The Aide De Camp and Robert Smalls

The Aide De Camp

Our camp lay amidst these live oaks, on a bluff overlooking a stretch of the green marsh grass and the tidal creek beyond. It was the most beautiful of locations, a welcome respite from a New Hampshire schoolmaster's existence. The winter had been mild- at times hot. No snow had come. And now the spring was brilliant with semi-tropical blossoms. The Negro women began to offer us shrimp and crabs along with the flounder and chickens they had been bringing us. I had begun to converse with them in their strange language, utterly incomprehensible to me at first, now becoming clearer as I recognized the underlying Englishness of its structure and vocabulary. They were a remarkably happy lot, having been abandoned some months earlier by their masters. They lived in the most rudimentary of natural conditions, in habitations barely differentiated from the ringing, live-oak forest and the long cotton fields filled with mist in the morning, beginning just now to shimmer with heat in the afternoon sun. There was nothing settled about our camp. It was a strange, temporary thing in a strange land.

The arrival of the Planter was just as alien, just as serendipitous. The steamer was of significant heft. It carried, in addition to its own armament, a collection of heavy artillery that had only recently been removed by the Confederates from one of their fortifications. The Planter was a river and coastal steamer, not really fit for long sea passages, but able to maneuver handily in the shallow, opaque waters of that region.

The Planter's story spread rapidly through the camp. The news took fire among the blacks, as if it were the most unbelievable of revelations. One might imagine the spread of the Resurrection story among Jesus' followers. There was a look of utter incredulity, mixed at once with the most fervent desire to believe and the hope that the horrible reality had, if only this once, contrary to all understanding and experience, been breached.

I watched the crew of the Planter shuffle off under guard, moving as any of the myriad, small groups of contrabands who wandered into our camp each day. But in the rear of the procession strode Smalls. A very young man of diminutive stature and slight build, he didn't really stride. He rolled off the gangplank like a man who was stepping in to his rightful existence, the one for which he had been destined since his creation.

In a hastily swollen army, built of necessity from a population of farmers and attorneys, shopkeepers and schoolmasters, one sees much artificial swagger. The uniform, the unearned rank, the unaccustomed command lead to comic displays of puffery and preening. But there was nothing of this in Smalls.

General Hunter summoned me to attend the debriefing in his headquarters, a sprawling plantation house in the shade of the live oaks. I was in the General's office when Smalls was introduced. Smalls had a seducing glint in his eyes. He had an aura of incipient success about him. I found myself instantly liking him.

As he was presented, he strode right up to the edge of the General's desk and stuck his black hand enthusiastically across the desk to be shaken. The General, whom I had never seen shake hands before, looked down at the proffered hand with a momentary look of amazement which he was unable to disguise. He quickly regained his composure, firmly grasped Small's hand, and shook it with enthusiasm and a grin.

Smalls discussed his escape and his crew, which included his wife and children. It was so pleasing to be around a young man of such charisma and intelligence. One found oneself pulling for the chap at every turn of the conversation, silently cheering as he answered each question with the humility and quick-wittedness to further win his audience.

Smalls did not speak to us as the other Negroes spoke, although over the months to come, I observed that he was completely bilingual and could speak to his fellow coloreds in their pidgin as if it were his mother tongue. He told his story to the General as would any white man from that region in possession of education and good breeding. I later was astonished to learn Smalls could neither read nor write. He appeared to have had some special background, some rare upbringing that separated him from the mass of the slaves we encountered.

I have often read and heard that Smalls was a mulatto, fathered and raised by his owner. That might, perhaps, explain some of this self-possession and demeanor as he was debriefed by a United States general. Yet I must admit that I never saw any white features in the man. He was as darkly complected as any of the other slaves I encountered on Hilton Head or a Port Royal. His hair was as kinky as any full-blooded Negro of those sea islands. And his features were as African as theirs. If one spends much time at all with these people, one quickly learns just how remarkably distinct their features are from those of European descent. I once encountered a contraband who was an albino Negress. The unfortunate young woman was quite odd-looking. With skin as white as mine, and far blonder hair, she nevertheless had the flattened nose, prominent brow, and other facial features of the African. As often as we encountered true mulattoes in South Carolina, I find it difficult to believe that Smalls himself had any European blood in his veins.

General Hunter's interest suddenly rose as Smalls discussed the provenance of the artillery pieces the Planter carried as deck cargo. The day previous to Smalls's escape, the Planter loaded the pieces from one of the forts guarding the entrance to the Stono River, just south of Charleston. The rebels had decided to abandon their positions guarding that unnavigable inlet.

Smalls, however, said he knew the inlet quite well and had passed through it often in the years before the war.

The General asked Smalls if he felt he could navigate the inlet today, and Smalls displayed no hesitation in saying he could.

Thus was the idea of an assault upon the Stono quickly hatched, and a new front opened in the seat of war in South Carolina.