Robert smalls the life of a slave man to ccongressman Term Paper

Robert smalls the life of a slave man to ccongressman - Term Paper Example This is because it proved to the entire society that even African Americans are able of making good leadership. Despite the fact that he is no more, Smalls is still a national hero. Robert Smalls was born on 5 April 1839 in South Carolina at a home where his mother was working as a slave for the white Native Americans (Wikipedia.org par. 1). The fact that his mother was a slave means that he was born into slavery, something that he grew up into. What is surprising is that his father who has since remained anonymous was a white American who is thought to have forced his mother into sexual intercourse because of her slavery at the time. Like his mother, smalls were also forced to work as a slave boy in the white settlements, something which he did until the age of twelve, after which he decided to seek for a paying job in Charleston (Kennedy 27). Since Smalls had no good education and the fact that jobs were being discriminatively awarded, he managed to get employed as a laborer (Miller 4). Despite the poor, working condition, which he had to work in, Smalls were determined to get some money, which he could use to help his enslaved mother who had been rendered destitute by slavery. The condition of the job was that out of all the earnings Smalls received from the job he was only allowed to save a dollar while the rest of his earning belonged to his master. Barclay reveals that by the time Smalls turned eighteen years old he decided to strike a deal with his employer, who accepted Smalls to send him fifteen dollars every month, as opposed to the earlier deal in which Small had to take only one dollar and hand over the rest (Par. 3). This deal enabled Smalls to save much money than he did initially. It is also here in Charleston that Smalls met Hannah, whom she married on 24 December 1856. Barclay notes that, at the time of Sm alls’ marriage, he was barely seventeen years old while his wife