in Charleston, and at night all the white officers went ashore,
leaving a colored crew of eight men on board in charge of Smalls.
Smalls hastily got his wife and three children on board, and at 2
o'clock on the morning of the 14th steamed out into the harbor,
passing the Confederate forts by giving the proper signals, and when
fairly out of reach, as daylight came, he ran up the Stars and Stripes
and headed his course directly toward the Union fleet, into whose
hands he soon surrendered himself and his ship. The act caused much
favorable comment and Robert Smalls became quite a hero. His
subsequent career has been in keeping with the high promise indicated
by this bold dash for liberty, and his name has received additional
lustre from gallant services performed in the war after, and in
positions of distinguished honor and responsibility in civil life. The
Planter, after being accepted by the United States, became a despatch
boat, and Smalls demonstrating by skill and bravery his fitness for
the position, was finally, as an act of imperative justice, made her
commander.

With the close of the Revolutionary War the prejudice against a
standing army was so great that the army was reduced to scarce six
hundred men, and the Negro as a soldier dropped out of existence. When
the War of 1812 closed sentiment with regard to the army had made but
little advancement, and consequently no place in the service was left
for Negro soldiers. In the navy the Negro still lingered, doing
service in the lower grades, and keeping up the succession from the
black heroes of '76 and 1812. When the War of the Rebellion closed the
country had advanced so far as to see both the necessity of a standing
army, and the fitness of the Negro to form a part of the army; and
from this position it has never receded, and if the lessons of the
Cuban campaign are rightly heeded, it is not likely to recede