Day: January 14, 2026

Robert Smalls Biography: Political Affiliation, Family & Honours

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Robert Smalls had a path to political promotion thanks to his military notoriety and his command of the Gullah tongue. Political Affiliation Robert Smalls was a founding member of the Republican Party of South Carolina. Following the Civil War, the Republican Party, which controlled the Northern states, enacted legislation protecting African Americans. Robert Smalls wrote to U.S. Senator Knute Nelson on August 22, 1912, saying, “I never lose sight of the fact that had it not been for the Republican Party, I never would have been an office-holder of any…

Robert Smalls: The Christian Courage Behind His Daring Escape & Life of Leadership

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Born into slavery in Beaufort, South Carolina, Robert Smalls was an American Republican politician who lived from April 5, 1839, to February 23, 1915. Smalls, who was still a slave, stole a Confederate transport ship in Charleston Harbor during the American Civil War and sailed it from the harbor’s Confederate-controlled waters to the American blockade that ringed it. After that, he took the ship to the Beaufort–Port Royal–Hilton Head enclave under Union control, where it was converted into a Union battleship. He set himself, his crew, and their families free…