Robert Smalls

I learned about this man in high school my mother bought me a biography about his life. Robert Smalls: Born a slave in Beaufort, South Carolina, Robert Smalls, who taught himself to read, grew up largely in Charleston, mastering the sea. In 1862, as its white officers slept, Smalls smuggled his wife and three children aboard “Planter,” a Confederate steamer, hoisted the Confederate flag and sailed it past other Confederate ships to deliver it and its secrets to the Union. After the war, Smalls served in the South Carolina Senate and the U.S. Congress.