There was no feigned mortification among Charleston’s military men. The outcome of the court-martial of the Planter’s officers was proof of that. They were brought to trial in short order. While one of them, the engineer, won a dismissal because the charges against him were faulty, the captain and mate were found guilty and sentenced to fine and imprisonment. Eventually reviewed by department commander Major General John C. Pemberton, those sentences were remitted. Pemberton found the order requiring officers to stay aboard vessels moored at the wharf had not been ‘properly communicated’ to the defendants, that no measures to enforce compliance had been taken, and that the Planter’s owner, responsible under government charter for his officers, seemed to have been ‘entirely indifferent’ to the order. The general concluded that the public would not ‘be benefitted by the punishment.’ He had the officers released.

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The real fault was in Charleston’s military administration. It had given the Union a great opportunity-or so it seemed. As Du Pont put it in his report to Secretary Welles, Smalls had brought information ‘most interesting, and portions of it of utmost importance.’ Smalls knew the location of the Rebel fortifications all through the area and where torpedoes had been planted in the rivers and creeks. Also, in the Planter’s cabin was ‘the book containing the secret of the signals of the Confederacy,’ enabling Unionists to ‘read’ the Rebel signal flags wagging around the harbor. Of even greater import was Smalls’ word of a Rebel redeployment ordered by Pemberton. Southerners had evacuated Cole’s Island and Stono Inlet at the tip of James Island, immediately adjacent to Charleston. Smalls, on the Planter, had been engaged in the evacuation and gave Du Pont a detailed account. The officer saw at once that, if the Union army could act with sufficient speed and strength, the way was open to get at Charleston by land, up Stono Inlet and through James Island.

Du Pont’s greatest interest might have been in that information. But what excited the Northern public was the tale of a slave snatching the Planter from under the noses of the Rebels, at the very spot where the war had started. The full story was eagerly sought.

Smalls had been born in Beaufort, near Port Royal. His mother had been a house slave of the prominent McKee family. As a child he had been a favorite of that family. When he was about age 12, his master took him to Charleston to be hired out. He displayed marked technical ability, and progressed from job to job, finally becoming a sailor. He had made a deal his master, allowing him to keep any earnings about $15 a month. Along the way he married a slave of another family. In 1858, his first child, a girl, was born. She, of course, became the property of his wife’s owner. That worried the young father. He persuaded his wife’s master to emancipate wife and child upon payment of $800. By 1862 he had accumulated $700 of that sum. Then, a second child, a boy, was born. Smalls doubtless wondered whether the price of freedom would be increased.

In 1861 Smalls had been hired as a sailor on the Planter, and so was with her during her charter to the Confederate military. Though he did not learn to read and write until 1864, he was-as would be said of him in the Dictionary of American Biography 70 years later-’good humored, intelligent, fluent, and self-possessed.’ By the spring of 1862 he had become head crewman. While his regular pay was only $16 a month, with $15 of that going to his master, he accrued considerable personal income-for a slave-by ‘petty trading.’ To all appearances he was content with his lot, taking good care of his little family and enjoying the full confidence of the Planter’s officers. Their confidence in him was confirmed by Smalls’ ‘reaction’ to the theft of General Ripley’s barge; he denounced the thieves as ‘the meanest of mortals.’

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