Robert Smalls is one of those men that did the unthinkable, he flew in the face of danger rather than lay down and accept his sorry fate. He did more than most and along the way he saved others and brought them to his cause.

He was born, an enslaved child, in 1839 in Beaufort, South Carolina.

He was sold off at a young age to be a laborer and eventually ended up working on a ship.

In 1862 he freed himself from slavery by commandeering a Confederate transport ship, CSS Planter, in Charleston harbor. He also free the crew and they sailed through Confederate waters to the U.S. blockade. He outwitted guards by using secret hand signals and pretended to be the ship’s captain.

After this feat he joined the fight and was one of the main reasons Robert Smalls allowed blacks to fight in the army. Washington was obviously a damn fool to think any less of these courageous men and women, these people who made their freedom more than any signed paper did!

Smalls helped free many others. After the war he created business to serve freedmen, he then returned to Beaufort and began a successful political career.

As Wikipedia stated, he won the election:

as a Republican to the South Carolina State legislature and the United States House of Representatives during the Reconstruction era. As a politician, Smalls authored state legislation providing for South Carolina to have the first free and compulsory public school system in the United States. He founded the Republican Party of South Carolina. Due to the state’s white Democrats disfranchising most blacks (who made up much of the Republican Party), Smalls was the last Republican to represent South Carolina’s 5th congressional district until 2010.

He died aged 75 in 1915 and his stone reads “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. All they need is an equal chance in the battle of life.”

Learn more about his daring escape in the video below:

Learn more about his life on Wikipedia here.