Darkness still blanketed the city of Charleston in the early hours of May 13, 1862, as a light breeze carried the briny scent of marshes across its quiet harbor. Only the occasional ringing of a ship’s bell competed with the sounds of waves lapping against the wooden wharf where a Confederate sidewheel steamer named the Planter was moored. The wharf stood a few miles from Fort Sumter, where the first shots of the Civil War had been fired just a little more than a year before.
As thin wisps of smoke rose from the vessel’s smokestack high above the pilothouse, a twenty-three-year-old enslaved man named Robert Smalls stood on the deck. In the next few hours he and his young family would either find freedom from slavery or face certain death. Their future, he knew, now depended largely on his courage and the strength of his plan.1
Like so many enslaved people, Smalls was haunted by the idea that his family—his wife, Hannah; their four-year-old daughter, Elizabeth; and their infant son, Robert, Jr.—would be sold. It was a harsh reality for many in bondage. Slave owners often broke up families depending on their own needs and desires, and usually with no consideration for the bonds between husband and wife or parent and child. When his child married, a master might give a slave as a gift. He might take a mother away from her children to nurse his own or sell a man who had tried to run. When a master died, his slaves might be randomly distributed among his heirs or sold to different owners. And once separated, family members often never saw each other again.2
The only way Smalls could ensure that his family would stay together was to escape slavery. This truth had occupied his mind for years as he searched for a plan with some chance of succeeding. But escape was hard enough for a single man; to flee with a young family in tow was nearly impossible: enslaved families often did not live or work together, and an escape party that included children would slow the journey significantly and make discovery much more likely. Traveling with an infant was especially risky; a baby’s cry could alert the slave patrols. And the punishment if caught was severe; owners could legally have runaways whipped, shackled, or sold.3
Now Smalls’ chance at freedom had finally come. With a plan as dangerous as it was brilliant, he quietly alerted the other enslaved crew members on board. It was time to seize the Planter.
* * *
Charleston’s flickering gas lamps dimly illuminated the wooden vessel as the men took their assigned positions on the steamer. The Planter was 147 feet long, 30 feet wide, and featured two large enclosed paddle wheels at port and starboard.4 From the beginning of the war, the Confederates had used the ship as a transport, moving personnel, ordinance, and supplies between various locations in and around the harbor. The Planter was one of the newest and fastest coastal steamers operating in the area.5
That morning the steamer was moored in its customary spot at Charleston’s Southern Wharf, one of the many wharves that lined the Cooper River on the eastern side of Charleston’s peninsula.6 With twin piers, offices, and warehouses originally built to store cotton and rice, the wharf stood near where the convergence of the Cooper and Ashley rivers forms Charleston Harbor.
The wharf’s proximity to the harbor provided the Confederates with easy access to the numerous heavily armed fortifications built to protect the city from a Union attack. This location also made the wharf ideal for the headquarters of the fiery and outspoken Confederate general Roswell Ripley.7
Ripley, thirty-nine, was commander of the Second Military District of South Carolina. Although the portly, balding officer with a full beard held a high-ranking position within the Confederacy, he had been a Northerner for most of his life. Born in Ohio and raised in New York, he seems to have developed his allegiance to the South in 1852, when he married a wealthy Charleston widow from the prominent Middleton family and settled in the city.8
As commander of the district, Ripley was responsible for all military vessels in the harbor, including the Planter, and he used it not only as a transport but also as his own personal dispatch boat for relaying military messages. This meant that, if successful, Smalls would be seizing a Confederate general’s boat docked within feet of the general’s headquarters.
Smalls’ plan was to commandeer the Planter and deliver it to the imposing fleet of Union ships anchored outside Charleston Harbor. These vessels were part of the blockade of all major Southern ports Lincoln had initiated shortly after Fort Sumter fell in April 1861.9
As one of the largest ports in the Confederacy, Charleston was a lifeline for the South. A largely agrarian society, the South depended on imports of war materiel, food, medicine, manufactured goods, and other supplies. With the Union vessels blocking the harbor, daring blockade runners looking to make hefty profits smuggled these goods into Charleston and carried cotton and rice out of the city for sale in European markets. After supplies arrived in Charleston, the city’s railroad connections delivered them throughout the Confederate states.
Although crucial, blockading such an important harbor was a staggering task. The many navigable channels in and out of the harbor made stopping all traffic nearly impossible and had led Northerners to refer to Charleston as a “rat hole.” Although many vessels outran and outmaneuvered the blockade, the Union was able to intercept some and either capture or destroy them.
