Robert Smalls: From Contraband to Congress

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

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from dot Com. Hello,
and welcome to the podcast I'm Trading and I'm Holly Fry.
Today we're picking up where we left off in the
story of Robert Smalls, so to very very briefly recap

(00:23):
part one. He was enslaved from birth in the McKee
household of Bufort, South Carolina, which is pronounced differently from Beaufort,
North Carolina, even though they are both named after the
same person. During the Civil War, he made a dramatic
escape aboard a boat called the Planter, directly under the
noses of the Confederate military. His escape was a boost

(00:44):
to morale and the Union and an embarrassment for the Confederacy,
and it also served to rally other enslaved persons who
heard about it. He became something of a celebrity in
the North and a spokesperson for African Americans with the Union.
At the time of his escape, Robert Smalls was only
twenty three years old. He was hailed as a hero

(01:04):
and the Union newspapers, while the newspapers of the Confederacy
alternated between strongly denouncing what he'd done and then kind
of downplaying it, while simultaneously casting tons of blame on
the White soldiers then officers that had failed to stop him.
Those officers who had left the boat overnight were indeed
court martialed, although it was eventually thrown out on a technicality.

(01:25):
From the time they reached the Union blockade, aboard the Planter,
Robert Smalls and his family were free. They were considered
to be contraband, which is a term that was used
to describe formerly enslaved people who joined the Union. But
this was just the beginning of an impressive career as
a freeman. When he reached the Onward, which was one

(01:45):
of the ships in the Union blockade, Robert Smalls is
reported to have said to Lieutenant J. F. Nicholas, who
was in command, quote, I thought this ship might be
of some use to Uncle Abe. I have some guns.
The Confederates took away from Fort Sumter, and the Planter
was in fact extremely useful. She was fast and she
rode very high in the water, so she was easy

(02:07):
to get in and out of shallow areas while still
carrying lots of men or cargo. But Smalls himself was
a huge asset to the Union as well. References to
his competence, intelligence, and resourcefulness are all over the letters
and papers of the Union officers and soldiers who encountered him,
and the words of Admiral Samuel F. DuPont quote, this man,

(02:29):
Robert Smalls, is superior to any who has yet come
into lines, Intelligent as many of them have been. His
information has been most interesting, and portions of it of
the utmost importance. I shall continue to employ Robert as
a pilot aboard the Planter for the Inland Waters, which
he appears to be very familiar pilot. By the way,

(02:51):
DuPont referring to him that way was a promotion because
he was enslaved. The highest rank that Smalls could hold
under the Confederacy was wheelman. He would even actually become
the Planter's captain. The way that used the word wheelman
was also basically what we have to call pilots if
they're enslaved, like he was doing a pilot's job, but

(03:11):
they wouldn't call him that because he was enslaved. His
familiarity with the Inland Waters was of huge, strate strategic
importance to the Union. He knew where minds had been laid,
He knew which spots were likely to be used as ambushes.
He knew which roots were used by smugglers. He basically
brought with him a mental atlas of the islands, rivers

(03:32):
and sounds, as well as Confederate fortifications in the area.
Robert Smalls was happy to lend all of this knowledge
to the Union. Doing so meant that he was working
against slavery rather than for it, as had been the
case when he was forced to work for the Confederacy.
Robert Small's military service for the Union began pretty much immediately,

(03:53):
but he couldn't actually join the Union Navy. To do that,
a person had to be literate. In spite of the
fact that the McKey family had been pretty lenient with
him during his enslavement, they hadn't allowed him to learn
to read. So to work around this restriction regarding his literacy,
he was instead made essentially a civilian contractor for the
army and then detailed back over to the Navy. During

(04:16):
the Civil War, Smalls participated in seventeen different military engagements
aboard the Planter, aboard an iron clad ship called the
Kia Kok, and other ships as well. But in addition
to this time in combat, thanks to the fame that
followed in the wake of his escape. He also did
a lot of diplomatic fundraising and a recruitment work for
the Union. For example, after it took Port Royal South Carolina,

