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 kind—from 1862 to the present.” He famously referred to his party as “the party of Lincoln…which unshackled the necks of four million human beings.” On September 12, 1912, he wrote a letter in which he expressed his concern about the impending presidential election. The conclusion of that letter was: “I ask that every colored man in the North who has a vote to cast would cast that vote for the regular Republican Party and thus bury the Democratic Party so deep that there will not be seen even a bubble coming from the spot where the burial took place.”
State Politics
Robert Smalls advocated for free, mandatory education for all South Carolina students while serving as a delegate to the 1868 South Carolina Constitutional Convention. In addition to participating in the Republican State conventions in South Carolina, he was a delegate at multiple Republican National Conventions.
He became the first African American member of the South Carolina House of Representatives when he was elected in 1868. He introduced the Homestead Act and pushed to enact the Civil Rights law, demonstrating his effectiveness. In 1870, Smalls was chosen to serve out his remaining term in the state Senate after Jonathan Jasper Wright was elected to the South Carolina Supreme Court. He kept serving in the Senate and defeated W. J. Whipper in the 1872 election. He was regarded as an excellent speaker and debater in the Senate. He chaired the Public Printing Committee and was a member of the Finance Committee.
Robert Smalls attended three National Republican conferences as a delegate: in Philadelphia in 1872, the incumbent President Grant was nominated for reelection; Hayes was nominated in Cincinnati in 1876; Blaine was nominated in Chicago in 1884; and he continued to attend all conferences until 1896. At the South Carolina Republican Party’s state convention in 1872, he was chosen as the party’s vice president.
He was made a lieutenant-colonel in the South Carolina State Militia’s Third Regiment in 1873. Later on, he was elevated to major-general of the Second Division, South Carolina State Militia, and brigadier-general of the Second Brigade, South Carolina Militia. He remained in this role until the state government was taken over by Democrats in 1877.
National Politics
Robert Smalls was elected to the US House of Representatives in 1874 and held the position for two terms, from 1875 to 1879. He served as the House representative for South Carolina’s fifth congressional district from 1882 to 1883. Beaufort and other predominantly African-American coastal areas were included in South Carolina’s 7th congressional district as a result of the state legislature’s gerrymandering of district lines, which also gave other adjacent districts significant white majorities. From 1884 until 1887, Smalls was elected from the 7th district. He served in the 44th, 45th, 47th, 48th, and 49th United States Congresses.
He opposed the withdrawal of troops from the American South in 1875 because he was concerned about how it would affect the security of African Americans living there. Smalls proposed an amendment that said that “[h]ereafter in the enlistment of men in the Army…no distinction whatsoever shall be made on account of race or color” while a bill to shrink and reorganize the US Army was being considered. Congress did not, however, take the amendment into consideration. Before Mick Mulvaney gained office in 2010, he was the final Republican elected from the Fifth Congressional District. Up until the middle of the 20th century, he was the second-longest serving African-American member of Congress (behind Joseph Rainey).
The U.S. government removed its remaining troops from South Carolina and other Southern states following the Compromise of 1877. Election fraud and violence had been employed by conservative Southern Bourbon Democrats to retake the state legislature. Five years prior, Smalls was prosecuted and found guilty of accepting a bribe in connection with the awarding of a printing contract as part of extensive Democratic Party efforts to diminish African-American political dominance. In exchange for his pardon, Democrats guilty of election fraud were also exonerated.
Robert Smalls suffered political setbacks as a result of the incident, losing to Democrat George D. Tillman in 1878 and again, barely, in 1880. He successfully challenged the 1880 outcome and won the seat back in 1882. He was chosen to serve in a different district in 1884. In December 1884, Wade Hampton defeated him despite his nomination for the Senate. During this time in Congress, he advocated for racial integration legislation, backed a pension for the widow of his former Major General, David Hunter, and counseled African Americans in South Carolina not to go to Liberia or the Northern or Midwestern United States.
President Benjamin Harrison named him collector of the Port of Beaufort in 1890, and he remained in that role until 1913, with the exception of Democrat Grover Cleveland’s second term. Robert Smalls continued to operate far into the 20th century. He was “the leading colored delegate” to the South Carolina constitutional convention in 1895. He vehemently resisted the overwhelming Democratic delegates, along with five other African-American officials, as they steadfastly included the state’s African-American citizens’ disenfranchisement in the proposed constitution. They published an essay for the New York World in an attempt to draw attention to this obviously discriminatory clause. At the state convention, they were outnumbered, though, and the new constitution was approved. This state constitution withstood court challenges for many decades, which led to the Republican Party’s crippling throughout South Carolina as well as the exclusion of African Americans from political involvement.
