Yearning to Breathe Free
Robert Smalls of South Carolina and His Families
Andrew Billingsley
Foreword by James E. Clyburn
On May 13, 1862, the enslaved African American Robert Smalls (1839–1915) commandeered a Confederate warship, the Planter, from Charleston harbor and piloted
the vessel to the Union blockade, thus securing his place in the annals of Civil War
heroics. Slave, pilot, businessman, statesman, U.S. congressman—Smalls played
many roles en route to becoming an American icon. Sociologist Andrew Billingsley
offers the first biography of Smalls to assess the influence of his families—black and
white, past and present—on his life and enduring legend.
Born a slave in Beaufort, South Carolina, Robert Smalls was raised with his master’s family and grew up amid an odd balance of privilege and bondage. Billingsley
underscores the influence of the slaveholders’ household as well as Smalls’s biological
family on the development of the passions and abilities that led Smalls to his bid for
freedom in 1862.
Smalls served with distinction in the Union forces at the helm of the Planter.
After the war he returned to Beaufort and bought the home of his former masters. A
founder of the South Carolina Republican Party, Smalls was elected as a delegate to
the black majority 1868 Constitutional Convention as well as to the overwhelmingly
white Constitutional Convention of 1895. Between those two events, he was elected
to the South Carolina House of Representatives, the state senate, and five times to
the U.S. Congress. Billingsley illustrates how Smalls’s support system, coupled with
his dogged resilience, empowered him for political success.
Today three branches of the Smalls family remain: the descendants of his daughter
with first wife, Hannah; of Hannah’s two daughters from a previous marriage whom
Smalls adopted; and of his son with his second wife, Annie. Writing of subsequent
generations of Smalls’s family, Billingsley delineates the evolving patterns of opportunity, challenge, and change that have been the hallmarks of the African American
experience thanks in no small part to the investments in freedom and family made
by Robert Smalls of South Carolina.
Andrew Billingsley is a professor of
sociology and African American studies and senior scholar in residence at
the Institute for Families in Society at
the University of South Carolina. His
previous books are Mighty like a River:
The Black Church and Social Reform
and Climbing Jacob’s Ladder: The
Enduring Legacy of African-American
Families.
May 2007, 304 pages, 45 illus.
Method of payment:
_____ Check or money order: (payable to USC Press in United States dollars)
Credit Card: _____ Discover _____ Mastercard _____ Visa
Account number: _____________________________________ Exp. Date ________
Signature: ____________________________________________________________
Name (please print): ________________________________ Phone: ____________
Shipping Address: ______________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________
Send me ______ copy/copies
(cl, 978-1-57003-686-6, $34.95 each) ______
SC residents add 6% sales tax ______
Shipping and Handling* ______
CODE AUFR
TOTAL ______
*add $5.00 for first book,
$2.00 for each additional book
718 Devine Street, Columbia, South Carolina 29208
800-768-2500 • Fax 800-868-0740 • www.sc.edu/uscpress