Happy Saturday listeners. Today we are finishing our two part Saturday classic on Robert Small's, who served in both the South Carolina and US governments after escaping from enslavement during the Civil War. This episode originally came out February sixteen, and Joy Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy and I'm Holly Fry. Today we're picking up where we left off in the story of Robert Small's so to very very briefly recap part one. He was enslaved from birth in the McKee household of Beaufort, South Carolina, which is pronounced differently from Beaufort, North Carolina, even though they are both named after the same person. During the Civil War, he made a dramatic escape aboard a boat called the Planter, directly under the noses of the Confederate military. His escape was a boost to morale and the Union and an embarrassment for the Confederacy, and it also served to rally other enslaved persons who heard about it. He became something of a celebrity in the North and a spokesperson for African Americans with the Union. At the time of his escape, Robert Smalls was only twenty three years old. He was hailed as a hero and the Union newspapers, while the newspapers of the Confederacy alternated between strongly denouncing what he'd done and then kind of downplaying it while simultaneously casting tons of blame on the White soldiers then officers that had failed to stop him. Those officers who had left the boat overnight were indeed court martialed, although it was eventually thrown out on a technicality. From the time they reached the Union blockade, aboard the Planter, Robert Smalls and his family were free. They were considered to be contraband, which is a term that was used to describe formerly enslaved people who joined the Union. But this was just the beginning of an impressive career as a freeman. When he reached the Onward, which was one of the ships in the Union blockade, Robert Smalls is reported to have said to Lieutenant J. F. Nicholas, who was in command, quote, I thought this ship might be of some use to Uncle Abe. I have some guns. The Confederates took away from Fort Sumter and the Planter was in fact extremely useful. She was fast, and she rode very high in the water, so she was easy to get in and out of shallow areas while still carrying lots of men or cargo. But that Smalls himself was a huge asset to the Union as well. References to his competence, intelligence, and resourcefulness are all over the letters and papers of the Union officers and soldiers who encountered him, and the words of Admiral Samuel F. DuPont quote this man, Robert Smalls, is superior to any who has yet come into lines, intelligent as many of them have been. His information has been most interesting, and portions of it of the utmost importance. I shall continue to employ Robert as a pilot aboard the Planter for the inland Waters, which he appears to be very familiar pilot. By the way, DuPont referring to him that way was a promotion because he was enslaved. The highest rank that Smalls could hold under the Confederacy was wheelman. He would eventually become the Planter's captain. The way that used the word wheelman was also basically what we have to call pilots if they're enslaved. Like he was doing a pilot's job, but they wouldn't call him that because he was enslaved. His familiarity with the inland waters was of huge strate strategic importance to the Union. He knew where mines had been laid, he knew which spots were likely to be used as ambushes, he knew which routes were used by smugglers. He basically brought with him a mental atlas of the islands, rivers and sounds, as well as Confederate fortifications in the area. Robert Smalls was, how be to lend all of this knowledge to the Union. Doing so meant that he was working against slavery, rather than for it, as had been the case when he was forced to work for the Confederacy. Robert Small's military service for the Union began pretty much immediately, but he couldn't actually join the Union Navy. To do that, a person had to be literate. In spite of the fact that the McKay family had been pretty lenient with him during his enslavement, they hadn't allowed him to learn to read. So to work around this restriction regarding his literacy, he was instead made essentially a civilian contractor for the Army and then detailed back over to the Navy. During the Civil War, Smalls participated in seventeen different military engagements aboard the Planter, aboard an iron clad ship called the Kia Kook, and other ships as well. But in addition to this time in combat, thanks to the fame that followed in the wake of his escape, he also did a lot of diplomatic fundraising and a recruitment work for the Union. For a example, after it took port Royal South Carolina, the Union wanted its residents to grow cotton. They needed cotton for the war effort, but most of the people living there had until the arrival of the Union been enslaved on a cotton plantation. Continuing to grow cotton felt like doing the same thing for a different master, so a lot of people had planted food crops instead. Smalls was sent in to negotiate. He was familiar with the people in the area, and he was bilingual, able to speak both English and Gula. Gola is an English based creole that draws from several West African languages and is spoken to the Sea islands of South Carolina and Georgia. Smalls was able to negotiate a temporary compromised that allowed the growing of both cotton and food crops. His powers of persuasion were directed at the Union government as well. As we mentioned in the previous installment of this story, General David Hunter had on a couple of occasions tried to free all of the enslaved persons in places where he was in command, and the Federal government had on both occasions shut this down, arguing that it was up to Congress or the President and slavery, not a general acting off on his own. In August eighteen sixty two, Hunter met with Smalls on the subject of recruiting African Americans into the Union military. Although Hunter had been encouraging the acceptance of enslaved persons who reached Union lines into military service in areas that were under his command, this was not official military policy. Hunter made arrangements for Smalls to go to Washington, d c. Traveling with Reverend Mansfield French, to speak with the Secretary of War and when Stanton and with other members of Lincoln's cabinet, Smalls met with the Secretary of War in August twenty Then he met with the Secretary of the Treasury and After that, he and Reverend French met directly with Abraham Lincoln. Others, including Frederick Douglas, had already advised the President to encourage the recruitment of black soldiers into