Robert Smalls and the CSS Planter: A Straw Hat Disguise Past Fort Sumter

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Robert Smalls was born into slavery in Beaufort, South Carolina, in 1839, enslaved by Henry McKee and raised by his mother Lydia Polite, who asked that her favored son be sent to the fields so he would see the system's brutality. At 12 he was hired out in Charleston, earning $16 a week and keeping one dollar, and he learned the harbor as a rigger, sailmaker and wheelman. After marrying Hannah Jones, he calculated that freeing his family would cost $800 when he had saved $100. On the night of May 12, 1862, the white officers of the Confederate transport CSS Planter, loaded with four artillery pieces and ammunition, went ashore, leaving the enslaved crew aboard.

Around 3 a.m. on May 13, Smalls collected the families hidden on the steamer Etiwan, put on the captain's straw hat, and gave the correct whistle signals past five forts, including Fort Sumter at about 4:30. Out of range, the crew raised a white bedsheet and surrendered to the USS Onward. Smalls gave the Union the signal code book, mine locations and word that Coles Island was abandoned, met Lincoln and Edwin Stanton to push for Black enlistment, and later fought in 17 battles. After the war he bought the house where he had been enslaved, helped launch the Enterprise Railroad, wrote South Carolina's free compulsory public school law, and served five terms in Congress.

• In December 1863, when the Planter's white captain hid in the coal bunker under fire, Smalls took command and was unofficially promoted to captain.
• In Philadelphia, his refusal to give up a streetcar seat helped prompt the integration of Pennsylvania's public transit.
• He let his former enslaver's elderly widow move back into the Beaufort house before she died.
• At the 1895 South Carolina Constitutional Convention, he argued against literacy tests, property rules and poll taxes aimed at Black voters.
• In 1913, at 74, he pressured the mayor and sheriff into stopping a lynch mob, and he died in the same house in 1915.