Robert Smalls - Brady-Handy
(Image by (From Wikimedia) Mathew Brady (–1896) / , Author: See Source) Details Source DMCA
Just before dawn on May 13, 1862, 23-year-old Robert Smalls and a crew composed of fellow slaves, in the absence of the white captain and mates, slipped a cotton steamer off the dock in South Carolina. They picked up family members at a rendezvous point, then slowly navigated their way through the harbor. Smalls donned the captain’s wide-brimmed straw hat to help to hide his face, responded with the proper coded signals at two Confederate checkpoints, and sailed into the open seas. In fewer than 4 hours, Robert Smalls had done something unimaginable: In the midst of the Civil War, a slave had commandeered a heavily armed Confederate ship and delivered its 17 black passengers from slavery to freedom. Smalls went on to serve five terms in Congress as a Representative from South Carolina. Read the rest of this exciting story here:
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