The Planter and its cargo were immediately put to Union use. Du Pont placed the ship in Union service under Acting Master Philemon Dickenson. It served the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron through that summer. Smalls, for his part, was hired as a civilian pilot for the U.S. Navy at $40 per month — a formal arrangement that reflected his value to Union operations, even as the legal and social status of the people he had helped liberate remained in a complicated transitional state.
## From Pilot to Captain: The Wartime Years
What Smalls did after the escape is sometimes treated as secondary to the escape itself, as if the morning of May 13, 1862, were the whole story. It was not. The wartime years that followed showed what kind of person he was under sustained pressure.
In August 1862, Smalls traveled to Washington, D.C., accompanied by the Reverend Mansfield French, at the encouragement of Major General David Hunter. The purpose was to make a case directly to President Lincoln and Secretary of War Edwin Stanton for arming African American men in service of the Union. Stanton authorized the enlistment of up to 5,000 African Americans at Port Royal following those meetings, leading to the formation of the 1st and 2nd South Carolina Colored Regiments. The direct line from Smalls’s advocacy to that authorization is documented; historians credit his role in the argument that changed Union policy on Black military service.
He piloted a succession of vessels during the war. The ironclad Keokuk, under Captain Alexander Rhind, took part in the April 7, 1863, assault on Fort Sumter. The assault was repulsed with heavy fire; the Keokuk took ninety hits and sank the following morning. Smalls was aboard for the engagement.