(04:41):
the Union wanted its residents to grow cotton. They needed
cotton for the war effort, but most of the people
living there had until the arrival of the Union been
enslaved on a cotton plantation. Continuing to grow cotton felt
like doing the same thing for a different master, so
a lot of people had planted food crops instead. Smalls
was sent in to negotiate. He was familiar with the

(05:03):
people in the area, and he was bilingual, able to
speak both English and Gula. Gola is an English based
creole that draws from several West African languages and is
spoken to the Sea islands of South Carolina and Georgia.
Smalls was able to negotiate a temporary compromised that allowed
the growing of both cotton and food crops. His powers

(05:24):
of persuasion were directed at the Union government as well.
As we mentioned in the previous installment of this story,
General David Hunter had on a couple of occasions, tried
to free all of the enslaved persons in places where
he was in command, and the federal government had on
both occasions shut this down, arguing that it was up
to Congress or the presidents and slavery, not a general

(05:45):
acting off on his own. In August eighteen sixty two,
Hunter met with Smalls on the subject of recruiting African
Americans into the Union military. Although Hunter had been encouraging
the acceptance of enslaved persons who reached Union lines into
military service in areas that were under his command, this
was not official military policy. Hunter made arrangements for Smalls

(06:08):
to go to Washington, d c. Traveling with Reverend Mansfield French,
to speak with the Secretary of War and when Stanton
and with other members of Lincoln's cabinet, Smalls met with
the Secretary of War in August twenty. Then he met
with the Secretary of the Treasury, and after that he
and Reverend French met directly with Abraham Lincoln. Others, including

(06:29):
Frederick Douglas, had already advised the President to encourage the
recruitment of black soldiers into the Union Army. Small's advised
the same and said that he would recruit ten thousand
men himself if the President allowed it. Ultimately, the President
and the Secretary of War authorized the enlistment of black
troops into the Union Army on August sixty two. Robert

(06:51):
Smalls added recruiting black troops into the rest of his
military work. He's reported to have recruited five thousand people,
but I didn't really find documentation of how that number
was calculated. And he did all of this wartime work
while the South had placed a four thousand dollar bounty
on him, along with an eight hundred dollar bounty on

(07:11):
his wife or children. Smalls continued his military service after
the Civil War, becoming a major general of the South
Carolina Militia. He also moved into political service, which is
what we will talk about after a brief word from
a sponsor. Okay, so before we get into Robert Small's
time in the South Carolina legislature, we need to set

(07:33):
the stage a little bit with what happened after the
end of the Civil War, because his political career directly
parallels other events in US history. The two biggest, most
obvious things that probably come to mind about the end
of the Civil War are that the states that had
succeeded rejoined the Union and slavery was abolished, but it
wasn't just as simple as the war is over, so

(07:54):
we're one country again, and also there's no more slavery.
There needed to be a plan for the former Confederate
state to demonstrate their loyalty to the United States, and
they're also needed to be a plan to address the social, political,
and economic inequality that stemmed from the institution of slavery,
and to try to rebuild the damage to the nation
and its infrastructure that had been caused by the war itself.

(08:15):
These plans and the years through which they played out
became known as Reconstruction. There is way too much reconstruction
history to cover in one episode or even ten episodes,
so this is an extremely basic overview. The grand idea
behind reconstruction was to rebuild and unify the nation and
to offset the inherent disadvantages that African Americans faced because

(08:38):
of the institution of slavery. But a lot went wrong. First,
there was significant back and forth between President Lincoln and
Congress about what the plan should be. Lincoln's plan boiled
down to the state's abolishing slavery and ten percent of
their eligible voters swearing an oath of Allegiance. Congress felt
like this was not enough, and has the Wade Davisville,

(09:01):
which set a significantly higher bar for readmission, one that
the president felt was too high, so he refused to
sign it. A much bigger issue was that when Abraham Lincoln,
a Republican, had run for re election in eighteen sixty four,
he had selected Democrat Andrew Johnson of Tennessee is his
running mate, and the hope that it would bring him
the support of Democrats and perhaps voters with pro Confederate leanings,