A few months earlier the Union had been so desperate to stop blockade runners that the Navy had tried to obstruct the entrance to the harbor by sinking an entire fleet of old whaling and merchant ships filled with New England granite. That plan had failed miserably. The ships, dubbed the “rat hole squadron” and the “stone fleet,” simply broke apart or sank farther into the sand, making a new channel. The blockade runners were back in business within days.10
It was fortunate for Smalls that the Union’s scheme had failed. Had it worked, the Union may have diverted the vessels at anchor outside the harbor to other ports, and reaching the Union ships was essential to Smalls’ plan.
Though the wharf and the Union fleet were only about ten miles apart, Smalls would have to pass several heavily armed Confederate fortifications in the harbor as well as multiple gun batteries along the shore without raising an alarm. The risk of discovery and capture was high.
The Planter created so much smoke and noise that Smalls knew that steaming past the forts and batteries undetected would be impossible. The ship had to appear to be on a routine mission under the command of its three white officers who were responsible for the enslaved black crew and were always on board when it was underway. And Smalls had come up with an inspired way to do just that. Protected by the darkness of the hour, Smalls would impersonate the captain.
This relatively simple plan presented multiple dangers. First, the three white officers posed an obvious obstacle, and Smalls and his crew would have to find a way to deal with them. Second, they would have to avoid detection by the guards at the wharf as they seized the Planter. Then, since Smalls’ family and others involved in the escape would be hiding in another steamer farther up the Cooper River, Smalls and the remaining crew would have to backtrack away from the harbor’s entrance to pick them up. The Planter’s movement up the river and away from the harbor was likely to attract the attention of sentries posted among the wharves. If everyone made it on board, the party of sixteen men, women, and children would then have to steam through the heavily guarded harbor. If sentries at any of the fortifications or batteries realized something was amiss, they could easily destroy the Planter in seconds.
Once safely through the harbor, Smalls and company faced yet another big risk: approaching a Union ship, which would have to assume the Confederate steamer was hostile. Unless Smalls could quickly convince the Union crew that his party’s intentions were friendly, the Union ship would take defensive action and open fire, likely destroying the Planter and killing everyone on board.
Clearing any one of these obstacles would be a remarkable feat, but clearing all of them would be astounding. Despite the enormous risks, Smalls was ready to forge ahead for the sake of his family and their freedom.11
* * *
Smalls was a stocky young man, likely of black and white descent, who favored a goatee that emphasized an oval face.12 Whether it was his determined gaze or his years of being enslaved, he looked much older than twenty-three.
For the past year Smalls had been a trusted and valued member of the Planter’s enslaved crew. The white officers in charge of the vessel had noticed Smalls’ skills on the water and quickly promoted him from deckhand to wheelman. With this promotion Smalls essentially functioned as the ship’s pilot, a difficult job that required navigating the shifting sandbars of Charleston Harbor and the shallow, twisting rivers and inlets that fed into it. But it all came easily to Smalls, who knew every curve of the surrounding waterways. Although Smalls had become known as one of the best pilots in the area, the Confederates refused to give him, or any enslaved man, the title of pilot.
Smalls was part of a crew of ten that included three white officers—the captain, Charles J. Relyea, forty-seven; the first mate, Samuel Smith Hancock, twenty-eight; and the engineer, Samuel Z. Pitcher, thirty-four.13 None of these men had grown up in the South. Relyea was born and raised in the state of New York; Hancock was from Glasgow, Scotland; and Pitcher was from Norwich, England. And although they served aboard the Confederate steamer as officers, they were not enlisted as officers in the Confederate Navy. They were private contractors who reported directly to the vessel’s owner, a dark-haired thirty-five-year-old Scot named John Ferguson.14
Ferguson, who was said to possess “the frame and strength almost of a Samson,” had lived in Charleston for years. He and his wife, Adelaide, had climbed the social ranks of the city as his reputation and wealth had grown. In addition to the Planter, he owned three other transport steamers and had become one of the city’s most prominent residents. “He was a man of large business capacity, and while he was always bold to conceive, he was equally at all times as fearless to act and carry out his plans,” wrote one of Ferguson’s acquaintances.15
In addition to Smalls, the rest of the crew included six other enslaved black men who ranged in age from their teens to middle age and acted as engineers and deckhands. John Small, who was not related to Smalls, and Alfred Gourdine served as engineers, while the deckhands were David Jones, Jack Gibbes, Gabriel Turner, and Abraham Jackson.16 Three of these men belonged to Ferguson, but the others, including Smalls, had different masters who “hired out” their time.17
Ferguson had commissioned construction of the Planter from a local shipyard two years earlier. She was made of the area’s famous live oaks, as well as red cedar, and had three decks, sleeping quarters for the crew, and storage space for supplies and cargo. Oscillating steam engines on the main deck powered each of two paddle wheels on either side of the steamer, an arrangement that gave her greater maneuverability. The vessel’s navigation was controlled from the pilothouse, and a single large smokestack emerged from the top deck in front of the pilothouse, emitting steam and smoke from the wood-burning engines. Of particular value was the Planter’s ability to operate in less than four feet of water, which meant she could navigate the notoriously shallow waterways of South Carolina’s coast.
