It was worth it.
What they built with it, and what was taken from it, and what remains — that is the longer story, and it is still being completed.
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**Excerpt (38 words):** In the early hours of May 13, 1862, an enslaved harbor pilot named Robert Smalls steered a Confederate steamer past five armed forts, collected his family, and sailed to the Union blockade. He carried sixteen people and a plan he had been making for months.
**SEO Title:** Robert Smalls Sailed a Confederate Ship to Freedom in 1862
**Meta Description:** Robert Smalls was an enslaved harbor pilot who took a Confederate steamer past Charleston’s forts in 1862. Here is what he did, who helped him, and what he built afterward.
**Slug:** robert-smalls-confederate-ship-charleston-escape-1862
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**Source Ledger**
– Wikipedia: Robert Smalls — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Smalls (aggregated from multiple primary and secondary sources; specific claims cross-checked)
– Wikipedia: USS Planter (1860) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Planter_(1860)
– NPS: The Planter — https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/the-planter.htm (named crew members, escape timeline, headcount of 16)
– Essential Civil War Curriculum: Robert Smalls — https://www.essentialcivilwarcurriculum.com/robert-smalls.html (wartime service, family details, Reconstruction career)
– NPS: Robert Smalls biography — https://www.nps.gov/people/robert-smalls.htm (institutional record; not directly fetched due to access restrictions but referenced via NPS article page)
– Du Pont quotation: sourced via multiple secondary accounts citing Du Pont’s contemporary letter to the Navy Secretary
– Smalls’s greeting on the Onward (“Good morning, sir!…”): attributed in NPS materials and multiple secondary accounts; exact wording treated as traditional record rather than verified verbatim transcript
– Hannah Smalls quotation: family memory/tradition as noted in multiple sources; not a contemporary written record
– Bribery conviction and pardon: essential Civil War Curriculum; Wikipedia; treated in the article with appropriate contextual caution per source guidance
– Home purchase: January 1864 date from Essential Civil War Curriculum; Supreme Court affirmation noted
– Ship dimensions: USS Planter Wikipedia entry; NPS Planter article
– Prize money: $9,000 official valuation per USS Planter Wikipedia; $1,500 Smalls share; 1900 congressional settlement per Robert Smalls Wikipedia
– Death date: February 23, 1915 — consistent across multiple sources including Essential Civil War Curriculum and Robert Smalls Wikipedia
– Lineberry, Cate. Be Free or Die. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2017.
– Miller, Edward A., Jr. Gullah Statesman: Robert Smalls from Slavery to Congress, 1839–1915. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1995.