(09:25):
along with other strategies. This worked, and Lincoln was re
elected by a landslide, but that meant that when Abraham
Lincoln was assassinated, Johnson became president. The same traits that
had led some voters to support Johnson's vice presidency also
led him to undermine some of the most important elements
of reconstruction. He granted an amnesty that affected numerous ex Confederates,

(09:48):
many of whom were then elected to the new governments
of the Southern States. He set standards for readmission to
the Union that didn't do much to address the issues
Congress was trying to fix. He's autoted civil rights legislation,
although Congress adopted it over his veto. He ultimately declared
that the Union was restored, even though many of the

(10:08):
rebelling states hadn't actually done one or more of the
very basic things that they were expected to do to
be readmitted to the Union. As a side note, Johnson
was also the first president to be impeached for dismissing
Edwin Stanton, Secretary of War, which violated the Tenure of
Office Act. And to be clear, there were strides made
to try to bring about equality after the Civil War.

(10:30):
Between eighteen sixty five and eighteen seventy fourteenth and fifteenth
amendments to the U s Constitution, which are known as
the Reconstruction Amendments, were ratified. The thirteenth abolished slavery. The fourteenth,
which we have talked about in a lot of episodes
on this show, gave all citizens due process and equal
protection under the law. In the fifteenth gave all male

(10:51):
citizens the right to vote, regardless of quote, race, color,
or previous condition of servitude. In eighteen sixty five, the
Freedman's Bureau was also established with the hope of providing education,
medical care, and assistance with labor contracts to previously enslaved persons,
but none of this was as broad, far reaching, or

(11:12):
effective as Congress had hoped at the conclusion of the war.
Sometimes people talk about the failure of Reconstruction, but really
Reconstruction was never given a chance to succeed. The election
of former Confederate leaders to Southern state governments led to
those governments actively working against reconstruction. Many passed explicitly discriminatory

(11:34):
laws and policies. Almost immediately, as early as no Member
of eighteen sixty five, governments and former Confederate states were
passing black codes, which eventually evolved into Jim Crow laws,
which denied African Americans basic legal rights and protections. All
of this was playing out as Robert Smalls became a
community and political leader, first in Beaufort and then in

(11:58):
South Carolina. After of the war, Small as his wife
and their two surviving children returned to Buford. He had
been awarded fifteen hundred dollars for the capture of the
planter for quote rescuing her from the enemies of the government.
He had also saved a lot of his pay, as
well as other financial awards that he got from various
aspects of his service. He used six hundred and fifty

(12:19):
dollars of this money to buy the former McKee home
which would which had since been sold to another family
at a tax auction. From there, he used some of
his money to help establish businesses and to help other
black families established businesses of their own. He acquired land
and property, and he helped build a black owned railroad

(12:40):
in Charleston. He also used some of his new found
wealth to assist his former owners, who had been financially
ruined by the war. He purchased a small house for
the mckeys, and he helped their children find jobs. After
Henry McKee died, Small Small's had Mrs McKee cared for
in his own home. So I want to be clear here.
This turnabout does not somehow negate the fact that the

(13:03):
mckeys had owned Robert Smalls and his mother and other
people as property, and it doesn't erase the institution of
slavery as a whole. But Small's compassionate treatment of the
McKees and the other white citizens of Bufort did wind
up earning him the respect of many in the white community.
Robert Smalls also did a lot of work in the
area of education. He had begun educating himself through private tutors.

(13:27):
During the war. Back in Bufort, he resumed the practice,
hiring a tutor, waking up at five am every morning
to study for two hours before the rest of his
day began. This desire to educate himself carried over to
a desire to educate his children and the black community
of South Carolina as a whole. He helped form the
Beaufort County School Board in February eighteen sixty seven and

(13:50):
was immediately elected chair. The school board then purchased property
and established a school. It's unsurprising given that after this
much community involvement. After the war, Smalls also moved into
political leadership. In eighteen sixty seven, he helped found the
Republican Party in South Carolina, and he was a delegate
at seven different Republican national conventions. Along with many other