When the ship was new, Ferguson had captained her himself and used the vessel to transport cotton and passengers between Charleston and nearby Georgetown as well as to landings on the Pee Dee River. Now he was leasing the vessel to the Confederacy for $125 per day, a hefty sum that added to Ferguson’s increasing wealth.18
Under the lease the crew’s duties included carrying supplies, weapons, men, and dispatches around the harbor and the surrounding area for the Southern cause. In the past year the men had also surveyed the sandbars along the coasts of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida; helped destroy the federal lighthouse at South Carolina’s Hunting Island to prevent the Union from using it for navigation; and helped lay mines, known then as torpedoes, in nearby rivers to protect against a Union attack.19
The Confederacy had armed the Planter with a 32-pound pivot gun on her foredeck for long-range targets and a 24-pound howitzer on her afterdeck for short-range targets.20 It was just enough firepower for the Planter to defend herself in an emergency.
By September 1861 Ferguson had stepped down as captain of the Planter and appointed Relyea to take his place. They had been business partners for years, and Relyea had captained other steamers in the area, including the General Clinch.21
While Relyea was captain of the General Clinch in January 1861, he had signaled the Confederate battery at Morris Island that the Star of the West was approaching the harbor.22 The U.S. government had hired the civilian steamship to bring supplies and reinforcements to Fort Sumter, then occupied by Union forces and under siege by the Confederates. After the Confederates received Relyea’s signal, they fired on the Star of the West from Morris Island and Fort Moultrie and forced the unarmed steamer to turn around. The Civil War began just three months later when Confederate batteries fired on Fort Sumter.23
As the new captain of the Planter, Relyea occasionally left the ship in the hands of the black crew overnight so he and his officers could stay with their wives and children in their homes in the city. Relyea may have done so because he trusted his crew, but it is more likely that he, like many whites in the South, and even the North, simply did not think that enslaved men would be capable of pulling off a mission as dangerous and difficult as commandeering a Confederate vessel. It would be nearly impossible for anyone to take a steamer in a harbor so well guarded and difficult to navigate; few whites at the time could imagine that enslaved African Americans would be able to do it.
By leaving the ship in the crew’s care, Relyea was violating recent Confederate military orders, General Orders, No. 5, which required white officers and their crews to stay on board, day and night, while the vessel was docked at the wharf so they could be ready to go at any minute.24 But even beyond his decision to leave the crew alone with the ship, Relyea himself was a key element of Smalls’ plan.
The unusual idea of how to get away with taking the Planter had come to Smalls that spring when, in the captain’s absence, another crew member had playfully placed Relyea’s wide-brimmed straw hat on Smalls’ head. Smalls was stocky like Relyea, and the crew member joked that when Smalls was wearing the hat, he resembled the captain.
In that seemingly inconsequential moment Smalls realized he had finally found a way to escape that would allow him to bring his family with him. He knew that steaming the vessel through the harbor undetected would be nearly impossible, but if he wore Relyea’s hat in the dark, early hours on one of the mornings when the white officers were absent, sentries guarding the harbor might mistake him for the captain and allow the Planter and those hidden on board to pass without interference.
Relyea frequently left his hat in the pilothouse when he was not on duty, so getting access to it would be easy. Also, Smalls would be standing in the pilothouse, and the Planter’s smokestack, positioned directly in front of him, would help obscure the color of his skin.
Of course Smalls could not be sure that wearing the hat would deceive the guards, yet he had to try. But before he went any further, he also needed to be certain his wife, Hannah, was willing to join him. The plan was worth the incredible risks only if Hannah and the children escaped with him.
When Smalls told Hannah about his idea, she wanted to know what would happen if he were caught. He did not hold back the truth. “I shall be shot,” he said. While all the men on board would almost certainly face death, the women and children would be severely punished and perhaps sold to different owners.