the Union Army. Smalls advised the same and said that he would recruit ten thousand men himself if the President allowed it. Ultimately, the President and the Secretary of War authorized the enlistment of black troops into the Union Army on August sixty two. Robert Smalls added recruiting black troops into the rest of his military work. He's reported to have recruited five thousand people, but I didn't really find documentation of how that number was calculated. And he did all of this wartime work while the South had placed a four thousand dollar bounty on him, along with an eight hundred dollar bounty on his wife or children. Smalls continued his military service after the Civil War, becoming a major general of the South Carolina Militia. He also moved into political service, which is what we will talk about after a brief word from a sponsor. So before we get into Robert Small's time in the South Carolina legislature, we need to set the stage a little bit with what happened after the end of the Civil War, because his political career directly parallels other events in US history. The two biggest, most obvious things that probably come to mind about the end of the Civil War are that the states that had succeeded rejoined the Union and slavery was abolished. But it wasn't just as simple as the war is over, so we're one country again, and also there's no more slavery. There needed to be a plan for the former Confederate states to demonstrate their loyalty to the United States, and they're also needed to be a plan to address the social, political, and economic inequality that stemmed from the institution of slavery, and to try to rebuild the damage to the nation and its infrastructure that had been caused by the war itself. These plans and the years through which they played out became known as Reconstruction. There is way too much reconstruction history to cover in one episode or even ten episodes, so this is an extremely basic overview. The grand idea behind reconstruction was to rebuild and unify the nation and to offset the inherent disadvantages that African Americans faced because of the institution of slavery, but a lot went wrong. First, there was significant back and forth between President Lincoln and Congress about what the plan should be. Lincoln's plan boiled down to the state's abolishing slavery and ten percent of their eligible voters swearing an oath of allegiance. Congress felt like this was not enough and passed the Wade Davis Bill, which set a significantly higher bar for readmission, one that the President felt was too high, so he refused to sign it. A much bigger issue was that when Abraham Lincoln, a Republican, had run for re election in eighteen sixty four, he had selected Democrat Andrew Johnson of Tennessee is his running mate, and the hope that it would bring him the support of Democrats and perhaps voters with pro Confederate leanings, along with other strategies. This worked, and Lincoln was re elected by a landslide, but that meant that when a Braham Lincoln was assassinated, Johnson became president. The same traits that had led some voters to support Johnson's vice presidency also led him to undermine some of the most important elements of reconstruction. He granted an amnesty that affected numerous ex Confederates, many of whom were then elected to the new governments of the Southern States. He set standards for readmission to the Union that didn't do much to address the issues Congress was trying to fix. He vetoed civil rights legislation, although Congress adopted it over his veto. He ultimately declared that the Union was restored, even though many of the rebelling states hadn't actually done one or more of the very basic things that they were expected to do to be readmitted to the Union. As a side note, Johnson was also the first president to be impeached for dismissing Edwin Stanton, Secretary of War, which violated the Tenure of Office Act. And to be clear, there were strides made to try to bring about equality after the Civil War between eighteens. In eighteen seventy four and fifteenth amendments to the U. S Constitution, which are known as the Reconstruction Amendments, were ratified. The thirteenth abolished slavery. The fourteenth, which we have talked about in a lot of episodes on this show, gave all citizens due process and equal protection under the law. In the fifteenth gave all male citizens the right to vote, regardless of quote, race, color, or previous condition of servitude. In eighteen sixty five, the Freedman's Bureau was also established with the hope of providing education, medical care, and assistance with labor contracts to previously enslaved persons, but none of this was as broad, far reaching, or effective as Congress had hoped At the conclusion of the war. Sometimes people talk about the failure of reconstruction, but really reconstruction was never given a chance to succeed. The election of former Confederate leaders to Southern state governments led to those governments actively working against recons struction. Many passed explicitly discriminatory laws and policies. Almost immediately, as early as no Member of eighteen sixty five, governments and former Confederate states were passing black codes, which eventually evolved into Jim Crow laws which denied African Americans basic legal rights and protections. All of this was playing out as Robert Smalls became a community and political leader, first in Baufort and then in South Carolina after the war. Small as his wife and their two surviving children returned to Beaufort, he had been awarded fifteen hundred dollars for the capture of the planter for quote rescuing her from the enemies of the government. He had also saved a lot of his pay, as well as other financial awards that he got from various aspects of his service. He used six hundred and fifty dollars of this money to buy the former McKee home which would which had since been sold to another family at a tax auction. From there, he used some of his money to help establish business his and to help other black families established businesses of their own. He acquired land and property, and he helped build a black owned railroad in Charleston. He also used some of his new found wealth to assist his former owners, who had been financially ruined by the war. He purchased a small house for the mckeys, and he helped their children find jobs. After Henry McKee died, Small Smalls had Mrs McKee cared for in his own home. So I want to be clear here. This turnabout does not somehow negate the fact that the mckeys had owned Robert Smalls and his mother and other people as property, and it doesn't erase the institution of slavery as a whole, but Small's compassionate