Captain Smalls, the Escaped Slave

I was commanding the third steamer to enter the Stono. Smalls, the escaped slave, was piloting his stolen vessel, the Planter, in the lead of the assault. I kept two sounding men casting lead on either side of the bow. The sea was a glassy calm, with a three-to-four-foot swell from the northeast peaking ominously in the shallows and the tidal currents of that treacherous inlet. We entered on a rising tide, hoping it would carry us off if we grounded.

Smalls moved his steamer with skill and confidence, and we followed in tight formation behind him. I was sweating in the steamy, early-summer heat, which seemed unbearable then, although it was nothing compared to what would come in the months ahead.

From our initial positions offshore, Smalls led us some two miles to the south of the inlet, and then close in along the beach. The dark, sea-island forest lay unbroken along the dunes. I expected fire from the rebels at any point along that run. But they had apparently abandoned this shoreline, and we passed unmolested.

When the sounding men called two fathoms, my muscles tensed. I had two steamers ahead of me, but we had the deepest draft of that small fleet by at least three feet. When the sounding men began calling one and a half, I waited for the thud of the keel on the bar. But it never came.

We passed the bar, turned to port into the inlet, and within minutes we were in South Carolina.

Here I expected a fierce battle, and I feared what would happen if the Planter were disabled and Smalls rendered incapable of leading us back out of that inlet. The river inside was wide enough for maneuvering, but not wide enough to evade artillery fire.

Broad expanses of salt marsh stretched upstream before us. There were sea islands close by on either side of the inlet, covered at these extremes with sand dunes, sea oats, and scrub. A wide river branched off to the north. Another river branched to the south a mile or so in.

Smalls led us on on a middle course up the Stono. We could see fortifications on a small island in the salt marsh to our north. As Smalls had reported, they were abandoned. Soon the riverbank to port was covered in the deep forest again. Still we encountered no enemy fire. Within an hour, we had steamed some five or six miles inland, and I began to wonder if we might land our troops at the very verges of Charleston. But as we approached a forested shore on the starboard side, the first artillery shells began to thunder into the river ahead of us. Smalls stopped the Planter, and we backed a half a mile or so down the river.

After some consultation, we anchored in the Stono a mile beyond the range of those Confederate guns on James Island. We had behind us an expanse of river sufficient to hold our entire fleet, miles of unoccupied land on the south and west side of the river, and the sea island on the north side of the river entrance. We were within seven miles of the city of Charleston. And we had not suffered a single casualty.

Smalls had advanced Federal forces farther in a morning than we had advanced in months of campaigning.