![]() ![]() But escape was hard enough for a single man to flee with a young family in tow was nearly impossible: enslaved families often did not live or work together, and an escape party that included children would slow the journey significantly and make discovery much more likely. This truth had occupied his mind for years as he searched for a plan with some chance of succeeding. The only way Smalls could ensure that his family would stay together was to escape slavery. And once separated, family members often never saw each other again. Like so many enslaved people, Smalls was haunted by the idea that his family-his wife, Hannah their four-year-old daughter, Elizabeth and their infant son, Robert, Jr.-would be sold. Their future, he knew, now depended largely on his courage and the strength of his plan. In the next few hours, he and his young family would either find freedom from slavery or face certain death. The wharf stood a few miles from Fort Sumter, where the first shots of the Civil War had been fired just a little more than a year before.Īs thin wisps of smoke rose from the vessel’s smokestack high above the pilothouse, a 23-year-old enslaved man named Robert Smalls stood on the deck. Only the occasional ringing of a ship’s bell competed with the sounds of waves lapping against the wooden wharf where a Confederate sidewheel steamer named the Planter was moored. Darkness still blanketed the city of Charleston in the early hours of May 13, 1862, as a light breeze carried the briny scent of marshes across its quiet harbor.
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