treatment of the mckeyes and the other white citizens of Baufort did wind up earning him the respect of many in the white community. Robert Smalls also did a lot of work in the area of education. He had begun educating himself through private tutors during the war. Back in Bufort, he resumed the practice, hiring a tutor, waking up at five am every morning to study for two hours before the rest of his day began. This desire to educate himself carried over to a desire to educate his children and the black community of South Carolina as a whole. He helped form the Beaufort County School Board in February eighteen sixty seven, and was immediately elected chair. The school board then purchased property and established a school. It's unsurprising given that after this much community involvement. After the war, Smalls also moved into political leadership. In eighteen sixty seven, he helped found the Republican Party in South Carolina, and he was a delegate at seven different Republican national conventions. Along with many other black civic leaders, he made huge strides in getting South Carolina's black citizens, which at this point outnumbered its white citizens, registered to vote. He was elected to be a delegate at South Carolina's Constitutional Convention in eighteen sixty seven. When the Constitutional Convention, which was one of the requirements for South Carolina to rejoin the Union, was convened in eighteen sixty eight, seventy six of its one twenty four delegates were black. Smalls was appointed to the Finance Committee, and he also proposed a resolution to set up free public schools that were available to everyone. This resolution ultimately led to the first public schools in South Carolina. That same year, he was elected to a two year term in the South Carolina House of Representatives. That year, the majority of representatives in the South Carolina General Assembly were black, and there were nine black and twenty four white senators in the state Senate. In fact, during reconstruction, South Carolina had more black citizens holding public law office than any other state. South Carolina also had more black representation in the United States Congress during reconstruction than any other state as well. At the end of his term in the House of Representatives, Smalls was elected to the South Carolina State Senate, where he served two terms, continuing to focus on education, economic opportunity, and investigation of alleged corruption in the Republican Party. From there, Small's next stop with the United States federal government, which we will talk about after another brief sponsor break. In eighteen seventy four, Robert Smalls was elected to the United States House of Representatives, representing a majority black district that included Beaufort County, South Carolina. Between eighteen seventy five and eighteen eighty six, he served five non consecutive terms in the House of Representatives. He continued to work towards the social and economic interests of South Carolina, especially it's black citizens. He advocated for a Navy base to be built in Port Royal, South Carolina, which wound up becoming a significant contributor to the state's economy. He also championed a bill that required the federal government to return land that had been confiscated for nonpayment of taxes, which allowed residents of South Carolina and many other states to buy the land at a low cost. This measure led to black citizens of Beaufort County owning most of the land there in eighteen seventy six, one more time, eighteen seventy six, Robert Smalls proposed an amendment to an army reorganization bill which would have integrated the United States Armed Forces. Although his efforts weren't successful, they did demonstrate that people were genuinely attempting to desegregate the United States Armed Forces long long before President Truman signed Executive Order one in nineteen forty eight. However, during these same years, an intense, violent backlash against reconstruction was growing more pronounced and severe in many Southern states. The white supremacist organization the Ku Klux Klan, had been established in eighteen sixty six, and by eighteen seventy it had really spread throughout the South. In eighteen seventy six, armed white men killed several black members of the militia near Hamburg, South carol Lineup, and that same year elections in South Carolina were overrun with violence and voter intimidation in an effort to remove black officials from power. In eighteen seventy seven, Republican Rutherford be Hayes took office as President of the United States after an incredibly long and controversial presidential election. His opponent, Democrat Samuel J. Tilden, had won the popular vote, but when it came to awarding electoral votes, the results reported by the Republican and Democratic parties and three different states did not match up. Consequently, it was up to Congress to decide how to allot the electoral votes from these states. In the end, a compromise was reached. Rutherford B. Hayes would become president, but as Commander in chief of the Army, he would have to issue the order to withdraw federal troops, which had been part of the reconstruction effort from the South. By this point, a lot of the early strides towards equality that had been made during the earlier years of reconstruction had already been erased, as states had passed black codes and other discriminatory laws. State and local governments that had briefly become a lot closer to reflecting the racial makeup of their constituents didn't anymore. Voter intimidation and violence against black citizens at the hand of white citizens were really on the rise. Governments all over the South returned to being mostly too entirely white, with many of the white government leaders having ties to the former Confederacy. A lot of people feel like this withdrawal of the federal troops was really the final nail in the coffin of reconstruction, and it was against this backdrop that in eighteen seventy seven, Robert Smalls was accused, tried, and convicted of accepting a bribe. The case boiled down to a man named Joseph Woodriff, who claimed that he had bribed Smalls with five thousand dollars on January nineteenth, eighteen seventy three. A key piece of evidence was a check dated the nineteenth which was made out to quote cash or bearer and not to Robert Smalls. Another was a handwritten note written in pencil, dated the eighteenth, the day before the check, with no signatures on it. In spite of the fact that none of what we just said really adds up, and the fact that there were a lot of other inconsistencies and unreliable witness testimonies involved in this trial, Smalls was found guilty. The