This is the guy we should make a movie, not a documentary, about. It's gets better. He steals the boat, goes North after helping his family, become a Northern army official, comes back with another gun boat and kicks ass. Then he's elected into office. If you ever needed a positive black role model, it's Smalls.
Because they have the plaque? Charleston is all about it's history and was the epicenter of the slave trade, so I wasn't surprised to see it I suppose.
Reading it sure did send a shiver down my spine though. Looking out over the harbor, with the mansion estates of The Battery directly at your back, knowing all the chapters of so many lives that began and ended there, suffering to create the wealth that built them.
It's certainly not your average spot to process a sidewalk history plaque - I recommend a visit sometime.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Smalls
-Railway owner
-Member of US House of representatives
-Publisher
-Owner of the most of the block where he was originally a slave.
> After pulling out of the dock, the Planter stopped at the West Atlantic Wharf to pick up Hannah and the children along with four other women, three more men, and another child.
So this guy jacked a warship (without spilling a drop of blood!) to evacuate his friends and family out of slavery. Sounds like a proper hero to me!
I would think it depends on his objective. Was it to fight a war or bring about rescue/escape? Leaving the moral considerations aside, stealing something vs. stealing something [i]and[/i] shedding blood brings an entirely different response from the enemy.
> The "enemy" were people he had worked alongside hours earlier
I think you mean people he had slaved under - let's call a spade a spade here, they could have talked cordially and all, they did not consider themselves his peers - the only people a chattel slave 'works' alongside with are other slaves
> In many cases - on both sides of the conflict - the "enemy" were slaves as well. Many of those who were free were conscripts.
Are you seriously equating conscription with chattel slavery? A chattel slave is the property of his master, his children are automatically his master's property at birth, like livestock. How many newly-born were conscripted, on either side? How many women were conscripted? Were entire families conscripted on the basis of the father's conscription?
Thanks for pointing that out. I don't mean to diminish at all the wrongness of slavery.
I apologize for my wording that did not bring to the fore that aspect of his not being a soldier at the time. Escaping from is not the same choice (morally and in terms of risk and preparedness) as killing your captors, and is again different from enlisting in an army against them.
We don’t know precisely why the three white officers on board a Confederate transport and gunboat called the CSS Planter decided to go ashore in Charleston, South Carolina...
Shucks, Any sailor can tell you about this! If you're going to work a con, best to use the strongest instincts in your favor, in this case, the prospect of booze and women.
Robert’s mother would tell him “you may be enslaved, but you are not a slave.”...He had trouble accepting a world in which he played with white children during the day, then was forced to quit when curfew came for slaves. “He was, as the story goes, disturbed and angered by having a different set of rules.”
From my experience, this is the takeaway: That being told earnestly of your worth is something very powerful for human beings, especially for children. I've experienced this from both sides on a number of occasions. As someone who grew up Asian in isolation from any kind of Asian community, I got both sides at once. I was respected as an example of intelligence, studiousness, and good behavior. At the same time, I was regarded as somehow less human -- emotionally, spiritually, and sexually inferior. It was so true, it was one of those so-true-its-funny jokes. I grew up supremely bolstered and confident in one way, horribly wounded in another. (It's taken me literally decades to recover, but now find myself in a relationship with someone intelligent and wonderful.) I wonder if Robert experienced the same division of experience, inverted? He knew from direct experience that he was just as smart and precocious as his playmates, yet was subject to arbitrary discrimination.
Sincere feedback given in the context of risk is the most powerful thing for a child. As a teacher of traditional music, I could see parents who didn't themselves play music bring their children, hoping to coddle and encourage them into participating. They always failed. Then, there were other children who grew up in households where the parents were part of a community who took joy in music and pride in excellence. You couldn't stop those kids, even in the face of frank and honest feedback. If there are any missing ingredients from our child-rearing environment, it is risk, undiluted challenge, and sincere passion.
