On that May morning in 1862 when Smalls seized the Planter, no one could have imagined he would become so successful. In the years following the war, Smalls continued to welcome whatever opportunities came his way and to fight for his family, the country, and African Americans. In the Sea Islands he was so revered that he was the punch line to a popular joke: “That’s true; Smalls ain’t God, but Smalls’ young yet.”1
Smalls’ efforts to escape from slavery had ignited a drive, and it refused to be quelled. He also was a natural leader, a gifted and inspirational public speaker, and an important bridge between white and black communities. Smalls was poised to accomplish much more in the coming years. And that is exactly what he did.
When Smalls returned to Beaufort after the war, he became involved in numerous business ventures. He ran a store called the Freedman’s Cheapstore with an African American business partner named Richard Gleaves, who is thought to have served as a mentor to Smalls.2 Gleaves would become the lieutenant governor of South Carolina, the highest office ever held by a black man in the state’s history. Smalls also was one of the founders of the Enterprise Railroad Company of Charleston, and he had interests in the Beaufort Railroad Company and the Beaufort Manufacturing and Improvement Company. Although he continued to live in his beloved home on Prince Street, Smalls purchased several houses and land in and around Beaufort.3
With his financial success Smalls was able to send his two daughters to some of the best schools in the country and give them a comfortable and secure life that stood in stark contrast to what he had known as an enslaved child. Elizabeth, who began her life in slavery and who had escaped aboard the Planter with her parents and brother, attended the Allen School, also known as the West Newton English and Classical School, in Newton, Massachusetts. Smalls’ younger daughter, Sarah, attended the Philadelphia Normal School for Girls and the Boston Conservatory, where she studied music.4
Their mother, Hannah, died unexpectedly in 1883. Seven years later Smalls married Annie, a thirty-four-year-old African American teacher from Charleston. They had a son named William. But their union would be short-lived. Annie, too, died unexpectedly, just five years after she and Robert had married.5
Smalls also made sure that William, who was just a toddler when his mother died, received a rigorous education. William eventually attended the Manual Training High School in Washington, D.C., and continued his education at the University of Pittsburgh as an undergraduate and at the University of Chicago as a graduate student.6
While Robert Smalls stressed the importance of education to his children, he also instilled in them a strong work ethic, a love of country, and a belief that they could accomplish whatever they wanted in life. Smalls was so successful at encouraging these qualities in his children that when Elizabeth was just thirteen she read the Declaration of Independence from the second-story verandah of a store on Beaufort’s main street as part of the town’s annual Fourth of July celebration. Elizabeth’s reading was the highlight of the day, as most of the adults in the audience had once been enslaved and could not read or write.7
As Smalls’ children studied, so did their father. He continued to improve his reading and writing skills on his own and with the help of tutors.
Smalls also was interested in helping others in Beaufort get an education. In 1867 he started a school for African American children in the town after learning the government had returned the buildings that had operated as African American schools during the war to their white former owners.8 This was the first of Smalls’ many public efforts on behalf of education, which later included advocating for free compulsory education in South Carolina.9
To help stop the violence between whites and blacks that escalated in South Carolina in the years after the war, Smalls joined the state militia. He rose in rank to major general in 1873, and in 1876 he calmed a potentially dangerous clash between three hundred unarmed African American rice workers and dozens of armed white planters. The workers had gone on strike after years of being paid only with checks, which they were forced to use at the planters’ overpriced stores.10 Smalls’ role as a trusted mediator between the Sea Island whites and blacks undoubtedly saved countless lives.
Smalls found another way to fight for others, particularly the Sea Island blacks who looked to him as their leader: he became active in politics as a Republican. In fact, shortly after the war Smalls helped found the Beaufort Republican Club, the first Republican organization in South Carolina.11
The intelligence, charm, and bravery that had catapulted Smalls to fame during the war served him well in the many political offices he held during the turbulent and dangerous years of Reconstruction. His ability to speak both English and Gullah also helped him considerably. In fact, Smalls’ popularity among Sea Island blacks was so high that he was considered the “king of Beaufort County,” a title given to Smalls by his political opponents and one he proudly claimed.12
Smalls’ political success ultimately led to his election as one of the first African American members of Congress.13 He served five terms in the U.S. House of Representatives, an astounding position for a man who had been born into slavery and had not learned to read and write until he was in his twenties. Smalls served in Washington almost continuously from 1875 to 1887, with his daughter Elizabeth briefly working by his side as his secretary, while the rest of his family remained in Beaufort.
