Front page illustration of the Flagship Hartford being attacked by the Rebel Ram Manassas in the Mississippi River. Other illustrations: Portrait of Escaped Slave Robert Smalls. The Steamer Planter run out of Charleston, S.C. by Robert Smalls. Feeding the negro children under charge of the military authorities at Hilton Head, S.C. Union troops with shovels marching into the trenches before Richmond. The Confederate Military Prison at Salisbury, N.C. Release of Union prisoners at Salisbury, N.C. Full centerfold with 6 vignettes drawn by Winslow Homer. The starving people of New Orleans fed by the United States military authorities. Portrait of Honorable Moses F. Odell, Member of Congress from Brooklyn, N.Y., and more. Very fine.
Biographical Sketch of Robert Smalls: (1839-1915) Smalls was born in Beaufort, S.C., to Lydia, a slave woman. John McKee was his owner and possibly his father. In 1851 McKee moved to Charleston where Smalls was permitted to hire himself out successively as a waiter, lamplighter, rigger and harbor pilot. At the start of the Civil War, the 22 year old slave was employed as a wheelman on the Planter. This 150 foot steamer, capable of transporting 1,400 bales of cotton, was chartered by the Confederacy. Armed with 32 and 24 pound howitzers, the vessel laid torpedoes and carried men and supplies for the erection and maintenance of Confederate fortifications along the Carolina coast. Smalls conceived a daring plan to seize the vessel, liberate its black crew and several family members, and escape to the Union fleet blockading Charleston harbor. At about 3 a.m. on May 13, 1862, Smalls and seven crewmen fired the boiler and slipped Smalls wife, daughter and son aboard, as well as four other women and one child. Thoroughly familiar with Confederate regulations, Smalls departed the wharf and headed downstream. He donned the straw hat of Planter's captain, C.J. Relyea, and mimicked his familiar walk. The ship slowly steamed past Fort Johnson and Fort Sumter, received a routine acknowledgement from Confederate batteries to proceed, and headed for the Union blockade. Planter was carrying 200 pounds of ammunition, four guns, and other supplies destined for Fort Ripley. The crew was later rewarded $7,000 in prize money, of which Smalls received $1,500. The success of Smalls stunned the Confederacy. In August Lincoln and Stanton welcomed Smalls to Washington and the black hero urged them to employ black troops in the war effort. Smalls served as a pilot on the ironclad Keokuk and was aboard when she sunk in the Union attack on Charleston, April 7, 1863. He spent most of the remainder of the war on the Planter, which participated in 17 engagements in the service of the Union army. Smalls intimate knowledge of Carolina's coastal waters was of critical value. He was promoted to captain in Dec. 1864 after assuming command when the ship's white commander panicked while under a Confederate artillery attack along the Stono River near Charleston. Smalls went on to enjoy a prominent career in Republican politics. He was elected to the S.C. state house in 1868 and the state senate in 1870, and he served 3 terms in the U.S. House of Representatives. |