(14:13):
black civic leaders, he made huge strides in getting South
Carolina's black citizens, which at this point outnumbered its white citizens,
registered to vote. He was elected to be a delegate
at South Carolina's Constitutional Convention in eighteen sixty seven. When
the Constitutional Convention, which was one of the requirements for
South Carolina to rejoin the Union, was convened in eighteen

(14:36):
sixty eight. Seventy six of its one twenty four delegates
were black. Smalls was appointed to the Finance Committee, and
he also proposed a resolution to set up free public
schools that were available to everyone. This resolution ultimately led
to the first public schools in South Carolina. That same year,
he was elected to a two year term in the

(14:56):
South Carolina House of Representatives. That year, the majar of
representatives in the South Carolina General Assembly were black, and
there were nine black and twenty four white senators in
the state Senate. In fact, during reconstruction, South Carolina had
more black citizens holding public law office than any other state.
South Carolina also had more black representation in the United

(15:17):
States Congress during reconstruction than any other state as well.
At the end of his term in the House of Representatives,
Smalls was elected to the South Carolina State Senate, where
he served two terms, continuing to focus on education, economic opportunity,
and investigation of alleged corruption in the Republican Party. From there,

(15:37):
Small's next stop was the United States federal government, which
we will talk about after another brief sponsor break. In
eighteen seventy four, Robert Smalls was elected to the United
States House of Representatives representing a majority black district that
included Beaufort County, South Carolina, between eighteen seventy five and
eighteen eighty six. He served five non consecutive terms and

(15:59):
the House of Representatives. He continued to work towards the
social and economic interests of South Carolina, especially it's black citizens.
He advocated for a Navy base to be built in
Port Royal, South Carolina, which wound up becoming a significant
contributor to the state's economy. He also championed the bill
that required the federal government to return land that had
been confiscated for non payment of taxes, which allowed residents

(16:22):
of South Carolina and many other states to buy the
land at a low cost. This measure led to black
citizens of Beaufort County owning most of the land there.
In eighteen seventy six, one more time, eighteen seventy six,
Robert Smalls proposed an amendment to an Army reorganization bill
which would have integrated the United States Armed forces. Although

(16:44):
his efforts weren't successful, they did demonstrate that people were
genuinely attempting to desegregate the United States armed forces, long
long before President Truman signed executive order in ninety. However,
during these same years, an intense, violent backlash against reconstruction
was growing more pronounced and severe in many Southern states.

(17:07):
The white supremacist organization the ku Klux Klan, had been
established in eighteen sixty six, and by eighteen seventy it
had really spread throughout the South. In eighteen seventy six,
armed white men killed several black members of the militia
near Hamburg, South Carolina, and that same year elections in
South Carolina were overrun with violence and voter intimidation in

(17:30):
an effort to remove black officials from power. In eighteen
seventy seven, Republican Rutherford be Hayes took office as President
of the United States after an incredibly long and controversial
presidential election. His opponent, Democrat Samuel J. Tilden, had won
the popular vote, but when it came to awarding electoral votes,

(17:51):
the results reported by the Republican and Democratic parties and
three different states did not match up. Consequently, it was
up the Congress to decide how to a lot the
electoral votes from these states. In the end, a compromise
was reached Rutherford Behayes would become president, but as Commander
in Chief of the Army, he would have to issue
the order to withdraw federal troops, which had been part

(18:14):
of the reconstruction effort from the South. By this point,
a lot of the early strides towards equality that had
been made during the earlier years of reconstruction had already
been erased as states had passed black codes and other
discriminatory laws. State and local governments that had briefly become
a lot closer to reflecting the racial makeup of their

(18:34):
constituents didn't anymore. Voter intimidation and violenced against black citizens
at the hand of white citizens were really on the rise.
Governments all over the South returned to being mostly too
entirely white, with many of the white government leaders having
ties to the former Confederacy. A lot of people feel
like this withdrawal of the federal troops was really the

(18:57):
final nail in the coffin of reconstruction, and it was
against this backdrop that in eighteen seventy seven, Robert Smalls
was accused, tried, and convicted of accepting a bribe. The
case boiled down to a man named Joseph Woodriff, who
claimed that he had bribed Smalls with five thousand dollars
on January nineteenth, eighteen seventy three. A key piece of

