The other women in the group were not passive participants either. The NPS account notes that when the plan was first proposed to the women who would be involved, some were frightened — which is the rational response to a plan that, if discovered, would result in severe punishment at best and death at worst. They agreed nonetheless. One account records that they later said they were glad for the opportunity to try. Their willingness to take that risk was what made the group’s escape possible. A man alone on the Planter would not have had the same cover for the families at the family-pickup wharf, and the families were what Smalls was making this run for.
## Charleston in the War’s First Year
By May 1862, the Civil War had been underway for a little over a year. Fort Sumter, whose fall in April 1861 had opened the conflict, sat at the mouth of Charleston Harbor, now repaired and back under Confederate control. The city itself was under the administration of Confederate military authorities and experienced, as a major port city, the constant presence of military activity: vessels moving through the harbor, troops drilling, fortifications being maintained and extended.
The Union blockade of Confederate ports, declared by President Lincoln in April 1861, had by the spring of 1862 begun to tighten. A substantial Union naval force under Flag Officer Samuel Francis Du Pont operated off the coast. They had captured Port Royal, South Carolina, in November 1861, giving the Union a significant base of operations on the South Carolina Sea Islands. From Port Royal, Union forces and naval vessels watched the approaches to Charleston.