conviction was upheld on appeal, but he was later pardoned, although the South Carolina press continued to use the issue against him for the next two years. At this point, most historians agree that this was really an effort to try to keep Smalls out of office and not a crime that he had committed at any point, even though he was running in an overwhelmingly black Republican congressional district. Smalls lost in the race for d u s House in eighteen seventy eight to white Democrat George Tillman. He continued to work within the Republican Party in the face of ongoing harassment and threats and intimidation. He lost to Tilban again in eighteen eighty. Although the results of the eighteen eighty election were heavily contested, in the House of Representatives ultimately decided to seat Smalls instead. More than eighteen months into the two year term, in eighteen eighty two, Smalls withdrew from the race in favor of another Republican candidate, in part because his own political support from voters hadn't yet recovered from the bribery charge. Robert Small's wife, Hannah, died in eighteen eighty three. Smalls later married a woman named Annie Wigg, and they had a son together, who they named William Robert. Annie died a few years into their marriage. In eighteen eighty four, Robert Smalls ran against white Confederate veteran William Elliott senior and one. At this point, jerry mandering had guaranteed that all but one of South Carolina's districts had a majority white population, so black representation in the South Carolina government and in South Carolina's representatives to the federal government had dropped dramatically. In eighteen eighty six, Elliott defeated Smalls in the race of the House of Representatives. Although he was nominated in subsequent years, Smalls did not return to elected office after this point. In eighteen eighty nine, he was appointed collector of customs at the port of Bufort. In eighteen nine, South Carolina Governor Benjamin R. Tilman urged the state to convene another constitutional convention to revise the state constitution, and it did because of all the work that had been done to gerrymander the state intimidate black voters and get black people out of public office. Nearly all of the delegates to this constitutional convention were white. No black delegates were appointed to the Committee on the Rights of Suffrage. It was this committee that set up as many barriers to black citizens voting as possible without directly contradicting the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Over the strenuous objections and counter proposals of the six Black Republican delegates to the Constitutional Convention, South Carolina adopted a new constitution, and under this constitution, in order to vote, people had to pass a literacy test, pay a poll tax, and own at least three hundred dollars worth of property. Being convicted of a number of crimes, including arson, burglary, and robbery also stripped people of the right to vote. Combined, these stipulations in the state constitution stripped most black citizens of the right to vote, which continued to be the case until the passage of the Voting Rights Act of nineteen sixty five. Also included in the constitution the establishment of segregated schools. Robert Smiles continued to hold his customs post until nineteen twelve, when he was reappointed by William Howard Taffe, but not confirmed by the Senate. By this point, his health was really poor, and the Beaufort Customs House closed after he left. He died at the age of seventy six in nineteen fifteen. In the nineteen forties, Camp Robert Smalls, which was part of the Great Lakes Naval Training Center and was created to train black Navy seamen while the Navy was segregated, was named after him. In nineteen seventy six, Robert Smalls Bufort Home was added to the National Register of Historic Places. He was awarded the Palmeadow Cross on May thirteenth, two thousand two, the anniversary of his capture of the Planter, in recognition of his service to the South Carolina Militia. An army transport ship was christened to the Major General Robert Smalls on April two thousand four. At various points, multiple schools in Beaufort County have born Robert Small's name. Robert Small's Middle School, which is now Robert Small's International Academy, still does in Some of its alumni protested that its logo, which featured a man with a face that was darker on one side and lighter on the other, wearing what appeared to be Revolutionary war Eric garb, didn't accurately represent who Robert Smalls was. The logo was temporarily changed to a G for Generals, which was their school mascot, but the greater discussion was still ongoing at the time. Recorded this episode to end with a quote for the man himself. Quote my race needs no special defense, for the past history of them in this country proves them to be equal of any people anywhere. All they need is an equal chance in the battle of life. That is Robert Smalls. I had a surprisingly difficult time researching this episode because if you can find lots of children's books about Robert Small's in a typical public library, there are a lot of them. There are also numerous, like rigorous academic works for adults about Robert Small's and to get any of them, I had to go to a university library, like the public library only had the children's book levels stuff. It's a trend that frustrates me. Like, I am glad that there are children's books about all of these people in these stories. That's great. And I'm glad that they're available for free at the public library. That's great. But it kind of sucks, slash really sucks when a lot of these stories are looked at as like inspirational stories for children rather than things for adults to study seriously. Also, so if you are interested in learning more about Robert Smalls, the two books that I had to go to a university library to get our gull of Statesman Robert Smalls from Slavery to Congress by Edward A. Miller and yearning to Breathe Free Robert Smalls of South Carolina and his family is by Andrew Billingsley, and they are both really good. Thank you so much for joining us today for this Saturday classic. If you have heard any kind of email address or maybe a Facebook you are l during the course of the episode, that might be obsolete. It might be doubly obsolete because we have changed our email address again. You can now reach us at History podcast at i heart radio dot com um and we're all over social media at missed in History and you can subscribe to our show on Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, the I heart Radio app, and wherever else you listen to podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Happy