Category Archives: Profiles

Robert Smalls

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Robert Smalls was a slave born on April 5, 1839 in Beaufort, South Carolina. His mother was a house slave, his father an unknown white man. When Robert was only 12-years-old, he began working in the Charleston, South Carolina shipyards.

Robert Smalls

Robert Smalls

Smalls was 23-years-old when he became the pilot of a steam-powered side-wheeler named the Planter. The Planter was used to move cotton bales through the coastal waters of South Carolina. The Confederate States of America also used the Planter for missions in waters held by the Rebels.

On May 13, 1862 slave Robert Smalls dressed as the Planter’s captain, and with help from family and other slaves, he commandeered the boat. As a ship pilot, Smalls knew the necessary signals that would allow the Planter to get by the Rebel-held Fort Sumter. Smalls took the Planter out to the Yankee navy boats blockading Charleston, and turned the boat over to the Union. Smalls, and the other slaves on board, gained their freedom. The Union got the Planter, along with four cannon, the cannon’s armament, and important intelligence regarding Confederate defenses in Charleston.

Smalls continued to pilot boats, but now he did it for the Union. As a civilian, Robert Smalls became the Planter’s captain and the boat took part in 17 engagements during the Civil War. On April 7, 1863 Smalls was piloting an ironclad ship named Keokuk during an attack on the Rebel-held Fort Sumter. During a flotilla attack of this engagement, Smalls was injured in his eyes while piloting the Keokuk. The ironclad Keokuk Smalls piloted was hit 90 times, most of the hits were at or below the ironclad’s waterline. The Keokuk sank the next day.

Robert Smalls was rewarded with fame and fortune for his heroic actions. Smalls met President Abraham Lincoln, and helped in fund-raising activities. Smalls learned how to read. President Lincoln signed a Congressional bill awarding prize money in the amount of $1500 to Smalls (Smalls’ associates also received money).

In August of 1862, Robert Smalls and a missionary named Mansfield French met with President Lincoln and Secretary of War Edwin Stanton. Smalls and Mansfield were asking Lincoln and Stanton for authorization to recruit African-American troops. Soon permission to raise the African-American troops was obtained.

Robert Smalls’ success did not end when the Civil War ended. After the Civil War, Smalls purchased the home of his former owner and master, and the slave quarters he was born in. He lived in his former master’s home the rest of his life. Smalls became a politician and served in the South Carolina house of representatives for two years, and then in the state senate for three years. His record was not without blemish however, as a state senator Smalls took a $5,000 bribe and was sentenced to three years in prison. Smalls was pardoned and served no time.

Robert Smalls was elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1875 and served five terms. Later, he was the collector for the Beaufort, South Carolina port. Congress awarded Robert Smalls a $30 a month pension in 1897, then he was awarded $5,000 in 1900 for capturing the side-wheeler Planter. Smalls died in 1915.

There is nothing small about Robert Smalls’ life accomplishments.

Learn Civil War History Podcast Episode Seven: Freedman Jourdon Anderson Writes A Letter To His Old Master

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Robert Smalls

Doctor Samuel Alexander Mudd

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Doctor Samuel Alexander Mudd was the physician who treated assassin John Wilkes Booth’s broken left leg after Booth shot President Abraham Lincoln. Booth had broken his leg when he leapt onto the stage from the presidential box at Ford’s Theatre after shooting Lincoln in the back of his head. Booth then fled on horseback.

Early the next morning on April 15, 1865 Booth and David Herold, an accomplice in the assassination, had made their escape into Maryland where they called on Dr. Samuel Mudd to treat Booth’s broken leg. Mudd was an acquaintance of the well-known and popular actor Booth. Booth and Herold then stayed briefly at the Mudd house before continuing on in their escape to Virginia. John Wilkes Booth was eventually shot dead by pursuing Union soldiers in a Virginia barn.

In 1865, a jury of Army officers convicted Mudd and seven others in the plot to assassinate President Abraham Lincoln. David Herold was one of the four hanged (along with Mary E. Surratt, Lewis T. Powell, and George A. Atzerodt) on July 7, 1865 for conspiracy in Abraham Lincoln’s assassination.

Dr. Samuel Mudd was found guilty of conspiracy but was spared the hangman’s noose by one jury vote. Dr. Samuel Mudd was sentenced to life imprisonment at Fort Jefferson. Fort Jefferson, with sweltering conditions of heat and humidity, was a harsh place to be imprisoned, it being approximately 70 miles west of Key West, Florida in the Dry Tortugas. President Andrew Johnson pardoned Mudd in February, 1869 and on March 8, 1869 Dr. Samuel Mudd was freed from the prison. During Dr. Mudd’s time at Fort Jefferson he helped stop the spread of a yellow fever epidemic that had ravaged through the prison.

There has been continuing controversy about whether or not Dr. Samuel Mudd was involved in the assassination conspiracy, or was only a country doctor helping a man with a broken leg. Doctor Mudd’s guilt or innocence, in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln is still debated.

In 1992 an administrative board of the Army made the recommendation that Mudd’s conviction be expunged because Mudd was a civilian. However, following Army secretaries and a federal judge, turned down this recommendation. A court decision in November, 2002 dismissed an attempt to have expunged the 1860s military commission conviction of Dr. Samuel Mudd.

Thomas Mudd is the grandson of Samuel Mudd, and he plans to seek a review of the 2002 court decision by the full appeals court. If this fails, Thomas Mudd intends to ask the United States Supreme Court to intervene.

Dr. Samuel Mudd was absolved by President James Earl “Jimmy” Carter in 1979 of involvement in the conspiracy to assassinate President Abraham Lincoln. It is a curiosity that the former television anchorman Roger Mudd, is related to Dr. Samuel Mudd.