During his time in Congress, Smalls fought for equal rights for blacks. He also promoted the establishment of the U.S. Naval Station at Port Royal and the purchase of Parris Island, just five miles south of Beaufort, as a naval shipyard. Both bolstered Beaufort’s economy.14
As an African American politician during Reconstruction, however, Smalls faced a slew of attacks. Because of the color of his skin he was forced to leave at least two hotels, one in Columbia, South Carolina, the other in Boston.15 And racist South Carolina whites, known as Red Shirts, who violently opposed Reconstruction, repeatedly threatened Smalls’ life.
Smalls’ political enemies were so ruthless that in 1877 they had Smalls arrested and charged with accepting a $5,000 bribe when he was a state senator. Although the evidence was weak and came largely from a convicted felon who had been granted immunity in exchange for his testimony, Smalls was sentenced to three years’ hard labor in the state prison. This was a devastating blow to Smalls that placed his entire reputation at risk. One New York newspaper even reported at the time that a man named Jenkins, not Smalls, was responsible for seizing the Planter in 1862, although no one named Jenkins was aboard the steamer.16
After he had spent three days in jail, Smalls was released pending appeal, and he returned to Congress despite the embarrassment and unwanted attention caused by the arrest.
In April 1879 the South Carolina Supreme Court finally heard Smalls’ appeal. He cited among his grounds for appeal that his trial should have been transferred to the federal courts, that he was entitled to congressional immunity, and that jury selection had been unfair. The court disagreed. Smalls was so determined to prove the charges false that he immediately appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. The court, however, would never have the chance to make a decision in the case. Instead South Carolina’s governor pardoned Smalls in exchange for the federal government’s dropping election fraud charges against a group of white South Carolinians. Smalls was incensed. He wanted the Supreme Court to hear his appeal so he could clear his name. But there was nothing Smalls could do. He lost his next election, and his reputation suffered for years.17
Despite the huge setback, Smalls did not give up. He was later reelected to Congress despite growing violence from white supremacist groups that tried to intimidate him and the state’s black voters.
Smalls was equally determined to seek justice for himself. He fought for years to receive a pension for his wartime service aboard the Planter and other vessels. But he had served as a civilian pilot and was not considered a veteran. The government denied his claim because he was a civilian pilot and was not considered a veteran. It failed to take into account that when Du Pont hired Smalls in 1862, African Americans were not allowed to enlist as pilots; they were limited to the position of boy. In 1897, more than thirty years after the war ended, Smalls finally received $30 a month, the pension at the time for a U.S. Navy captain.18
Smalls also struggled to be properly compensated for handing the Planter to Union forces. In 1883 a House committee report agreed with Smalls that the 1862 appraisal of the steamer and its cargo was “absurdly low.” It concluded that a fair 1862 valuation would have been $67,000, rather than the $9,000 given at the time.19
The federal law awarding the prize money to the crew specified that they were to receive half the amount of the appraisal, so Du Pont had only $4,584 to split among them. As the leader of the crew, Smalls had received the most, but it amounted to only $1,500. It was not until 1900, almost forty years after Smalls had seized the Planter, that Congress finally awarded Smalls an additional sum. Although George Wright, an African American member of the House from North Carolina, had originally requested an additional $20,000 be paid to Smalls, the Committee on War Claims reduced the amount to $5,000.20
While this award was substantially less than the actual value of the steamer when Smalls presented it to the Union, it finally brought closure to his quest for fair compensation for a vessel that had figured so prominently in his life. The Planter had afforded him the chance to gain freedom for himself and his family, and had meant so much to him that when he learned in March 1876 that she had wrecked on a beach while trying to tow a schooner, he felt as if he had lost a member of his family.21
It was not just his own service that Smalls fought to have recognized financially. In 1886 he made an impassioned speech in the House of Representatives for an increased pension for the widow of Gen. David Hunter, the man who had become famous for attempting to emancipate African Americans under his charge in 1862 and creating his own unauthorized regiment of black soldiers. Congress had passed the bill, which gave Hunter’s widow $50 a month, instead of $30, but President Grover Cleveland vetoed it, saying the increase could not be justified. Although other efforts were made on her behalf, her pension remained the same.22