Hannah, who had a kind face and a strong spirit, remained calm and decisive. She told her husband: “It is a risk, dear, but you and I, and our little ones must be free. I will go, for where you die, I will die.”25 Both were willing to do whatever it took to win their children’s freedom.
Smalls, of course, also had to approach his fellow crew members. Sharing his plan with them was in itself a huge risk. Even talking about escape was incredibly dangerous in Confederate Charleston. If someone revealed the plot either purposefully or accidentally, Smalls, and perhaps the whole group, would pay a huge price. Smalls, however, had little choice in the matter. He could not operate the large steamer on his own, and he could not take the vessel using other men and keep the plan a secret from the original crew. His only option was to recruit the men and trust them.
The crew met secretly with Smalls sometime in late April or early May and discussed the idea, but their individual decisions could not have been easy. All knew that whatever they decided in that moment would affect the rest of their lives. It was still quite possible that the Confederacy would win the war. If it did, staying behind meant enduring lives of servitude. Joining Smalls, however, could result in their capture and severe punishment or death. Even if they succeeded, they were also putting at risk anyone who might be suspected of helping them. Once the Confederates learned of the escape, they would want to punish anyone who had been involved.
The promise of freedom was so strong, and the thought of remaining in slavery so abhorrent, that these considerations ultimately convinced the men to join Smalls. Before the meeting ended, all had agreed to take part in the escape and to be ready to act whenever Smalls decided it was time. Until then, they promised not to reveal the plan to anyone, not even to their families. Hannah, of course, already knew, but the other women who would join them that evening would not know until the last moment.26 The crew simply could not risk word getting out.
Three other men who would join in the escape also likely attended the meeting. One was Abram Allston, the brother of Jack Gibbes, a deckhand. Allston, forty-four and enslaved, worked as a hired boatman at nearby Fort Moultrie; he was a useful addition because of his experience on the water. The other two were William Morrison, forty-three, and Samuel Chisholm, twenty-two.27 These men were probably trusted neighbors, friends, or relatives of those working on the Planter, but, like Allston, they were not regular crew members. Morrison, who had secretly learned to read and write, was a tinsmith and plumber by trade and was owned by Emile Poincignon, a tinsmith in Charleston. In addition to gaining his freedom, Morrison was motivated by the idea of once again seeing his wife and two children, who lived in Montgomery, Alabama.28 Chisholm was likely working on a nearby steamer called the Etiwan that would have a critical role in the escape.
Remaining calm and quiet would take patience and courage as Smalls’ crew waited for the day he would signal it was time to put their plan into action. In the meantime they became worried about one of their own.
That man was the deckhand David Jones. “He was given to talk, and whenever he got hold of whiskey he wanted to tell all he knew,” said Gourdine, one of the engineers. When the crew realized Jones was losing his resolve to keep quiet, their concern grew into outright fear. “He was all right at first, but after a few days he began to weaken and predict disaster, and was evidently ready to give the whole thing away,” Gourdine said. “In this emergency we got at him one night and threatened his life if he did not brace up, and thus frightened him into being steadfast.” With so much at stake the men could not take any chances and were prepared to do almost anything to preserve their secret.29
Although Smalls and the crew had a lot of factors working against them, they were fortunate in their timing. If the Planter reached a Union ship, its sailors were now required to provide help or face punishment from the Navy. Just two months earlier Congress had approved an additional article of war that forbade all military personnel from returning fugitive slaves to their Confederate owners. Until then, the Union had had no consistent military policy on what to do about enslaved people who escaped the South. Many had been sent back to the nightmares they had fled, pursuant to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which required their return to their owners.
* * *
On the afternoon of May 12, 1862, just hours before the escape, the men on the Planter finished two grueling weeks of intense labor. They had been removing cannon from Cole’s Island near the mouth of the Stono River, loading them onto the steamer and transporting them to James Island just across the Ashley River from Charleston. Moving the guns was part of the Confederates’ tactic of concentrating their depleted troops and weapons in strategic areas around Charleston. In doing so, however, they were also leaving the entrance to the Stono River open to a Union invasion. Smalls noted this critical weakness in Charleston’s defenses.
