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Instead of having statues and bases named in honor of Confederates, let’s have statues and bases named in honor of heroes like Robert Smalls. I’m sure many people know about him but I’m gonna make a short thread about it because I’m bored and we need this.
He was born into slavery in Beaufort, South Carolina and worked on ships up until the start of the Civil War, when he was forced to work on a Confederate gunboat, the CSS Planter. While working on the boat, he memorized the needed signals for Confederate bases and hatched a plan.
On May 12, 1862, white officers left him and six other slaves alone at 3 am, and in the dark of night, Robert Smalls dressed up as the captain of the ship,, straw hat included, and sailed to pick up his family and the families of the other slaves.
After picking up the families, Smalls sailed the ship past five Confederate bases using the signals he had memorized, with the alarm at Fort Sumter being raised only after the ship had sailed past firing distance. He replaced the Confederate flags with white bed sheets,
then approached the Union fleet a few miles away. After Union ships almost fired upon the Planter, Smalls sailed to the USS Onward and greeted the Union officers with one of the greatest quotes ever: “Good morning, sir! I've brought you some of the old United States guns, sir!”
Smalls asked for an American flag and surrendered the Planter, its cargo, and its guns to the US Navy. The CSS Planter was now the USS Planter.
Smalls became an icon in the North. Newspapers carried his story and Congress passed a bill giving him and the other slaves prize money for the capture. Perhaps most importantly, however, his story helped assure Lincoln that allowing African Americans serve in the US military
was in fact a good idea. Smalls joined the military, and after repairs to the Planter was made, he was named Captain of the ship and helped to disarm sea mines he was forced to put down. He continued to be awesome everywhere he went.
In a public streetcar in Philadelphia in 1864, he was ordered to give up his seat to a white man. Instead of complying he refused to ride on the car, and walked to his destination instead. Partly because of the embarrassment that came with disrespecting a war hero,
Pennsylvania integrated public transportation 3 years later. In April of 1865, he sailed the Planter to Fort Sumter and helped raise the American flag over the fort once again. After the war ended, he was discharged and used the ship to deliver resources to freedmen who
desperately needed them after losing their homes. He then donated the ship to the Freedmen’s Bureau. Smalls learned how to read and write in about 9 months, and bought a house in Beaumont to be used as a school for recently freed slaves.
In 1870 he was elected to the South Carolina State Senate and in 1874 he was elected to the US House of Representatives, one of the first African Americans to do so. He served in Congress until 1877, when white people aiming to regain their power charged and convicted him of
fraud. He was pardoned not too long after, but lost the 1878 election as a result of the “scandal.” After challenging the results of the 1880 House election, he won the seat back in 1882, and served until he was beaten by former Confederate officer Wade Hampton in 1886.
He went into private life for a couple of decades and struggled with diabetes, but in 1913 he was vital in stopping a lynch mob that had been targeting two black men for the murder of a white man, and did so by threatening the mayor with riots if the mob continued.
Robert Small died at the age of 75 in 1915 of malaria and diabetes in his hometown of Beaufort.
The following is inscribed on his gravestone: "My race needs no special defense, for the past history of them in this country proves them to be the equal of any people anywhere. All they need is an equal chance in the battle of life."
There is no base named for Robert Smalls. In 1863 a Fort Robert Smalls was founded, but it was dissolved in the 1940s, and this statue for him stands in the National Museum of African American History in DC.
Robert Smalls is beyond a hero. He is one of the most interesting and awesome men to ever live. The evil men he fought against do not deserve monuments and forts named for them. Great and iconic men and women like Robert Smalls deserve it more than anyone else.
This was longer than I thought it was gonna be, hope you’re fine with that
I’m reading this again and sorry about the grammatical errors, I typed this up pretty fast and didn’t proofread
