Robert Smalls and the Secretary of War

Yet it was never lost on me that he was a most extraordinary man, and he could, when he so chose, and when the Almighty blessed him with the necessary grace, simply amaze those with whom he was conversing, transmigrating the business at hand, and calling men to some place they would not go on their own.

This grace and force sometimes presented themselves in his interlocutors, also. For there in the President's office, matters of the greatest import were often under consideration, and I found myself thinking the men who sat or stood in that place, at times, rose far beyond their ordinary powers of thought, speech, and consideration, and spoke as if infused with a spirit that came from some place outside themselves.

I was surprised by how short the colored man was, especially next to Lincoln. I had been informed that Smalls was a complete illiterate, and I assumed the white man who accompanied him would do much of the talking. Smalls was quite young and had escaped from bondage only a few weeks before. I anticipated he would be as deferential and quiescent as the steward who brought us coffee when the President summoned with his pull cord. Smalls was a famous and dashing man, much interviewed, celebrated, and written about in the papers. And he had boldly stolen a Confederate steamer from the middle of their most heavily fortified port. But here he would find himself in as unaccustomed a situation as if he had suddenly been transported to the surface of the moon, I thought.

That was not what happened at all. Smalls's white companion, a Reverend French I believe, did not particularly interest the President. Instead, the president was full of questions about Smalls's recent exploits, about his seizing of the Planter and his leading our fleet into Stono Inlet. And Smalls told his story with a plainspoken straightforwardness, humility, and boldness that instantly captured the imagination of the President. Here was one extraordinary, ordinary man speaking to another, and there was an instant affinity, an instant chemistry.

Smalls's story was remarkable. It was as if the steward had, instead of bringing the coffee when the President pulled his chord, entered the room and challenged the President on the strategy for campaigning the Army of the Potomac. I was terrified as I listened to Smalls's tale, the certainty of torture and death if their escape failed, the unlikelihood of passing the forts in the night with their system of coded signals, the impossibility of navigating the mine field in the dark with the strong tidal currents sweeping them toward the bank.

Every man in the room listened, the President included, with the awe of one who knows the speaker is far more courageous than he.

Was Smalls simply too young to understand the impossible audacity of his deed? Or was he a man of more daring than any I had ever met?

How rarely had I seen the President overwhelmed by a visitor to his office? Usually, he listened patiently to the generals, the cabinet secretaries, the senators, the famous orators, and then, when he had tired of their posturing and puffing, he would slide one of his frontiersman homilies across the room to let them know just how little he was impressed.

But listening to this young slave, the President sat transfixed.

General Hunter had sent Smalls to advocate for his initiative to enlist freed coloreds in the army. The President was not in the least inclined to listen to this counsel, I feel. He had never felt colored men were the equals of white men, and he worried often, in my hearing, about what would become of these people when slavery was abolished. His concerns extended to the care, feeding, gainful employment, and governing of freed slaves. A week or so before Smalls's visit, the President had addressed a group of freed coloreds in his office, exhorting them to separate themselves from the white race and lead their brethren to a new colony in Central America. In no way, I feel, did he envision dressing these poor, ignorant men in uniforms and arming them for modern warfare.

Yet here was a man who had weeks before been an illiterate, oppressed bondsman, trapped in Charleston, South Carolina, as unnoticed and uncared for as any of his fellow servants, and he was before us transformed into the boldest warrior in the nation, a man who had shown more courage, initiative, and accomplishment than all the generals who had heretofore entered this office.

The President sat though most of his meetings politely and inquisitively, but with little prospect of his core beliefs changing. On those occasions when I had seen him reverse himself, the change came slowly and deliberately, for a truly open mind, as the President certainly had, can be changed with persuasive argument.

But never before had I seen President Lincoln astonished.