Robert Smalls and the Seller

I always liked that boy, from the time I first met him. Although Hannah and her mother had been dear to me as servants in our household, there was the inevitable distance one feels between slave and master. There was the divide that had to be maintained. But this young man tempted me to step a bit closer to the divide. He was open, quick-witted, and an able worker. Those who employed him along the waterfront and as a wheelman had the highest confidence in him.

His dogged interest in Hannah mystified me. She was noticeably older than he, and she already had two children- quite obviously fathered by some other slave. But he was devoted to her, and I was pleasantly surprised when he asked if he could marry her. I consented, after consulting with his owner, Mr. McGee of Beaufort. McGee seemed to think highly of Robert, too. He had sent the boy to Charleston some seven or eight years earlier to work for hire. McGee undoubtedly felt the young man would be a good earner for him. His return correspondence to me seemed to betray genuine concern for the boy's welfare and happiness.

Robert married Hannah and moved into a shack behind our house, where she could continue her domestic duties. He was often away from home aboard whatever steamer he was working on. I would see him walking into our garden at the most random hours, when his ship returned to port and released him from his duties on board. I rarely heard squabbling or fighting from that shack.

Nothing could have prepared me for Robert's next proposal. I suppose it was the white blood in him. There's nothing more disgusting to me than a man who would lie with his slave, but that's neither here nor there. It happens enough, and what comes of it is something like poor Robert, a part-white soul living in a slave's body.

Robert proposed buying Hannah and her brood from me. Although I didn't allow him to see it, his proposal pained me to the core. He was such a decent and upright man, I thought. I had always cared so much for Hannah. I wanted her to be happy with this man. No one could possibly dislike young Robert. I have never known a man, black or white, with the charismatic attraction of that young fellow.

There was ample precedent of free coloreds owning slaves, even buying their women and children. But I doubted there was any standing in law for a slave to buy another slave. Nevertheless, I wanted to help Robert and to do whatever I could to support and sustain Hannah's marriage to him. Robert largely lived as a free colored anyway. Such was his relationship with his owner, this McGee, who well may have been his very father, that Robert lived his life almost as his own man. And it was not entirely outside my imagination that the institution of slavery might not outlive us. Certainly I recognized the possibility that it might not outlive Robert and Hannah.

So I made an agreement to sell him his wife and her children. I drew up a bill of sale for seven hundred dollars and took a down payment from him of one hundred dollars. Where and how he had amassed that down payment I have no idea. It never occurred to me he might be a thief. There was nothing about the man that ever gave me the slightest suspicion such behavior was in his character. It goes, of course, to show how wrong we may be when we pretend we can see into other men's souls.

I drew up the papers and took his money, realizing I myself might be breaking the law in having drawn up such a contract. But who would know? I intended to honor the spirit of the contract as long as the two of them lived under my protection. The transaction seemed to give Hannah and Robert the greatest joy and pride. There was no possibility he would ever try to get legal title to the three of them for the purpose of a sale. And there was the distinct possibility that this earnest, industrious, and thrifty young man would deliver me further payments over the years to come. My emotional attachment to Hannah, and, by extension, to her children, was such that I doubt I would ever have been able to sell them to another man for any consideration. I was not sacrificing property that was ever likely to bring me or my descendants financial gain.

Oh, vanity! Such calculation. Such careful business planning. Where did it get me? Ruined by war. Destitute. Unable to support my own family. This Robert, having stolen from me my property, now rides through Beaufort, I read in the Charleston papers, in the finest of carriages, in his fancy clothes, as if he were a king. I hear he owns McGee's home now. Poor McGee is dead.

I have read that Robert had on his person the balance of the seven-hundred-dollar payment when he stole the Planter. I doubt now that he ever intended to pay me that money. Thievery is, after all, so much more convenient than honor. And in time of calamity and war, thieves are transcendent.

I met Robert on more than one occasion immediately after the war. At the war's end, he had piloted the Planter back into Charleston, overloaded to the gunwales with drunken coloreds and carpetbag-toting Yankees. He strutted through town as the black-faced conqueror.

Oh, he was most gracious, most kind to me. He has lost nothing of the charisma. Even in defeat, I could not help but like the man. I could not help but celebrate his freedom and happiness in my heart. And Hannah seemed as almost as happy as he. Nothing in me begrudged her this.

The money I was owed turned out to be utterly uncollectable.

They seemed to be such decent people. They were people I loved. I look into my own soul, I admit I love them still. You've got to be a damn fool to love a nigger.

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