The Navy has renamed the USS Chancellorsville, a name honoring a Confederate victory, to the USS Robert Smalls, after an enslaved man who escaped the South by stealing a Confederate steamship.
The USS Chancellorsville has been renamed the USS Robert Smalls, to honor the enslaved man who stole a Confederate battleship in the Civil War and delivered to the Union forces, loaded with weapons. The USS Robert Smalls is shown here off the Japanese island of Iwo To, on its way to honor the fallen service members of the World War II battle of Iwo Jima.
The U.S. military is in the process of renaming all the bases and warships that honor the Confederacy, including civil war generals who enslaved people and fought against the U.S. military. The newly christened USS Robert Smalls may be the most direct repudiation of that legacy.Robert Smalls, a Civil War hero who escaped from slavery in 1862. Smalls was the first Black man to command a U.S. Naval vessel, and later served in the U.S. House of Representatives.
"He knew in slavery that his family could be separated from him in an instant. To make a long story short, he knew that there was a blockade just outside the mouth of Charleston River," said Moore. The risk was absolute. Smalls and probably the entire crew would have been made gory examples if they'd been caught.
Once they slipped past Confederate lines, the danger wasn't over. Seeing a Southern ship heading directly at them, the Union sailors prepared their cannons. The dawn's early light revealed a white flag just in time, sewn by Smalls' wife from bedsheets."Robert got a reward for delivering the boat to the United States. And he actually could have lived a very comfortable, happy life, perhaps up in the north where he was received as a real hero," said Michael Moore.
"His commitment to education was passed along to his daughter Elizabeth, who was that four-year old on that ship. All of Elizabeth's children went to college," she said.
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