Smalls even had to fight to keep the house on Prince Street that he had purchased during the war. Henry McKee had sold the house to William DeTreville in 1851. Like so many other whites, DeTreville had fled Beaufort when the Union captured Port Royal Sound, and the house had been sold to Smalls because DeTreville had not paid the taxes required by the U.S. government. DeTreville, however, contended that the tax sale was invalid and sued Smalls after the war in an effort to have the property returned. It was a test case affecting many properties in the South, and it went to the U.S. Supreme Court. Finally, in 1878 the court upheld Smalls’ title in a ruling that helped many others keep their homes.23
Smalls also fought to win the coveted and well-paid position of U.S. Customs collector for the Port of Beaufort after his congressional career was over. President Benjamin Harrison appointed Smalls to the position in 1889.24 Smalls held the post until 1912, except for the four years of the second Grover Cleveland administration.25
Smalls passed away only a few years after he had to step down as customs collector because two white southern senators blocked his reappointment by President William Howard Taft. After months of being confined to his bed, Smalls died of complications from diabetes on February 23, 1915, at his cherished home on Prince Street in Beaufort. He was seventy-five.26
Smalls died a proud man. He had achieved much in his own lifetime and had raised three successful children whom he had given a far better chance at living the life they wanted rather than one that was dictated to them.
After Elizabeth served as her father’s secretary while he was in Congress, she worked as a secretary at Penn School, the school for newly freed African Americans that Northern missionaries founded on St. Helena Island during the Civil War.27 Elizabeth married Samuel Jones Bampfield, an attorney who became postmaster of Beaufort, and the couple had eleven children. When Bampfield died, President Theodore Roosevelt appointed Elizabeth postmistress of the Beaufort post office, a position she held for many years. She later moved to Charlotte, North Carolina, and died at the age of 101 in 1959.28
Sarah, Smalls’ younger daughter, married Dr. Jay Williams. When Smalls needed care during his final years, Sarah looked after him. She later taught music at South Carolina State College in Orangeburg.29
After attending the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Chicago, William taught at several schools. He also served in the Army during World War I as a lieutenant and later joined the National Urban League in Toledo, Ohio, where he worked for equal rights for forty-four years. Like his sisters, William also married. He and his wife, Martineau, had two children.30
When Robert Smalls died, many African Americans across the Sea Islands mourned him; they had looked to Smalls as their leader for decades. So many people paid their respects at his funeral that it was the largest Beaufort had ever seen.
A solemn yet poignant service was held at the First African Baptist Church in Beaufort, where Smalls had been a member for more than ten years. Three ministers and an elder of the African Methodist Episcopal Church spoke of Smalls’ many achievements, particularly on behalf of African Americans, while another leading citizen read telegrams from people across the country who could not attend. When the speakers finished, the mourners passed by Smalls’ body while a choir sang, “Shall We Meet Beyond the River.” At the end of the service, a brass band that had often played at Smalls’ political rallies led the procession as friends carried Smalls’ coffin to the nearby Tabernacle Baptist Church, where he was buried.31
Despite the outpouring of grief by African Americans locally, by the time Smalls died much of the nation had already forgotten his significant contributions during the war and after.
Today, 155 years after Smalls stunned the nation with his heroic act, Smalls is still relatively unknown. He has received occasional honors, including having a U.S. Army support vessel named for him in 2007, the Major General Robert Smalls, the first Army vessel named for an African American.32 He is also featured in the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C., and two historic markers in Charleston now honor him.33 But most Americans still do not recognize his name.
Perhaps Smalls said it best when he served as one of the few African American delegates to the 1895 South Carolina Constitutional Convention, which took away the right of black men to vote and laid the groundwork for the South’s infamous Jim Crow laws. In response to attacks on his character, he said, “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.” He was the only delegate who refused to sign the blatantly racist new constitution.34
As the country finally begins to fully honor the stories and contributions of African Americans, Smalls deserves to be celebrated as not just a Union hero but as an American hero.