• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

The absence of any major slave revolts during the Civil War should in no way obscure the nature and extent of the resistance that accompanied, often in the same person, the more celebrated slave virtues of obedience, fidelity, and patience. Not all slaves waited for freedom to be thrust upon them, nor did pro-Union blacks necessarily confine their activities to secretive prayers and midnight meetings. Where it was possible to expedite the Union cause, there were almost always some slaves and free blacks willing to take the risks. While a few operated as Union spies, still larger numbers provided the Union Army with valuable information about Confederate campsites, troop movements, and morale and guided Union forces when they came into the vicinity. “A negro brought the Yankees from Pineville,” a white South Carolinian noted with dismay, “and piloted them to where our men were camped, taking them completely by surprise, capturing Bright and killing two of his men.” Alarmed at the effective use made of slave informants by the Union Army, Confederate officials urged severe punishment of any blacks found engaged in such activity, and soldiers resorted to various ruses to ferret them out. In Berkeley County, South Carolina, where a black driver had come under suspicion as an informant, Confederate scouts disguised as Yankees went to his cabin, offered to pay him if he could lead them to a reported Confederate camp in the swamps, and then “hung the traitor” when he did so. By early 1864, however, a Confederate officer thought slave activity on behalf of the Union Army had reached the point of “an omnipresent spy system, pointing out our valuable men to the enemy, revealing our positions, purposes, and resources, and yet acting so safely and secretly that there is no means to guard against it.”113

The literature of the Civil War is replete, too, with stories of how slaves and free blacks rendered invaluable assistance to Union soldiers who had escaped from Confederate prisons. Several such prisoners testified that their escape would have been impossible had it not been for the blacks who fed them and guided them to the Union lines. “George has brought us food during the day, and will try to get us a guide to-night,” an escaped Union soldier noted in the diary he kept during his flight. “Sometimes,” another escapee reported, “forty negroes, male and female, would come to us from one plantation, each one bringing something to give, and lay it at our feet, in the aggregate corn bread and potatoes enough to feed a regiment.” Fearing the consequences if they were detected, some slaves proved less helpful, while still others treated the Yankees as enemies and reported escapees to local authorities. One Union soldier who managed to escape from Andersonville recalled an uncooperative black woman who proclaimed her hatred for all white men, Yankees and Confederates alike, and refused to assist him in any way. “She was the only one of the race I ever applied to in vain for assistance.”114

Judged by the reaction it generated, the most spectacular and celebrated exploit of a black man during the Civil War concerned the delivery of a Confederate steamer to the Union Navy. The protagonist in this drama was Robert Smalls, a Charleston slave who had been hired out on the waterfront for several years and had acquired a boatman’s skills. In 1862, impressed into service, Smalls worked as an assistant pilot on the Planter, a cotton steamer converted by the Confederate government into an armed transport. On the night of May 12, 1862, the ship was docked in Charleston with some artillery newly loaded aboard. The officers and white crewmen had gone ashore, leaving Smalls to prepare the vessel for departure the next day. But the black crew, including the families of Robert Smalls and his brother, chose to leave prematurely aboard the Planter, thereby culminating Smalls’s plan to deliver the steamer intact to the Union ships blockading Charleston