partly disabled.
(22:08):
One of the boilers was being repaired, and the crew
had been getting ready to wash down the deck, so
they had pointed their largest gun inward towards the middle
of the ship, not out towards the enemy. The shots
kept coming from shore. The Confederates had headed cannons behind
(22:30):
some earthworks in the woods. They had been planning this
attack for a while. The goal was to disable the
marble Head and capture its men, that included the roughly
one hundred and fifty Union troops stationed nearby. Captain Mead
shouted for his men to assume battle stations, and Robert
(22:51):
Blake went to work. He was a powder man, sometimes
called the powder boy. His job was to carry gunpowder
from the powder magazine to the guns on the deck.
The magazine was tucked away and designed to avoid explosions
or fires by keeping the gun powder safe. So powder
(23:13):
men were usually young, small and fast. They had to
be able to squeeze between the tight spots on the
ship where the powder was kept. Mead ordered the Marblehead
to quickly move closer to the shore and to the Confederates.
That way the ship would be harder to hit. Then
(23:34):
he ordered the Marblehead's guns to be fired. As the
sailors got ready. Blast kept coming from shore. Steel and
wood fragments splintered across the deck. In the first fifteen minutes,
three Union sailors had been killed.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
Several more were wounded.
Speaker 2 (23:56):
Mead later wrote that quote the decks were slippery with blood.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
Robert was the.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
Powder man for a twenty pounder rifle. It looked like
a cannon, and it was located at the front of
the ship, out in the open, totally unprotected from enemy fire.
He would have been running back and forth from the
powder magazine to the rifle, up and down, over and over,
(24:28):
exposed to fire every time he reached the deck. Robert
had been on that boat since September. He knew, of course,
that he would face danger, and he was ready.
Speaker 3 (24:41):
It was not yet we're fighting for the freedom of
enslaved South Carolinian or all enslaved people throughout the country. No,
it was literally their family and their homes and people
that they knew and they loved, and they hoped to
spend the reck with their lives.
Speaker 2 (24:59):
With That love and commitment must have been an engine
for his courage. But there was something else sparking that
bravery as well, a knowledge of what waited for him
if they failed, if he was captured. Being a prisoner
during the Civil War was horrific. The death rate of
(25:22):
POW's was as high as thirty percent, but the fate
of men like Robert who were formerly enslaved fighting for
the Union was much much worse. The battle went on,
a sailor was cut into by a round from the
(25:43):
Confederate cannon. The men must have been screaming, screaming orders,
screaming from the pain, but according to later reports, Robert
kept us cool.
Speaker 3 (25:58):
He was fulfilling years at Zion under extremely stressful and
dangerous circumstances, and he was able to keep doing it
at a rather extraordinary pace throughout the engagement.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
Years later, me described quote the excellent manner in which
he served his gun, his coolness, intrepidity, and high spirits,
and the merry laugh with which he cheered his comrades
under the severe and galling fire of the enemy. He
seemed wholly insensible to fear. He would cut jokes with
(26:33):
his comrades as he passed along to the magazine with
his box under his arm. He showed a marked degree
of intelligence and forethought during the hottest part of the fight.
The battle went on for an hour and a half.
Robert's gun fired seventy two times, a super high number
(26:54):
when you consider how much work it took to fire
a gun back then. But his energy didn't flag, and
by eight am the skirmish was over. The men of
the Marblehead were victorious. Three days after the battle, Mead
went ashore with his men and took the rebels guns.
(27:16):
It was the first Union naval victory in more than
two years, and Robert would get the credit he deserved.
Captain Mead was determined that Robert would be honored for
his brave actions of Christmas Day eighteen sixty three. First,
he ensured that Robert got a promotion to seamen, leaving
(27:39):
his contraband label behind him for good, and Robert, along
with three other sailors, received the Medal of Honor. The
Order for the Metal reads quote, Robert Blake, serving as
powder boy, displayed extraordinary courage, alacrity, and in colligent in
(28:00):
the discharge of his duties under trying circumstances, and merited
the admiration of all. Robert Blake would be the first
black sailor to receive the Medal of Honor. Robert reenlisted
he was on the USS Vermont, where he had started
(28:22):
the war, at least through the summer of eighteen sixty four,
and then well, our trail goes cold, Robert Blake just vanishes.