Saturday listeners. Today we are finishing our two part Saturday classic on Robert Small's, who served in both the South Carolina and US governments after escaping from enslavement during the Civil War. This episode originally came out February sixteen, and Joy Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy and I'm Holly Fry. Today we're picking up where we left off in the story of Robert Small's so to very very briefly recap part one. He was enslaved from birth in the McKee household of Beaufort, South Carolina, which is pronounced differently from Beaufort, North Carolina, even though they are both named after the same person. During the Civil War, he made a dramatic escape aboard a boat called the Planter, directly under the noses of the Confederate military. His escape was a boost to morale and the Union and an embarrassment for the Confederacy, and it also served to rally other enslaved persons who heard about it. He became something of a celebrity in the North and a spokesperson for African Americans with the Union. At the time of his escape, Robert Smalls was only twenty three years old. He was hailed as a hero and the Union newspapers, while the newspapers of the Confederacy alternated between strongly denouncing what he'd done and then kind of downplaying it while simultaneously casting tons of blame on the White soldiers then officers that had failed to stop him. Those officers who had left the boat overnight were indeed court martialed, although it was eventually thrown out on a technicality. From the time they reached the Union blockade, aboard the Planter, Robert Smalls and his family were free. They were considered to be contraband, which is a term that was used to describe formerly enslaved people who joined the Union. But this was just the beginning of an impressive career as a freeman. When he reached the Onward, which was one of the ships in the Union blockade, Robert Smalls is reported to have said to Lieutenant J. F. Nicholas, who was in command, quote, I thought this ship might be of some use to Uncle Abe. I have some guns. The Confederates took away from Fort Sumter and the Planter was in fact extremely useful. She was fast, and she rode very high in the water, so she was easy to get in and out of shallow areas while still carrying lots of men or cargo. But that Smalls himself was a huge asset to the Union as well. References to his competence, intelligence, and resourcefulness are all over the letters and papers of the Union officers and soldiers who encountered him, and the words of Admiral Samuel F. DuPont quote this man, Robert Smalls, is superior to any who has yet come into lines, intelligent as many of them have been. His information has been most interesting, and portions of it of the utmost importance. I shall continue to employ Robert as a pilot aboard the Planter for the inland Waters, which he appears to be very familiar pilot. By the way, DuPont referring to him that way was a promotion because he was enslaved. The highest rank that Smalls could hold under the Confederacy was wheelman. He would eventually become the Planter's captain. The way that used the word wheelman was also basically what we have to call pilots if they're enslaved. Like he was doing a pilot's job, but they wouldn't call him that because he was enslaved. His familiarity with the inland waters was of huge strate strategic importance to the Union. He knew where mines had been laid, he knew which spots were likely to be used as ambushes, he knew which routes were used by smugglers. He basically brought with him a mental atlas of the islands, rivers and sounds, as well as Confederate fortifications in the area. Robert Smalls was, how be to lend all of this knowledge to the Union. Doing so meant that he was working against slavery, rather than for it, as had been the case when he was forced to work for the Confederacy. Robert Small's military service for the Union began pretty much immediately, but he couldn't actually join the Union Navy. To do that, a person had to be literate. In spite of the fact that the McKay family had been pretty lenient with him during his enslavement, they hadn't allowed him to learn to read. So to work around this restriction regarding his literacy, he was instead made essentially a civilian contractor for the Army and then detailed back over to the Navy. During the Civil War, Smalls participated in seventeen different military engagements aboard the Planter, aboard an iron clad ship called the Kia Kook, and other ships as well. But in addition to this time in combat, thanks to the fame that followed in the wake of his escape, he also did a lot of diplomatic fundraising and a recruitment work for the Union. For a example, after it took port Royal South Carolina, the Union wanted its residents to grow cotton. They needed cotton for the war effort, but most of the people living there had until the arrival of the Union been enslaved on a cotton plantation. Continuing to grow cotton felt like doing the same thing for a different master, so a lot of people had planted food crops instead. Smalls was sent in to negotiate. He was familiar with the people in the area, and he was bilingual, able to speak both English and Gula. Gola is an English based creole that draws from several West African languages and is spoken to the Sea islands of South Carolina and Georgia. Smalls was able to negotiate a temporary compromised that allowed the growing of both cotton and food crops. His powers of persuasion were directed at the Union government as well. As we mentioned in the previous installment of this story, General David Hunter had on a couple of occasions tried to free all of the enslaved persons in places where he was in command, and the Federal government had on both occasions shut this down, arguing that it was up to Congress or the President and slavery, not a general acting off on his own. In August eighteen sixty two, Hunter met with Smalls on the subject of recruiting African Americans into the Union military. Although Hunter had been encouraging the acceptance of enslaved persons who reached Union lines into military service in areas that were under his command, this was not official military policy. Hunter made arrangements for Smalls to go to Washington, d c. Traveling with Reverend Mansfield French, to speak with the Secretary of War and when Stanton and with other members of Lincoln's cabinet, Smalls met with the Secretary of War in August twenty Then he met with the Secretary of the Treasury and After that, he and Reverend French met directly with Abraham Lincoln. Others, including Frederick Douglas, had already advised the President to encourage the recruitment of black soldiers into