The Robert Smalls Memorial in Beaufort, South Carolina

Monument to Robert Smalls beside Tabernacle Baptist Church in Beaufort, South Carolina

On my recent trip to Beaufort, South Carolina, I visited Tabernacle Baptist Church and the grave of and memorial to Robert Smalls. The details of the daring escape of Smalls and his companions in the steamer Planter is well told elsewhere. (I am currently reading and enjoying Cate Lineberry’s 2017 book “Be Free or Die” about Smalls.) I had not been aware of Planter’s cargo of heavy cannons: the two most significant of which were a rifled and banded 42-pounder and an 8-Inch Columbiad. Smalls would go on to serve as a civilian pilot for the US Navy - most notably aboard USS Keokuk in the April 7th, 1863 “Attack of the Ironclads” against Fort Sumter. Later he would serve as captain of the Planter in US Army service. Postwar he would serve in a variety of roles, including as a US Congressman through much of the 1870s and 1880s.

Harper’s Weekly illustration of Smalls and Planter

Grave of Robert Smalls beside Tabernacle Baptist Church

Grave of Robert Smalls beside Tabernacle Baptist Church

A Monument to Harriet Tubman is also near Tabernacle Baptist Church