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would own land or what civil rights they might enjoy. Indeed, events in the Sea Islands had raced well ahead of the formulation of the federal government's own policy toward slaves liberated from their masters by advancing Union armies: were the slaves to be regarded as other people's property or as free human beings?
    If federal authorities continued to wrestle with such matters, there was for Robert Smalls little confusion. It had been no secret to him, or most other slaves, that the victory of Abraham Lincoln in the election of 1860, and the outbreak of war itself, held the definite potential for freedom. Looking out on clear evenings from the pilothouse of the
Planter,
Smalls could see the lights of Beaufort and marvel at the fact that his mother and other relations and friends there were already free.

    By spring 1862, with the federal lines so close, Smalls and the other slaves on the
Planter
began talking of crossing over, perhaps using the boat itself as a means of deliverance. Any slave caught plotting such an act, let alone carrying it out, would be killed, and Smalls understood that neither his connections to a good Southern family like the McKees nor his usefulness as a ship's pilot would save him. But he agreed with his mates to discuss the notion further and to watch for an opportunity to escape.
    They had several advantages. Smalls knew the placement of the Confederate batteries and the location of all the mines in Charleston Harbor—he had helped put them there—as well as the signals needed to pass by the harbor defenses. He later explained that the scheme for using the boat to escape was partly inspired by a casual remark made by one of his crew that, in height and build, he resembled the ship's white skipper. One afternoon when the whites were elsewhere, the crewman had playfully slapped Captain C. J. Relyea's distinctive straw hat onto Smalls's head and exclaimed, "Boy, you look jes like de captain."
    The
Planter
returned to Charleston on May 12 after having spent nearly a week moving guns from Cole's Island to James Island. Smalls suspected that since the boat had not berthed in Charleston for many nights, its white officers would likely choose to spend the night ashore, leaving him in charge. (This violated Confederate naval policy—at least one officer was required to remain with the ship at all times—but the rule was often disregarded.) In the afternoon a wagon carrying two hundred pounds of ammunition and four small pieces of artillery arrived at the wharf for transport to Fort Ripley, a newly built harbor fortification. Realizing this cargo would be a substantial prize for the Union forces, Smalls quietly ordered his men to take their time loading it onto the
Planter,
so that the delivery to Fort Ripley would be put off until the next day.
    Once the whites had departed, Smalls and his fellow conspirators made their final arrangements, then laid low until about 2 A.M. , when he ordered the boilers fired. As a precaution, Smalls had told the crew that if a sentry came by, they should complain loudly and bitterly about the early morning departure and curse "the cap'n and his orders." A sentry on the wharf did hear the steamer come to life but later recalled he did not "think it necessary to stop her, presuming that she was but pursuing her usual business."
    Smalls had timed their departure so that his ability to impersonate Captain Relyea would work to maximum effect. If they tried to pass Fort Sumter in total darkness, he feared the sentry there might demand to speak with him to ascertain his identity; but Smalls surmised that in the half-light just before dawn, Relyea's profile, his naval jacket, trademark straw hat, and even his characteristic way of pacing the deck, which Smalls had learned to mimic, would suffice to allow the boat to pass without inspection. Having positioned himself in the pilothouse as the vessel reached Fort Sumter, he "stood so that the sentinel could not see