the Union Army. Smalls advised the same and said that he would recruit ten thousand men himself if the President allowed it. Ultimately, the President and the Secretary of War authorized the enlistment of black troops into the Union Army on August sixty two. Robert Smalls added recruiting black troops into the rest of his military work. He's reported to have recruited five thousand people, but I didn't really find documentation of how that number was calculated. And he did all of this wartime work while the South had placed a four thousand dollar bounty on him, along with an eight hundred dollar bounty on his wife or children. Smalls continued his military service after the Civil War, becoming a major general of the South Carolina Militia. He also moved into political service, which is what we will talk about after a brief word from a sponsor. So before we get into Robert Small's time in the South Carolina legislature, we need to set the stage a little bit with what happened after the end of the Civil War, because his political career directly parallels other events in US history. The two biggest, most obvious things that probably come to mind about the end of the Civil War are that the states that had succeeded rejoined the Union and slavery was abolished. But it wasn't just as simple as the war is over, so we're one country again, and also there's no more slavery. There needed to be a plan for the former Confederate states to demonstrate their loyalty to the United States, and they're also needed to be a plan to address the social, political, and economic inequality that stemmed from the institution of slavery, and to try to rebuild the damage to the nation and its infrastructure that had been caused by the war itself. These plans and the years through which they played out became known as Reconstruction. There is way too much reconstruction history to cover in one episode or even ten episodes, so this is an extremely basic overview. The grand idea behind reconstruction was to rebuild and unify the nation and to offset the inherent disadvantages that African Americans faced because of the institution of slavery, but a lot went wrong. First, there was significant back and forth between President Lincoln and Congress about what the plan should be. Lincoln's plan boiled down to the state's abolishing slavery and ten percent of their eligible voters swearing an oath of allegiance. Congress felt like this was not enough and passed the Wade Davis Bill, which set a significantly higher bar for readmission, one that the President felt was too high, so he refused to sign it. A much bigger issue was that when Abraham Lincoln, a Republican, had run for re election in eighteen sixty four, he had selected Democrat Andrew Johnson of Tennessee is his running mate, and the hope that it would bring him the support of Democrats and perhaps voters with pro Confederate leanings, along with other strategies. This worked, and Lincoln was re elected by a landslide, but that meant that when a Braham Lincoln was assassinated, Johnson became president. The same traits that had led some voters to support Johnson's vice presidency also led him to undermine some of the most important elements of reconstruction. He granted an amnesty that affected numerous ex Confederates, many of whom were then elected to the new governments of the Southern States. He set standards for readmission to the Union that didn't do much to address the issues Congress was trying to fix. He vetoed civil rights legislation, although Congress adopted it over his veto. He ultimately declared that the Union was restored, even though many of the rebelling states hadn't actually done one or more of the very basic things that they were expected to do to be readmitted to the Union. As a side note, Johnson was also the first president to be impeached for dismissing Edwin Stanton, Secretary of War, which violated the Tenure of Office Act. And to be clear, there were strides made to try to bring about equality after the Civil War between eighteens. In eighteen seventy four and fifteenth amendments to the U. S Constitution, which are known as the Reconstruction Amendments, were ratified. The thirteenth abolished slavery. The fourteenth, which we have talked about in a lot of episodes on this show, gave all citizens due process and equal protection under the law. In the fifteenth gave all male citizens the right to vote, regardless of quote, race, color, or previous condition of servitude. In eighteen sixty five, the Freedman's Bureau was also established with the hope of providing education, medical care, and assistance with labor contracts to previously enslaved persons, but none of this was as broad, far reaching, or effective as Congress had hoped At the conclusion of the war. Sometimes people talk about the failure of reconstruction, but really reconstruction was never given a chance to succeed. The election of former Confederate leaders to Southern state governments led to those governments actively working against recons struction. Many passed explicitly discriminatory laws and policies. Almost immediately, as early as no Member of eighteen sixty five, governments and former Confederate states were passing black codes, which eventually evolved into Jim Crow laws which denied African Americans basic legal rights and protections. All of this was playing out as Robert Smalls became a community and political leader, first in Baufort and then in South Carolina after the war. Small as his wife and their two surviving children returned to Beaufort, he had been awarded fifteen hundred dollars for the capture of the planter for quote rescuing her from the enemies of the government. He had also saved a lot of his pay, as well as other financial awards that he got from various aspects of his service. He used six hundred and fifty dollars of this money to buy the former McKee home which would which had since been sold to another family at a tax auction. From there, he used some of his money to help establish business his and to help other black families established businesses of their own. He acquired land and property, and he helped build a black owned railroad in Charleston. He also used some of his new found wealth to assist his former owners, who had been financially ruined by the war. He purchased a small house for the mckeys, and he helped their children find jobs. After Henry McKee died, Small Smalls had Mrs McKee cared for in his own home. So I want to be clear here. This turnabout does not somehow negate the fact that the mckeys had owned Robert Smalls and his mother and other people as property, and it doesn't erase the institution of slavery as a whole, but Small's compassionate treatment