Earlier that day the crew had picked up four massive cannon—a banded 42-pound rifled gun, an 8-inch Columbiad, an 8-inch howitzer, and a 32-pound rifled gun—as well as a 10-inch Columbiad gun carriage and 200 pounds of ammunition.30 The guns, which weighed thousands of pounds, had been damaged during the bombardment of Fort Sumter in April 1861, but cannon were now so scarce that General Ripley had recently had them repaired. The crew’s orders were to deliver the munitions the following morning to Fort Ripley, which was under construction in the harbor.
With the cannon on board, it was an opportune time to seize the vessel. At some point Smalls became aware that the white officers planned to leave the ship that night as they had previously done. If they did, and if Smalls’ plans were successful, he could deliver to Union forces not only a valuable steamer, but also desperately needed munitions.
It would be a remarkable feat. Most enslaved men and women trying to reach the Union fleets blockading Southern ports rowed to the vessels in canoes. No civilian, black or white, had ever taken a Confederate vessel of this size and turned it over to the Union. Nor had any civilian ever delivered so many priceless guns.
Just a few weeks earlier, a group of fifteen slaves in Charleston had surprised the city by seizing a barge from the waterfront and rowing it to the Union fleet. The barge belonged to General Ripley, the same commander who used the Planter as his dispatch boat. When it was found to be missing, the Confederates were furious. They were also embarrassed at being outsmarted by slaves. Nonetheless, they failed to take any extra precautions in securing other vessels at the wharf. The caper may even have inspired Smalls. But seizing a massive steamer loaded with heavy artillery pieces would be far more difficult than commandeering a barge.31
Smalls also may have decided to act when he did because he knew that the Confederate guard boat that monitored the entrance to the harbor was temporarily out of commission.32
In addition, Smalls knew that Charleston would be placed under martial law the following day in anticipation of a Union attack. Martial law gave the military authority over the civilian population and would bring heightened security that would make executing the plan to commandeer the Planter even more difficult. With martial law but hours away, this could be their last real chance for escape.
Smalls quietly let the men know his intentions. As the reality of what they were about to do descended on them, they were overwhelmed by fears of what might happen. Even so, they pressed forward.
Almost immediately, they encountered an unexpected problem. As the white officers prepared to leave, the first mate, Hancock, suddenly announced that he would sleep on the steamer that night. The news came as a great shock, but the crew could not reveal their disappointment and frustration. They could only go about their tasks as routinely as possible while deciding their next steps.
Smalls had no intention of abandoning his plan. “He wouldn’t give up … saying that he would either lock the mate in his stateroom or kill him,” Gourdine said. “It was finally decided to go ahead, but we had scarcely come to that conclusion when the man went ashore and thus saved his bacon. If he had remained with us, he’d either [have] been carried out to sea as a captive or thrown overboard as a corpse.”
Once the crew was alone, they faced yet another problem. Two deckhands announced that they had changed their minds. Jones, the talkative drinker, and Gibbes had decided they would not participate in the escape. The risks were simply too great for them.
Although the rest of the crew was angry and worried that Jones and Gibbes would reveal Smalls’ plans, Smalls and the others quickly regrouped from this latest setback as the men left the ship.
Thanks to the three additional men the crew had invited to join in—Allston, Chisholm, and Morrison, who probably arrived shortly after the officers left—they would have enough hands to operate the steamer.33
* * *
As the hour grew later, the men kept watch for the rest of their party. Hannah, of course, knew about the plan, but the other women did not. They had simply been told to come to the vessel to visit with the men, just as the women had done many times in the past.34
Hannah soon arrived with Elizabeth and Robert, Jr., in tow. Also with Hannah, who was about twelve years older than her husband, was her teenaged daughter from another relationship, Clara Jones. Hannah’s oldest daughter, Charlotte, who was only a few years younger than Smalls, was not with the group that night. She had stayed behind with her five-year-old daughter, Emily, and Emily’s father, a man named Brown.35
Joining Smalls’ family were the wife and daughter of the first engineer, John Small. Two other women, Lavinia Wilson, who was owned by a cashier at a Charleston bank, and Anna White, for whom details are not known, made up the rest of the group.36
As time passed and a fog descended over the harbor, partially obscuring a nearly full moon, the women became suspicious. The men would not let them leave the Planter, even though they needed to be back at their quarters before Charleston’s nine o’clock slave curfew.
