STEAL THE SHIP, RETURN THE NATION

Robert Smalls, From Enslaved to Congressman

By: William Ferrier Jr.

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

Before dawn on May 13, 1862, Robert Smalls made a choice: steal a Confederate warship or die trying.

He was twenty-three years old. Enslaved. A ship's pilot who'd memorized every signal, every channel, every gun placement in Charleston Harbor. That night, he put on a stolen captain's hat, loaded his family and crew aboard the CSS Planter, and sailed past Fort Sumter's cannons in the darkness.

If the Confederate sentries saw through his disguise, sixteen people would die—including his wife and children.

They didn't. He delivered the ship to the Union Navy, became an instant hero, and met with Abraham Lincoln himself.

That should have been the end of the story.

It was only the beginning.

"One of the most astonishing untold stories in American history."

Robert Smalls didn't just steal a ship—he stole his freedom, his family's future, and a piece of the Confederacy's confidence. He became America's first Black ship captain, fought in seventeen naval battles, and used his fame to push for emancipation and Black military service.

But when the war ended, Smalls discovered that escaping slavery was easier than building a nation that honored freedom.

Elected to the South Carolina House. Then the State Senate. Then five terms in the United States Congress.

He fought to fund schools for Black children. To protect voting rights. To prove that formerly enslaved people could govern, could lead, could participate as equals in American democracy.

And he watched as everything he built was systematically destroyed.

White supremacists used violence, fraud, and terror to overthrow Reconstruction. Federal troops withdrew. Jim Crow rose. The promise of equality collapsed into a new system of oppression that would last seventy years.

Robert Smalls spent half a century fighting to return America to ideals it had never fully lived—and lost almost every battle after the war ended.

But he never stopped fighting.

THE THEFT. THE CAPTAIN. THE CONGRESSMAN. THE BETRAYAL.

Drawing on naval records, congressional testimony, and contemporary accounts, STEAL THE SHIP, RETURN THE NATION is the definitive biography of an American hero whose story has been systematically erased from our history books.

This is the story of:

• The most daring escape of the Civil War
• The first Black captain in U.S. naval history
• A five-term congressman who fought for justice
• Reconstruction's rise and violent fall
• One man's fifty-year fight to make freedom real

Perfect for readers who loved:

• Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly
• The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson
• Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson
• Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin

Why this story matters now:

Voting rights under attack. Democracy threatened. The promise of equality still unfulfilled.

Robert Smalls' fight didn't end in 1915 when he died. It continues today—in every struggle for voting rights, for equal justice, for the idea that America can live up to its stated ideals.

He stole a ship to free himself.
He fought for fifty years to free everyone else.
His work isn't finished.

STEAL THE SHIP, RETURN THE NATION
The true story of the man who became a legend—and the nation that betrayed him.