What the Union offered the sixteen people who came in on the Planter was freedom in a legal sense that was still being defined in May 1862.
The Emancipation Proclamation would not take effect until January 1, 1863. In the spring of 1862, the legal status of enslaved people who came into Union lines was governed primarily by the First and Second Confiscation Acts and by General Benjamin Butler’s earlier designation of enslaved people as ‘contraband of war’ — a legal fiction that allowed Union commanders to refuse to return enslaved people to their Confederate enslavers without immediately declaring them free. The people aboard the Planter were, under the logic of the moment, valuable human resources whose labor could be directed to Union purposes. This was better than re-enslavement. It was not the same as full legal freedom.
For Smalls himself, the Union’s immediate response was to hire him as a civilian pilot at $40 a month. This formalization reflected his practical value: he knew Charleston Harbor, he had demonstrated both skill and reliability under extreme pressure, and he was willing to assist Union operations. The $40 a month was not a fortune, but it was a salary — a form of payment for labor that was his to keep, entering into a legal relationship that his enslavement had made impossible.
Hannah and the children were at Port Royal, in Union-held territory on the South Carolina Sea Islands, in a community of formerly enslaved people that was growing rapidly as the war continued and more people made their way from Confederate-held areas. The Sea Islands had become, under Union military occupation, a site of early experiments in what freedom would actually mean in practice — how land would be organized, who would teach the newly emancipated children, how labor would be contracted and compensated.