It was then that Smalls decided to reveal the plot. The women met the news with alarm and concern. “They didn’t know much about war, but they knew enough to realize that every man of us would be shot or hung if the attempt was a failure,” Gourdine said. The women’s fear soon got the best of them as they realized the magnitude of what they had stumbled into, but Smalls remained steady. “They cried and prayed and entreated, and if Smalls hadn’t had the grit of a bulldog, he would have let go,” Gourdine said. “It took an hour to calm those women down, and then we locked them in the staterooms and threatened to kill the first one who made a loud noise.” It was a drastic move, but the plan had been set in motion and there was no turning back.37
This may also have been when they boldly decided as a group that if a Confederate vessel attacked and they were not killed immediately, they would hold hands and jump overboard to drown themselves.38 One way or the other, they would all be free, as would their children. They simply refused to go back to slavery.
Once the women had regained their composure, the men prepared to move them and the children to another vessel nearby. They could not remain on the Planter until the escape. If they were spotted still on the ship after curfew, they would arouse immediate suspicion. The crew also had to make sure that anyone watching saw the women leave as if they were going home.
Even if Smalls had been able to stow the women and children aboard the vessel without anyone noticing, he could not risk one of them making a sound that would draw attention to the Planter. At least one sentinel was watching the area around Southern Wharf that night, and he was backed up by twenty guards within hailing distance.
Three crew members accompanied the women and children on foot to the Etiwan, which was tied up at the North Atlantic Wharf. Like the Southern Wharf, this wharf was located along the Cooper River, but it was several blocks north and more removed from the watchful eyes of the Confederate guards around General Ripley’s headquarters. With the help of at least one member of the Etiwan’s crew, thought to be Chisholm, the group boarded the steamer, where they would stay hidden inside until the Planter arrived to pick them up.
Meanwhile, Smalls and the others on the Planter could only wait. Time passed slowly as they wondered what the next few hours would bring. They could not leave the wharf until the early hours of the morning. Doing so would allow them to pass Fort Sumter at first light, which was around four o’clock. If they arrived any earlier, they might raise questions about why they were on the water in the dark. If they left any later, someone on shore might discover that no white officers were on board.
Finally, around three o’clock in the morning, the crew began preparations for leaving. They added wood to the fires, which they had banked when they moored the steamer earlier in the evening, and anxiously waited for the water in the boilers to heat. They would get under way as soon as they had enough steam.
Once again, events did not unfold as Smalls had planned, and the men’s initial excitement quickly turned to concern. Perhaps in their eagerness they had failed to recognize that the wind had picked up and would quickly carry over the city any smoke generated by their fire, possibly drawing attention to the wharf. By the time they realized what was happening, it was too late to stop it. “I feared that people would think there was a fire near the wharf,” Smalls said.39 His concern was warranted: five months earlier Charleston had seen one of the worst fires in its history, and people were still on edge.
The men watched the smoke waft into the night sky, but all they could do was wait anxiously to see if anyone came to investigate. They almost certainly tried to craft a believable excuse for leaving so early with no white officers on board, although there was probably nothing credible they could have said that would have saved them from arrest.
The minutes ticked by, and the men braced themselves for disaster, but no suspicious guards or curious citizens appeared. Relieved, they returned to their duties.
When Smalls judged the time was right, he ordered the steamer to leave. The fog was now thinning, and the crew raised two flags. One was the first official Confederate flag, known as the Stars and Bars, and the other was South Carolina’s blue-and-white state flag, which displayed a Palmetto tree and a crescent. Both would help the ship maintain its cover as a Confederate vessel.
Smalls, acting as captain, and Allston, serving as wheelman, moved to the pilothouse of the Planter.40 Once inside, Smalls donned Relyea’s straw hat.
As the flags flapped in the wind, the rest of the men untied the Planter’s moorings, and the ship soon backed away from the wharf, using its whistles to signal it was preparing for a normal day’s duties.41
The Confederate guard stationed about fifty yards away from the Planter saw the ship was leaving, and even moved closer to watch her, but he assumed the vessel’s officers were in command and never raised an alarm. A police detective also saw that the ship was leaving and made the same assumption.42 Luck seemed to be on Smalls’ side, at least for now.
The Planter’s next task was to stop at the North Atlantic Wharf to pick up Smalls’ family and the others. Apparently no one noticed that the steamer was moving away from the entrance to the harbor, which would have been its usual destination. That behavior alone should have raised suspicions.
The crew soon reached the North Atlantic Wharf and had no trouble approaching the pier. “The boat moved so slowly up to her place we did not have to throw a plank or tie a rope,” Smalls said.43
Shortly after the Planter arrived, three men, five women, and three children quietly exited the Etiwan.44
All had gone as planned, and they were now together. With sixteen people on board, and the women and children belowdecks, the Planter resumed her way south toward Confederate Fort Johnson, leaving Charleston and their lives as slaves behind them.
