Two Miserable Presidents by Steve Sheinkin Page A

right past five Confederate forts in the harbor. To pass each fort, a ship had to blow a different secret signal on its steam whistle. Smalls knew these signals, but if anything went wrong, he and the crew had agreed, they would never allow themselves to be taken alive. If stopped, they would blow the ship into the sky.
    Smalls hunched over and paced back and forth exactly as the Planter’s captain normally did. Smalls had practiced this walk, and in the dark, from a distance, he looked like the captain. As the ship passed each fort, Smalls blew all the right signals on the ship’s
whistle. At 4:15, just as the sun was beginning to rise, the Planter reached Fort Sumter, the last fort. Smalls blew the secret signal.
    â€œPass!” yelled the guard.
    Safely beyond the fort, Smalls ran a white flag (the signal of truce or surrender) up the ship’s flagpole and sailed toward a group of Union ships floating about three miles out. As the Planter cruised closer, Union sailors were shocked to see a Confederate ship with an all-black crew. A Union captain demanded to speak with the Planter ’s captain.
    You’re speaking with him now, Robert Smalls told them. “I have the honor, sir, to present the Planter.”
    Robert Smalls’s dash to freedom was a massive front-page story all over the North and South. It was “one of the most daring and heroic adventures” of the war, declared the New York Herald . The Union gained a valuable ship, full of supplies. And Smalls became a symbol in the debate over emancipation. To many Northerners, Smalls’s actions made it more obvious than ever that all African Americans should be free.
    Lincoln Is Convinced
    I n a meeting with his cabinet on July 22, 1862, Lincoln announced an important decision. He was going to declare all slaves in the Confederacy free.
    Once they got over the shock, most of Lincoln’s advisors supported the idea. But the secretary of state, William Seward, raised a concern. If they issued this plan now, when the war was going so badly for them, wouldn’t they look kind of weak and desperate? Wouldn’t it be better to wait for a military victory?
    Good point, Lincoln said. He put the Emancipation Proclamation back in his desk.
    In August there was another big battle near Bull Run in Virginia. Lee and Jackson crushed a large Northern force, sending the Union army stumbling back toward Washington.
    â€œWell, John, we are whipped again, I’m afraid,” Lincoln told his secretary. And that proclamation stayed in his desk.
    Lee’s Hungry Wolves
    R emember that quote about Robert E. Lee taking chances? On September 4, Lee’s army waded into the Potomac River and splashed across the shallow water to Maryland. Lee was invading the North.
    Lee knew he could lose everything—his entire army, and the war too. But he also knew he could win everything. One huge victory on Northern territory just might convince the North that it could never win this war. The South would have its independence.
    There was only one problem, as Lee told Jefferson Davis, “The army is not properly equipped for an invasion of an enemy’s territory.”

    That was putting it mildly. Thousands of Lee’s soldiers were barefoot. Their clothes and bodies were so filthy, people in Maryland said they smelled the army before they saw it. One witness called them “the dirtiest men I ever saw, a most ragged, lean, and hungry set of wolves.” Lee’s half-starved soldiers picked unripe apples and corn, and soon thousands of men were sprinting into the woods, sick with diarrhea.
    Still, Lee’s soldiers continued marching north in high spirits. These were tough combat veterans who were used to winning.
    Then, in a war full of incredible events, something truly unbelievable happened.
    Who Dropped the Cigars?
    A few days after Lee’s army marched through Frederick, Maryland, the Union army began to arrive. At about ten in