(19:19):
evidence was a check dated the nineteenth which was made
out to quote cash or bearer and not to Robert Smalls.
Another was a handwritten note written in pencil, dated the eighteenth,
the day before the check, with no signatures on it.
In spite of the fact that none of what we
just said really adds up, and the fact that there
were a lot of other inconsistencies and unreliable witness testimonies

(19:43):
involved in this trial, Smalls was found guilty. The conviction
was upheld on appeal, but he was later pardoned, although
the South Carolina press continued to use the issue against
him for the next two years. At this point, most
historians agree that this was really an effort to try
to keep Smalls out of office, and not a crime
that he had committed at any point, even though he

(20:04):
was running in an overwhelmingly black Republican congressional district. Smalls
lost in the race for the US House in eighteen
seventy eight to white Democrat George Tillman. He continued to
work within the Republican Party in the face of ongoing
harassment and threats and intimidation. He lost to Tilban again
in eighteen eighty. Although the results of the eighteen eighty

(20:25):
election were heavily contested, in the House of Representatives ultimately
decided to seat Smalls instead. More than eighteen months into
the two year term, in eighteen eighty two, Smalls withdrew
from the race in favor of another Republican candidate, in
part because his own political support from voters hadn't yet
recovered from the bribery charge. Robert Small's wife, Hannah, died

(20:47):
in eighteen eighty three. Smalls later married a woman named
Annie Wigg and they had a son together, who they
named William Robert. Annie died a few years into their marriage.
In eighteen eighty four, Robert Smalls ran against white Confederate
veteran William Elliott Senior and one. At this point, jerrymandering
had guaranteed that all but one of South Carolina's districts

(21:09):
had a majority white population, so black representation in the
South Carolina government and in South Carolina's representatives to the
federal government had dropped dramatically. In eighteen eighty six, Elliott
defeated Smalls in the race for the House of Representatives.
Although he was nominated in subsequent years, Smalls did not
return to elected office after this point. In eighteen eighty nine,

(21:32):
he was appointed collector of customs at the port of Bufort.
In eighteen ninety five, South Carolina Governor Benjamin R. Tillman
urged the state to convene another constitutional convention to revise
the state constitution, and it did because of all the
work that had been done to jerrymander the state intimidate
black voters and get black people out of public office.

(21:54):
Nearly all of the delegates to this constitutional convention were white.
No black delegates were appointed to the Committee on the
Rights of Suffrage. It was this committee that set up
as many barriers to black citizens voting as possible without
directly contradicting the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Over the strenuous objections and counter proposals of the six

(22:17):
black Republican delegates to the Constitutional Convention, South Carolina adopted
a new constitution, and under this constitution, in order to vote,
people had to pass a literacy test, pay a poll tax,
and own at least three hundred dollars worth of property.
Being convicted of a number of crimes, including arson, burglary,

(22:37):
and robbery also stripped people of the right to vote. Combined,
these stipulations in the state constitution stripped most black citizens
of the right to vote, which continued to be the
case until the passage of the Voting Rights Act of
nineteen sixty five. Also included in the constitution the establishment
of segregated schools. Robert Smalls cantinued to hold his customs

(23:01):
post until nineteen twelve, when he was reappointed by William
Howard Taffe, but not confirmed by the Senate. By this point,
his health was really poor, and the Beaufort Customs House
closed after he left. He died at the age of
seventy six in nineteen fifteen. In the nineteen forties, Camp
Robert Smalls, which was part of the Great Lakes Naval
Training Center and was created to train black Navy seamen

(23:24):
while the Navy was segregated, was named after him. In
nineteen seventy six, Robert Smalls Bufort Home was added to
the National Register of Historic Places. He was awarded the
Palmeadow Cross on May thirteenth, two thousand two. The one
forty anniversary of his capture of the Planter. In recognition
of his service to the South Carolina Militia, an army

(23:45):
transport ship was christened the Major General Robert Smalls on
April two thousand four. At various points, multiple schools in
Beaufort County have born Robert Small's name. Robert Small's Middle School,
which is now Robert Small's International Academy, still does in
Some of its alumni protested that its logo, which featured