of the mckeyes and the other white citizens of Baufort did wind up earning him the respect of many in the white community. Robert Smalls also did a lot of work in the area of education. He had begun educating himself through private tutors during the war. Back in Bufort, he resumed the practice, hiring a tutor, waking up at five am every morning to study for two hours before the rest of his day began. This desire to educate himself carried over to a desire to educate his children and the black community of South Carolina as a whole. He helped form the Beaufort County School Board in February eighteen sixty seven, and was immediately elected chair. The school board then purchased property and established a school. It's unsurprising given that after this much community involvement. After the war, Smalls also moved into political leadership. In eighteen sixty seven, he helped found the Republican Party in South Carolina, and he was a delegate at seven different Republican national conventions. Along with many other black civic leaders, he made huge strides in getting South Carolina's black citizens, which at this point outnumbered its white citizens, registered to vote. He was elected to be a delegate at South Carolina's Constitutional Convention in eighteen sixty seven. When the Constitutional Convention, which was one of the requirements for South Carolina to rejoin the Union, was convened in eighteen sixty eight, seventy six of its one twenty four delegates were black. Smalls was appointed to the Finance Committee, and he also proposed a resolution to set up free public schools that were available to everyone. This resolution ultimately led to the first public schools in South Carolina. That same year, he was elected to a two year term in the South Carolina House of Representatives. That year, the majority of representatives in the South Carolina General Assembly were black, and there were nine black and twenty four white senators in the state Senate. In fact, during reconstruction, South Carolina had more black citizens holding public law office than any other state. South Carolina also had more black representation in the United States Congress during reconstruction than any other state as well. At the end of his term in the House of Representatives, Smalls was elected to the South Carolina State Senate, where he served two terms, continuing to focus on education, economic opportunity, and investigation of alleged corruption in the Republican Party. From there, Small's next stop with the United States federal government, which we will talk about after another brief sponsor break. In eighteen seventy four, Robert Smalls was elected to the United States House of Representatives, representing a majority black district that included Beaufort County, South Carolina. Between eighteen seventy five and eighteen eighty six, he served five non consecutive terms in the House of Representatives. He continued to work towards the social and economic interests of South Carolina, especially it's black citizens. He advocated for a Navy base to be built in Port Royal, South Carolina, which wound up becoming a significant contributor to the state's economy. He also championed a bill that required the federal government to return land that had been confiscated for nonpayment of taxes, which allowed residents of South Carolina and many other states to buy the land at a low cost. This measure led to black citizens of Beaufort County owning most of the land there in eighteen seventy six, one more time, eighteen seventy six, Robert Smalls proposed an amendment to an army reorganization bill which would have integrated the United States Armed Forces. Although his efforts weren't successful, they did demonstrate that people were genuinely attempting to desegregate the United States Armed Forces long long before President Truman signed Executive Order one in nineteen forty eight. However, during these same years, an intense, violent backlash against reconstruction was growing more pronounced and severe in many Southern states. The white supremacist organization the Ku Klux Klan, had been established in eighteen sixty six, and by eighteen seventy it had really spread throughout the South. In eighteen seventy six, armed white men killed several black members of the militia near Hamburg, South carol Lineup, and that same year elections in South Carolina were overrun with violence and voter intimidation in an effort to remove black officials from power. In eighteen seventy seven, Republican Rutherford be Hayes took office as President of the United States after an incredibly long and controversial presidential election. His opponent, Democrat Samuel J. Tilden, had won the popular vote, but when it came to awarding electoral votes, the results reported by the Republican and Democratic parties and three different states did not match up. Consequently, it was up to Congress to decide how to allot the electoral votes from these states. In the end, a compromise was reached. Rutherford B. Hayes would become president, but as Commander in chief of the Army, he would have to issue the order to withdraw federal troops, which had been part of the reconstruction effort from the South. By this point, a lot of the early strides towards equality that had been made during the earlier years of reconstruction had already been erased, as states had passed black codes and other discriminatory laws. State and local governments that had briefly become a lot closer to reflecting the racial makeup of their constituents didn't anymore. Voter intimidation and violence against black citizens at the hand of white citizens were really on the rise. Governments all over the South returned to being mostly too entirely white, with many of the white government leaders having ties to the former Confederacy. A lot of people feel like this withdrawal of the federal troops was really the final nail in the coffin of reconstruction, and it was against this backdrop that in eighteen seventy seven, Robert Smalls was accused, tried, and convicted of accepting a bribe. The case boiled down to a man named Joseph Woodriff, who claimed that he had bribed Smalls with five thousand dollars on January nineteenth, eighteen seventy three. A key piece of evidence was a check dated the nineteenth which was made out to quote cash or bearer and not to Robert Smalls. Another was a handwritten note written in pencil, dated the eighteenth, the day before the check, with no signatures on it. In spite of the fact that none of what we just said really adds up, and the fact that there were a lot of other inconsistencies and unreliable witness testimonies involved in this trial, Smalls was found guilty. The