Each rotation of the paddle wheels brought the group closer to realizing their dream, but they could not go too fast. Smalls kept a normal, steady pace to maintain the impression that the ship was going about its regular business.
After roughly two tense miles, the ship neared Fort Johnson, which sat on the northern end of James Island. A fort had been on that site since 1708, and it had been rebuilt several times over the years. When Confederate forces occupied it in December 1860, just days after the Union major Robert Anderson’s move to Fort Sumter triggered the siege, they found that the Union had been using Fort Johnson for storage. The Confederates had quickly built up the fort, and it now had two batteries, each with two 10-inch mortars and an earthwork containing three guns. It was from Fort Johnson’s east mortar battery that the Confederates had fired the first shots in the Civil War.45
As the Planter passed the well-armed fort, the crew scanned the batteries for any sign that their plan had been discovered. After a harrowing few minutes, they passed it without arousing any suspicions and continued east about one mile toward Fort Sumter and the main ship channel. Their early success must have helped settle their nerves, but their biggest challenges were still ahead.
Soon after they passed Fort Johnson, they spotted a guard boat patrolling the harbor, but it seemed to take no notice of them.46 They had traveled far enough now that they could go faster without raising any alarms. As soon as they had passed the guard boat, Smalls rang for more steam. “We gave it to him down in the engine-room, knowing that the crisis had come, but not able to tell just where we were,” Gourdine said. “John and I were alone down there. When the call came for a full head of steam I was taken so weak that I could hardly stand, and when I looked at John his face was the color of wood ashes. We were both as scared as rabbits in front of a dog, and it was the same with all others except Robert Smalls. If he lost his nerve for a single minute no one noticed it.”
As the Planter picked up speed and steamed toward Fort Sumter, it passed several more boats. The first was a gunboat at anchor. Despite the potential danger, Smalls remained calm and simply saluted the gunboat with a whistle. A few minutes later, the Planter also passed a brig with two barges behind her. Smalls continued to play his part as Captain Relyea and casually shouted a greeting to the brig’s pilot.47
At about 4:15 A.M., the Planter finally neared the formidable Fort Sumter, whose massive walls towered ominously about fifty feet above the water. The five-sided stronghold had been built on an artificial island after the War of 1812, part of a substantial effort to strengthen the country’s coastal defenses. Ongoing construction had been halted in December 1860, however, and about 10 percent of the fort remained unfinished. Confederate forces had occupied the incomplete fort since April 1861 and had been heavily fortifying it.
Fort Sumter was less than a mile from Fort Moultrie on Sullivan’s Island and overlooked the narrow main ship channel, which was usually marked with buoys. The channel was the only one that ships of any size could use to enter or leave the harbor. To restrict access the Confederates had constructed a floating log boom across the channel but left a narrow gap near Fort Sumter to allow blockade runners to slip through. Any vessel entering this gap had to pass directly under Sumter’s powerful cannon.48
Those on board the Planter were terrified. They were about to pass the massive fort and its powerful guns. Adding to their concerns over being discovered was the possibility that another ship might stop them and ask them to run an errand, as occasionally happened. If they refused to stop, those at the fort would quickly realize something was amiss.
The only one not outwardly affected by fear was Smalls. “When we drew near the fort every man but Robert Smalls felt his knees giving way and the women began crying and praying again,” Gourdine said.49
As the Planter approached the fort, Smalls, wearing Relyea’s straw hat, pulled the whistle cord, offering “two long blows and a short one.” It was the Confederate signal required to pass, which Smalls knew from earlier trips as a member of the Planter’s crew.
In response to Smalls’ signal, the sentinel on the fort’s parapet “called for the corporal guard and reported the guard-boat going out.” The soldier at the fort did not realize that the guard boat was out of commission and had mistaken the steamer for it.50 Another stroke of luck.
As the Planter passed, the sentry yelled out, “Blow the d—d Yankees to hell, or bring one of them in.” Smalls must have longed to respond with something hostile, but he stayed in character and simply replied, “Aye, aye.”51
What Smalls and the others on board the Planter did not know then was that, just as they were passing Fort Sumter, Relyea had appeared at the wharf and found his steamer was missing. He had immediately suspected what was going on, but rather than sound an alarm right away, he started asking questions. Had he notified the guards immediately, the Confederate soldiers at Sumter probably would have fired on the Planter. Instead, the ship passed the imposing fort without any trouble.