(24:06):
a man with a face that was darker on one
side and lighter on the other, wearing what appeared to
be Revolutionary war Eric Garb, didn't accurately represent who Robert
Smalls was. The logo was temporarily changed to a G
for Generals, which was their school mascot, but the greater
discussion was still ongoing at the time. We recorded this
episode to end with a quote from the man himself, quote,

(24:28):
my race needs no special defense, for the past history
of them in this country proves them to be equal
of any people anywhere. All they need is an equal
chance in the battle of life. That is Robert Smalls.
I had a surprisingly difficult time researching this episode because
you can find lots of children's books about Robert Small's

(24:52):
in a typical public library. There are a lot of them.
There are also numerous like rigorous academic works for adults
about Robert Smalls, And to get any of them, I
had to go to a university library, like the public
library only had the children's book levels stuff. It's a

(25:14):
trend that frustrates me. Like, I am glad that there
are children's books about all of these people in these stories.
That's great. And I'm glad that they're available for free
at the public library. That's great. But it kind of sucks,
slash really sucks when a lot of these stories are
looked at as like inspirational stories for children rather than

(25:37):
things for adults to study seriously. Also, so if you
are interested in learning more about Robert Smalls. The two
books that I had to go to a university library
to get our gulla Statesman Robert Smalls from Slavery to
Congress by Edward A. Miller and Yearning to Breathe Free
Robert Smalls of South Carolina and his Family is by

(25:57):
Andrew Billingsley, and they are both really good it. Do
you also have some listener mail for us? Yeah? I
do yeah from Aaron. Aaron says, Hi, ladies, thanks so
much for keeping the podcast interesting. I listen at work
and it helps keep me focused when I get overwhelmed
and stressed. Thanks for giving me something else to think
about when everything else gets too crazy. I just listened

(26:20):
to the podcast on the Schoolhouse Blizzard, and your little
side discussion into relative comfort and cold weather hit very
close to home. I recently moved to Madison, Wisconsin, from
New York City, and while n YC. Isn't necessarily warm,
it certainly isn't as cold as as Wisconsin. Now, just
my second winter here in Wisconsin, I'm finding that I
treat most winter temperatures the same as I used to

(26:41):
treat temperatures thirty degrees warmer. For instance, I'll go out
in twenty degree weather the same way I used to
prepare for fifty degree weather. And this change in behavior
was so drastic that even my husband took notice and
got worried. He did some research and learned that this
is not an unexpected and an unexplained phenomenon. People that
spend more time in cold weather, we'll have the structure

(27:01):
of their body fat change, becoming more insulative. When summer comes,
the fat structure changes back, and the following winter your
body has to prepare all over again. This explains why
I am now more comfortable in cold weather than I
other ever was before, and my people in northern climates
were shorts in the winter simply because their bodies are
more prepared to deal with the cold. This could also
explain why years ago, after spending two weeks in Cambodia

(27:22):
working outside in degree temperatures and nearly humidity, I returned
home to the hottest summer in New York City on
record and found myself cold wearing a light summer a
light sweater all summer long. Thanks for the podcast. I
hope that I was able to teach you ladies something
in exchange for everything you've taught me. Aaron, thank you
so much, Aaron. I looked into this. That is indeed

(27:44):
the case, And of course most newspapers reported on this
research as being like, did you know being cold might
help you lose weight? Thanks newspapers for that not the
point at all interpretation of the scientific study. That's the
clickable version, right. Yeah. Well, and I do you find
any studies on my winter rage disorder? Because I never badly, badly.

(28:08):
Maybe I'll research that after we're done recording. I have
the exact same experience as Aaron, like I will go
outside and it's thirty degrees and I don't have gloves on,
and that I usually regret that after about fifteen minutes.
But the fact that I will even walk out of
my house without a hat and gloves on when it
is in the thirties is still continues to baffle me

(28:34):
because that used to be the freezingest temperature possible. It's
pretty cold, yep. Anyway, you would like to write to us,
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(28:55):
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(29:16):
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