Fort Robert Smalls

Fort Robert Smalls was a Civil War redoubt built by free Blacks for the defense of Pittsburgh in 1863.[1][2]

Fort Robert Smalls
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in United States
TypeAmerican Civil War redoubt
Site information
Controlled byUnion Army
Site history
Built1863

It was named in honor of Robert Smalls, a man who escaped from slavery in Beaufort, South Carolina with his crew and their families by capturing a Confederate transport ship and piloting it to the safety of a Union blockade around the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina in 1862.[3]

History

According to historic preservationist Eliza Smith Brown, during the American Civil War, civic leaders in Pittsburgh ordered the construction of defensive structures, including forts and redoubts, in response to the threatened invasion of Pennsylvania by Confederate troops in 1863. Fort Robert Smalls was one of two of those installations which were known to have been built by black workers on McGuire's Hill.[4][5]

It was named for Robert Smalls, a slave who commandeered a Confederate transport, the CSS Planter, and brought his family and others to freedom in the north. Its "four-to-five-foot-high earthen embankments" survived at the top of McGuire's Hill at the mouth of Becks Run in Arlington Heights[6][7] until their 1930 destruction to make way for public housing.[8]

References
  1. "Black History Month: Fort Robert Smalls" (video). Pittsburgh: KDKA2 CBS Pittsburgh, retrieved online June 2019 (posted online circa 2017).
  2. Eliza Smith Brown. African American Historic Sites Survey of Allegheny County, p. 111. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 1994.
  3. Gates, Henry Louis Jr. "Which Slave Sailed Himself to Freedom?" Washington, D.C.: PBS, retrieved online September 7, 2019.
  4. Brown, African American Historic Sites Survey of East Allegheny County.
  5. McCarthy, William D. The Civil War Fortifications of Pittsburgh: An Historical and Archaeological Survey," (M.A. paper, University of Pittsburgh, Department of Anthropology). Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: University of Pittsburgh, 1992.
  6. "Greater Pittsburgh Area". Retrieved 2008-07-04.
  7. Reeves, Frank. "Pittsburgh supplied weaponry to North in Civil War." Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, May 29, 2011.
  8. Brown, African American Historic Sites Survey of Allegheny County, p. 111.
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