US Congressman, Military Figure. He was a Republican Congressman from South Carolina during the Post-American Civil War Reconstruction Era. Born a slave in South Carolina on the John McKee plantation, he engineered a daring escape and delivered to Union forces a Confederate transport steamer manned by a crew of 6 slaves. When delivering C.S.S. "The Planter," flying under a white flag to the commanding officer of the Union fleet on May 12, 1862, he said that the ship was intended as a gift given from his people to the cause of freedom. He and his family were considered free from that point, as well as his crew and their families. After his story was published in "Harper's Weekly," he was hailed in Washington DC as a hero and was awarded for his valor with $1,500. He helped to recruit Black soldiers for the Union Army. Commissioned as a second lieutenant in Company B, 33rd Regiment, U.S. Colored Troops, Robert Smalls fought in 17 battles in the Civil War by his own count. Eventually, the US Navy made him a captain and he was given command of "The Planter." He was discharged as commanding officer of "The Planter" and from military service on June 11, 1865. After the war, he returned to South Carolina where he entered politics. Elected first to the State House of Representatives, he entered the state Senate in 1872 before being elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1875. Since it was against the law to teach slaves, he was an adult before he could read, yet he was a fierce orator. He served in the United States Congress for five terms from 1875 to 1887, in a time when Black Americans serving in politics were often being murdered. He did not serve in the 46th Congress. He was a delegate to the South Carolina Constitutional Convention of 1895, witnessing the passage of legislation, which greatly reduce the legal rights of black South Carolinians for decades. After leaving Congress, he moved back to his hometown of Beaufort where he became very successful as a duty collector for the port, publisher of a newspaper and served in the South Carolina militia as a major general. For the back taxes, he purchased the McKee plantation mansion, which stayed in his family until 1953. In January of 2017, President Barack Obama issued an executive order establishing Reconstruction Era National Monument in Beaufort County, noting the significance of Robert Smalls in our nation's history. This is located near his homesite and the cemetery of his last resting place. In 1856, he married Hannah Jones, a slave who worked as a hotel maid in Charleston. The couple had two daughters and their only son, Robert, Jr., died of smallpox as a toddler. As a widower, he married in 1890, a school teacher Annie Elizabeth Wigg, and the couple had a son before her death about 1895.