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Web posted Sunday, April
11, 2004
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Editorial: Statehouse marker would be fitting
tribute to a hero
Carolina Morning News
The
Beaufort County man many historians refer to as
the first hero of the Civil War soon may get
recognition for his contributions to South
Carolina and the new South.
Last week a
state Senate subcommittee lent its support to a
bill to erect a marker commemorating Robert Smalls
on the Statehouse grounds in Columbia.
The
bill, sponsored by Sen. Darrell Jackson,
D-Hopkins, initially proposed seeking private
funds to create a Smalls monument. Citing
difficulty in raising enough money and opinions
that Statehouse grounds are nearly overrun with
monuments, Jackson settled for a marker as a
memorial instead.
The latter argument is
reasonable. There are more than 20 statues,
markers and monuments surrounding the Statehouse,
at last count - one as an acknowledgement of
African-American heritage.
But the funding
challenge argument is weak. Surely corporate
donors and the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People could round up the
financial backing. After all, the NAACP knows all
too well the significance of honoring an African
American hero in a Confederate flag waving
state.
Smalls represents the best of South
Carolina. He fought for what he believed in, while
earning the respect of white and African-American
residents.
All Lowcountry residents and
visitors should know about him. A highway and
middle school north of the Broad River bear his
name, and the house he lived in after the war is
an attraction on tours of historic
Beaufort.
But that's not the end of his
story. It began with Smalls, dressed in a
captain's coat and hat, taking control of a
steamer, sailing through five Confederate
checkpoints with his family and crewmen in tow and
surrendering it to Union soldiers. Consider this:
He was a slave hired as a deckhand at the time.
Smalls went on to become the first
African-American captain of a U.S. vessel, general
in the South Carolina militia, state legislator
and five-time U.S. Congressman.
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