- Info
Letter to the Editor
Comment on a Long-standing Error
From Dean S. Bird
Mr. Bird wrote in October 2007 to correct
errors contained in the Studies in Intelligence Winter 1998-1999
Unclassified Edition article by P.K. Rose "Valuable Sources--The Civil
War: Black American Contributions to Union Intelligence" (pp. 73-80).
Mr. Bird is a retired history teacher and Civil War reenactor at Fort
Clinch, in Fernandina, Florida, a location erroneously connected to a
historic figure mentioned in the Rose article, Robert Smalls.
Robert Smalls was a popular Civil War hero
of the times. He was a slave and a ship pilot in Charleston, South
Carolina, who in May 1862 with 16 people on board, including his wife,
brother, and their children sailed the ship on which he worked (The
Planter) past the Confederate-occupied Fort Sumter, and surrendered it
to the blockading Union navy. He also delivered important information
about Confederate dispositions in and around Charleston Harbor. Smalls
would go on to serve as a pilot for both the navy and the army during
the remainder of the war. After the war, he was elected to the US House
of Representatives multiple times. In September 2007, a ship named in
honor of Small was commissioned. Fittingly, it is an Army vessel, the
logistic support ship Major General Robert Smalls (LSV-8). After Smalls
handed The Planter to the navy, it was turned over to the Union army
because it was a wood-burning ship--in 1862 the US Navy had committed
itself to the use of coal.
While Mr. Rose's summary of the Planter
story, as it was told by Benjamin Quarles in The Negro in the Civil War
is generally correct--Smalls did sail the ship to the US Navy, but he
was not, as described, "a free black American," nor did he receive a
share of the value of the ship the month he delivered it (the payment
was only authorized that quickly)--he misses most seriously by wrongly
attributing to Smalls an earlier event off Fernandina involving an
unnamed slave described by Quarles. In March 1862, when Union navy flag
officer Samuel Francis DuPont and his fleet of 27 ships approached
Fernandina, this slave rowed a small boat out to the fleet and informed
DuPont that the Confederates had evacuated Fort Clinch. Most sources do
not name this slave-- some have named him "Louis Napoleon"--and extant
descriptions of him do not match descriptions of Smalls. In addition,
at least one source has Smalls becoming the Planter's pilot in
Charleston the day before the incident in Fernandina, more than 200
miles to the south.
Historical Document
Posted: Dec 11, 2007 11:51 AM
Last Updated: Jun 25, 2008 07:52 AM
Last Reviewed: Dec 11, 2007 11:51 AM