Robert Smalls developed diabetes in the late 1890s. He declined an assignment as minister to Liberia and a colonelcy in an African-American U.S. military regiment during the Spanish-American War.
Local politics
Smalls had some impact even though he wasn’t formally involved in local politics. He was instrumental in preventing a lynch mob from executing two black suspects in the death of a white man in 1913, one of his last acts as a community leader. He put pressure on the mayor by threatening to set the town on fire if the mob was not put down. He had despatched black people throughout the city. The mob was put down by the sheriff and mayor.
Family
Robert Smalls had three children with his first wife, Hannah Jones Smalls, whom he married on December 24, 1856: Sarah Voorhies (1863–1920), Robert Jr. (born in 1861 and died at age two), and Elizabeth Lydia (1858–1959; m. Samuel Jones Bampfield, nine live children). Prior to her marriage to Robert Smalls, Hannah Jones Smalls had two daughters, Charlotte and Clara Jones. While residing in Washington, D.C., Smalls and his family attended Berean Baptist Church and were members of the Baptist Church. Smalls belonged to Sons of Beaufort Lodge #36 and was a Prince Hall mason. In 2024, Michael B. Moore, Smalls’ great-great-grandson, ran unsuccessfully as the Democratic contender for South Carolina’s first congressional district.
On July 28, 1883, Hannah Smalls passed away. Robert Smalls married Charleston educator Annie E. Wigg on April 9, 1890, and the two had a son, William Robert Smalls (1892–1970). On November 5, 1895, Annie Smalls passed away.
On February 23, 1915, Robert Smalls, at 75 years old, passed away from diabetes and malaria. He was laid to rest in his family’s plot at the downtown Beaufort churchyard of the Tabernacle Baptist Church. Smalls’ 1895 declaration to the South Carolina legislature, “My race needs no special defense, for the past history of them in this country proves them to be the equal of any people anywhere,” is engraved on the monument honoring him in this churchyard. All they require is an equal opportunity in the struggle for survival.
Honors and Legacy
- Robert Smalls Day has been observed on May 13 in the state of South Carolina since 2023.
- During the Civil War, free Blacks constructed Fort Robert Smalls in his honor on McGuire’s Hill on Pittsburgh’s South Side in 1863. It continued to exist into the 1940s.
- Beaufort’s Robert Smalls House is now recognized as a National Historic Landmark.
- He is buried at Tabernacle Baptist Church in Beaufort, where a memorial and statue are erected in his honor.
- In Cheraw, South Carolina, the Robert Smalls School bears his name.
- In Beaufort County, South Carolina, the Robert Smalls Leadership Academy (previously the Robert Smalls Middle School) bears his name.
- Black sailors were trained at Camp Robert Smalls, a sub-facility of the Great Lakes Naval Training Center, during World War II (the Navy was segregated at the time).
- Smalls is the subject of an exhibit at the Verdier House museum in Beaufort.
- The USAV Major General Robert Smalls (LSV-8), a Kuroda-class logistical support vehicle run by the US Army, was named for Smalls in 2004. It was the first ship in the Army to bear the name of an African American.
- In 2012, Charleston celebrated the 150th anniversary of Smalls’ escape on the Planter with special events on May 12 and 13.
- A five-mile stretch of South Carolina Highway 170 that passes through Port Royal Island and into Beaufort is known as the Robert Smalls Parkway.
- The National Museum of African American History and Culture in the United States has a statue of Smalls.
- A tiny pedestal in Charleston’s Waterfront Park features a plaque outlining Smalls’ services to the community.
- A plan was made to erect a statue of Smalls at the State House in South Carolina. On August 29, 2024, the measure was ceremoniously signed by Governor Henry McMaster. On that day, the Robert Smalls Monument Commission convened for the first time in order to move forward with monument planning. Currently serving on the Commission are South Carolina Senators Tom Davis, Margie Bright Matthews, Shane Massey, Chip Campsen, and Darrell Jackson, as well as Representatives Wendell Gilliard, Jermaine Johnson, Brandon Cox, Patrick Haddon, and Sylleste Davis.
- Amazon revealed in 2019 that company and director Charles Burnett were working on a biopic. Malcolm Mays was revealed to be reworking the script in 2021.
- Legion M, Wolper Corporation, and Bill Duke are working on a biopic called “Defiant” about Smalls.
- On the advice of The Naming Commission, the Navy renamed USS Chancellorsville USS Robert Smalls on March 1, 2023, in honor of Smalls.
- The Drunk History episode “Charleston” (Season 2, Episode 5) told Smalls’ narrative.
