SMALLS, ROBERT (5 April 1839–23 February 1915), African American war hero, businessman, and politician, and the first Black captain of a US Navy vessel.
Born into slavery in Beaufort, South Carolina, Smalls was taken to nearby Charleston in 1851 and hired out to work as a waiter, rigger, and carriage driver. In 1856 Smalls married Hannah Jones, an enslaved hotel maid; they had three children.
During the Civil War Smalls was forced to pilot ships for the Confederacy around Charleston Harbor. He began planning his escape, and on the night of May 13, 1862, Smalls, along with a small crew of fellow slaves and their families (including his own), secretly commandeered the Confederate steamship CSS Planter and navigated it out of the harbor and into Union hands.
Smalls’ daring escape garnered widespread attention and admiration, earning him recognition as a war hero in the North and a symbol of hope for those still enslaved in the South. His actions fueled the momentum of the abolitionist cause and helped persuade President Lincoln to press forward with his plan to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. As a freedman Smalls continued to prominently serve the Union cause. His knowledge of coastal waterways proved invaluable, and he played a crucial role in several key military operations, aiding in the capture of a number of Confederate-held forts and vessels. In 1863, after a ship he was piloting was sunk in battle, Smalls was granted command of the USS Planter as a reward for his bravery, making him the first Black captain in the US Navy.
After the war Smalls pursued several business ventures in the Beaufort-Charleston area, opening a store for freedmen, starting a newspaper, and, in 1870, along with a small group of other prominent African Americans, opening the Enterprise Railroad, an eighteen-mile-long horse-drawn railway that would facilitate the movement of cargo and travelers between Charleston and inland areas. Historian Bernard E. Powers described the railroad as “the most impressive commercial venture by members of Charleston’s black elite.”
As well as an entrepreneur Smalls became a politician during the Reconstruction era. He was elected to the South Carolina State Legislature in 1868, to the State Senate in 1870, and, in 1874, to the United States House of Representatives, where he would serve three terms (1875–79, 1882–83, and 1884–87). In Congress he fought tirelessly for the rights of African Americans, advocating for measures to integrate the armed forces and to keep federal troops stationed in the South to ensure the safety of its Black population.
Smalls spent his final years back in Beaufort, living in the mansion of the man who had once enslaved him. He died in 1915 of malaria and diabetes at the age of seventy-five and was buried in his family’s plot in Beaufort.
In 2007 the USAV Major General Robert Smalls was commissioned; it is the first Army ship named for an African American.