After clearing Fort Sumter, the Planter continued at its normal speed through the main ship channel. “For a half an hour we expected to hear the boom of a big gun at any instant, and when we finally got out of range and realized that we had actually escaped, there was more weeping and praying and singing of hallelujah songs,” Gourdine recalled.
It was a moment they would never forget. No matter what else happened during the next hour, they had made it past the Confederate forts.
Once the Planter was out of range of Fort Sumter’s guns, Smalls again ordered more steam and headed for the Union fleet.52
When the Planter did not turn east toward Morris Island, the Confederate guards at Fort Sumter suddenly realized she was headed toward the Union vessels stationed off Charleston Bar, a series of submerged sandbars that formed the outer limit of Charleston Harbor. The sentries tried desperately to signal the Confederate troops on Morris Island, but by the time they did, the steamer was too far away to be stopped.53
Now Smalls and the others faced the heavily armed Union warships patrolling a thirteen-mile arc outside Charleston. The group’s freedom was within reach, but they had to let the Union know they were friendly before the Northerners mistook the Planter for an enemy warship and started firing.
With steam and smoke belching from her stacks and her paddle wheels churning through the dark water, the steamer headed straight toward the closest of the Union ships, while her crew rushed to take down the Confederate and South Carolina flags and hoist a white bedsheet to signal surrender.
With the makeshift white flag now flying, Smalls could only wonder if they had signaled in time or if they would see a flash from a Union vessel and hear the thunderous roar of cannon.
Meanwhile another heavy fog had quickly rolled in, obscuring the steamer and its flag in the morning light. The crew of the Union ship they were approaching, a 174-foot, three-masted clipper ship named the Onward, was now even more unlikely to see the flag in time and might assume a Confederate ironclad was planning to ram and sink them.54
Ironclads, a new type of ship, were revolutionizing naval warfare. First built in Europe just before the Civil War, the vessels were clad in iron to protect them from cannon fire.55 Some were also equipped with underwater rams to pierce the hulls of enemy ships. In battle these iron-plated monsters could easily destroy wooden vessels like the Onward, which had dominated the seas for centuries.
Although the Planter’s silhouette did not match that of an ironclad, the Onward, blinded by the fog and dim morning light, was not going to take any chances. The Union knew that the Confederates were building ironclads in Charleston.
The Onward’s captain, acting volunteer lieutenant John Frederick Nickels of Searsport, Maine, a handsome young man with dark hair and muttonchops, decided that if there was any chance the fast-approaching vessel intended to ram his ship, his only option was to destroy it first.56 As a sailing vessel, the Onward had no chance of outrunning an ironclad and would be demolished. The nearby steamers in the Union fleet, however, could steam away and were now headed farther out to sea in an attempt to protect themselves.
Nickels ordered his men to battle stations. The cries of “All hands to quarters!” filled the ship.57 Roughly one hundred sailors, some just waking in their bunks, scrambled to obey. Nickels then commanded the crew to turn the clipper so that her port cannon were aimed at the Planter.
Smalls and his party saw the Onward’s guns being prepared and the general commotion on the vessel and braced themselves for the worst. Smalls, still in the pilothouse, must have been frantically looking for another way to signal the Union ship, while Hannah held Elizabeth and Robert, Jr., tightly, trying to comfort them as well as herself.
Just then Nickels saw the unmistakable white flag of surrender waving from the front of the ship. He immediately ordered the gun crews, who were seconds from unleashing an assault, to stand down.58
As the steamer continued toward the Onward, those aboard the Planter began to realize their improvised flag had been seen. Their freedom was closer than ever.
The two vessels were now within hailing distance of one another, and Nickels yelled for the steamer’s name and her intent. After the men supplied the answers, the captain ordered the ship to come alongside. Whether because of their relief that the Onward had not fired or because Smalls and Allston were still quite shaken, they did not hear the captain’s command and started to go around the stern. Nickels immediately yelled, “Stop, or I will blow you out of the water!”59
The harsh words jolted them to attention, and the men maneuvered the steamer alongside the warship.
As Smalls and Allston managed the vessel, those on board the Planter realized they had actually made it to a Union ship. Some of the men began jumping, dancing, and shouting in an impromptu celebration, while others turned toward Fort Sumter and cursed it. All sixteen were free from slavery for the first time in their lives.60
Smalls then spoke triumphantly to the Onward’s captain: “Good morning, sir! I’ve brought you some of the old United States guns, sir!—that were for Fort Sumter, sir!”61