Robert Smalls was born a slave in 1839, in Beaufort, South Carolina. During the Civil War in 1861, Robert Smalls was part of the enslaved crew on a ship called the Planter, operating in Charleston Harbor. The owners of the ship contracted the vessel out to the Confederate army as a transport ship, and Smalls found himself as a pilot on board the ship. In early 1862, the Confederacy had achieved numerous battlefield victories, and it seemed as if the quest to create an independent slaveholders’ republic might succeed. Robert Smalls decided not to wait and find out. He devised a plan to free not only himself, but his family as well.

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