Seven Miles to Freedom: The Robert Smalls Story

Imagine yourself in Charleston, South Caroline, as the Civil War is breaking out around you and you are standing on the deck of a steamer filled with four cannon headed to Confederate forts. You are a slave who has grown up on the docks and around the shipping world so you've learned the tools and the tricks of the trade. You know where the reefs lie and you know where the forts stand and you even know the secret whistles a steam boat must toot to pass by the Confederate forts in safety. On this evening, all the white sailors have left the ship and gone ashore leaving you in charge. You bear an uncanny resemblance to the white ship's captain if you don a straw hat so you could pass for the man from afar. Now, in the next few minutes, you have a decision to make. Will you risk your life, the lives of your loved ones, and the lives of your crew and their families, to have a chance for freedom? Will you try to steer this ship with its vital cargo past the forts with the hope that you can pass all the tests and convince the guards that you should be allow to pass? This is the precise decision that faced Robert Smalls, a slave and he chose to make a run for it. Would you have had that courage? Ages 7 and up 40 pages