conviction was upheld on appeal, but he was later pardoned, although the South Carolina press continued to use the issue against him for the next two years. At this point, most historians agree that this was really an effort to try to keep Smalls out of office and not a crime that he had committed at any point, even though he was running in an overwhelmingly black Republican congressional district. Smalls lost in the race for d u s House in eighteen seventy eight to white Democrat George Tillman. He continued to work within the Republican Party in the face of ongoing harassment and threats and intimidation. He lost to Tilban again in eighteen eighty. Although the results of the eighteen eighty election were heavily contested, in the House of Representatives ultimately decided to seat Smalls instead. More than eighteen months into the two year term, in eighteen eighty two, Smalls withdrew from the race in favor of another Republican candidate, in part because his own political support from voters hadn't yet recovered from the bribery charge. Robert Small's wife, Hannah, died in eighteen eighty three. Smalls later married a woman named Annie Wigg, and they had a son together, who they named William Robert. Annie died a few years into their marriage. In eighteen eighty four, Robert Smalls ran against white Confederate veteran William Elliott senior and one. At this point, jerry mandering had guaranteed that all but one of South Carolina's districts had a majority white population, so black representation in the South Carolina government and in South Carolina's representatives to the federal government had dropped dramatically. In eighteen eighty six, Elliott defeated Smalls in the race of the House of Representatives. Although he was nominated in subsequent years, Smalls did not return to elected office after this point. In eighteen eighty nine, he was appointed collector of customs at the port of Bufort. In eighteen nine, South Carolina Governor Benjamin R. Tilman urged the state to convene another constitutional convention to revise the state constitution, and it did because of all the work that had been done to gerrymander the state intimidate black voters and get black people out of public office. Nearly all of the delegates to this constitutional convention were white. No black delegates were appointed to the Committee on the Rights of Suffrage. It was this committee that set up as many barriers to black citizens voting as possible without directly contradicting the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Over the strenuous objections and counter proposals of the six Black Republican delegates to the Constitutional Convention, South Carolina adopted a new constitution, and under this constitution, in order to vote, people had to pass a literacy test, pay a poll tax, and own at least three hundred dollars worth of property. Being convicted of a number of crimes, including arson, burglary, and robbery also stripped people of the right to vote. Combined, these stipulations in the state constitution stripped most black citizens of the right to vote, which continued to be the case until the passage of the Voting Rights Act of nineteen sixty five. Also included in the constitution the establishment of segregated schools. Robert Smiles continued to hold his customs post until nineteen twelve, when he was reappointed by William Howard Taffe, but not confirmed by the Senate. By this point, his health was really poor, and the Beaufort Customs House closed after he left. He died at the age of seventy six in nineteen fifteen. In the nineteen forties, Camp Robert Smalls, which was part of the Great Lakes Naval Training Center and was created to train black Navy seamen while the Navy was segregated, was named after him. In nineteen seventy six, Robert Smalls Bufort Home was added to the National Register of Historic Places. He was awarded the Palmeadow Cross on May thirteenth, two thousand two, the anniversary of his capture of the Planter, in recognition of his service to the South Carolina Militia. An army transport ship was christened to the Major General Robert Smalls on April two thousand four. At various points, multiple schools in Beaufort County have born Robert Small's name. Robert Small's Middle School, which is now Robert Small's International Academy, still does in Some of its alumni protested that its logo, which featured a man with a face that was darker on one side and lighter on the other, wearing what appeared to be Revolutionary war Eric garb, didn't accurately represent who Robert Smalls was. The logo was temporarily changed to a G for Generals, which was their school mascot, but the greater discussion was still ongoing at the time. Recorded this episode to end with a quote for the man himself. Quote my race needs no special defense, for the past history of them in this country proves them to be equal of any people anywhere. All they need is an equal chance in the battle of life. That is Robert Smalls. I had a surprisingly difficult time researching this episode because if you can find lots of children's books about Robert Small's in a typical public library, there are a lot of them. There are also numerous, like rigorous academic works for adults about Robert Small's and to get any of them, I had to go to a university library, like the public library only had the children's book levels stuff. It's a trend that frustrates me. Like, I am glad that there are children's books about all of these people in these stories. That's great. And I'm glad that they're available for free at the public library. That's great. But it kind of sucks, slash really sucks when a lot of these stories are looked at as like inspirational stories for children rather than things for adults to study seriously. Also, so if you are interested in learning more about Robert Smalls, the two books that I had to go to a university library to get our gull of Statesman Robert Smalls from Slavery to Congress by Edward A. Miller and yearning to Breathe Free Robert Smalls of South Carolina and his family is by Andrew Billingsley, and they are both really good. Thank you so much for joining us today for this Saturday classic. If you have heard any kind of email address or maybe a Facebook you are l during the course of the episode, that might be obsolete. It might be doubly obsolete because we have changed our email address again. You can now reach us at History podcast at i heart radio dot com um and we're all over social media at missed in History and you can subscribe to our show on Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, the I heart Radio app, and wherever else you listen to podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.