One possibility is that he stayed in South Carolina. So
many formerly enslaved people did after the war. That was
(28:44):
the place they knew, filled with the people they loved,
and record keeping back then wasn't great, particularly for black folks.
But maybe Robert didn't stay in South Carolina. Our detective
Professor Reedy points out that by now Robert was a
(29:05):
seasoned sailor.
Speaker 3 (29:07):
He had naval experienced at that point, and this is
not to say he stayed in the navy because he
apparently did not, but he could have continued to work
at the Mariner.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
According to a report that Captain Meade wrote decades after
the battle, Robert got one hundred dollars along with his medal.
That's worth more than two thousand dollars today. That's enough
money to kickstart a new life. He was still serving
on the Vermont in the summer of eighteen sixty four,
(29:41):
and the Vermont left Port Royal for the Brooklyn Navy
Yard on August two of that year. Could he have
still been on it heading to New York. We just
don't know, but I think it's an amazing idea. At
that time, there were close to a million people living
(30:03):
in New York City. He could have slipped into those
crowded streets. Or Robert could have just boarded the next
boat off to Points unknown, skimming across the ocean.
Speaker 1 (30:19):
Who knows. We have no records of him.
Speaker 2 (30:24):
It's possible that he changed his name and left Blake,
the name of his former slaveholder behind. And if you're
wondering what happened to Old Arthur Middleton Blake, here's this gem.
For years after the Civil War ended, Arthur had the
audacity to petition the government asking to be paid back
(30:46):
for the slaves who had been quote unquote taken from him,
a sum that he said amounted to at least four
hundred thousand dollars. One man on Arthur's list of property
is named Robert. He's valued at eleven hundred dollars, almost
twice the average of other enslaved people. Whether that was
(31:10):
our Robert Blake or the other Robert Blake is unclear.
In eighteen seventy five, the US Congress unequivocally rejected Arthur's petition.
Speaker 1 (31:22):
Good God, Arthur.
Speaker 2 (31:27):
Captain Mead also wondered what became of Robert, as he
later wrote, quote whatever became of him does not appear,
as there is no record of him in the books
at the Navy Department. But if he is still alive,
he is doubtless as cheery as ever. No man ever
deserved a medal of honor more truly than this gallant
(31:51):
young negro From the Captain down, every man on the
marblehead honored the ex slave Robert Blake. I personally love
the idea of Robert having a totally fresh start, a
new city, maybe even a new name, but whether he
(32:12):
left the South or not, I hope he felt that
his courage was rewarded not by the Medal of Honor,
not by the one hundred dollars, but by the hope
for a country that might deliver on its promise of life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness for everyone.
Speaker 1 (32:35):
Hope for a new version of America.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
Hope at long last for freedom.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
Medal of Honor.
Speaker 2 (33:11):
Stories of Courage is written by Meredith Robins and produced
by Meredith Rollins and Jess Shane. Our editor on this
episode is Amy Gaines McQuaid. Sound design and additional music
by Jake Gorsky. Our executive producer is Gonstanza Gayadovo. Fact
checking by Arthur Gomperts and original music by Eric Phillips.
(33:32):
Production support by Suzanne Gabber. Special thanks to the Congressional
Medal of Honor Society don't forget.
Speaker 1 (33:38):
We want to hear from you.
Speaker 2 (33:40):
Send us your personal story of courage or highlight someone
else's bravery. Email us at Medal of Honor at Pushkin
dot fm. You might hear your stories on future episodes
of Metal of Honor, or see them on our social
channels at Pushkin pods.
Speaker 1 (33:59):
I'm your host j R. Martinez
Host
Malcolm Gladwell
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