events
Southern slave Robert Smalls steals the steamboat Planter, spirits it through Confederate lines and hands it to the United States Navy, who quickly commission it as the gunboat USS Planter and appoint Smalls as captain, thus making him the first black man to command a United States ship.
Related Wikipedia articles
Robert Smalls
Former slave and American politician (1839–1915)
Robert Smalls was an American Republican politician who was born into slavery in Beaufort, South Carolina. During the American Civil War, the still enslaved Smalls commandeered a Confederate transport ship in Charleston Harbor and sailed it from the Confederate-controlled waters…Source: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA)
Confederate States of America
Unrecognized state in North America (1861–1865)
The Confederate States of America (CSA), also known as the Confederate States (C.S.), the Confederacy, or the South, was an unrecognized breakaway republic in the Southern United States from 1861 to 1865. It comprised eleven U.S. states that declared secession: South Carolina,…Source: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA)
USS Planter (1860)
Gunboat of the United States Navy
USS Planter was a steamer taken over by Robert Smalls, a Southern slave and ship's pilot who steered the ship past Confederate defenses and surrendered it to Union Navy forces on 13 May 1862 during the American Civil War. The episode is missing from Scharf's History of the…Source: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA)