These two sons of Beaufort County truly are worthy of statues in our new day | Opinion

On a family vacation 20 years ago, we spent one afternoon in Charleston, much of it with a Gullah tour guide. He introduced us to three sights I will never forget — the decorative iron work of Philip Simmons throughout the city, the image of John C. Calhoun towering high above a city park, and the workshop of Mr. Simmons, where we met the artist himself, then in his nineties.

When I saw Mr. Calhoun being lifted from his pedestal on the evening news the other day, I thought of Robert Smalls as the perfect person to replace him. His life and legacy embody the ideals of national and racial reconciliation we need today.

Robert Smalls is still remembered in Beaufort County. On a celebrated night in May 1862, the 23-year-old enslaved native of Beaufort bravely piloted the Confederate steamboat Planter past the forts of Charleston Harbor to safety within the Federal blockade.

Back home in Beaufort after the war, Smalls helped to found the state Republican Party and was a delegate to the state Constitutional Convention in 1868. As pioneering black politician, he represented Beaufort County in the state House, the state Senate, and during five terms in the U. S. House of Representatives.

By the time the sculpture of John C. Calhoun overlooking Marion Square was placed on its pedestal in 1896, Smalls was about to serve his second term as Collector of Customs for the port of Beaufort, a position he held until 1913. How appropriate it would be to see him on the pedestal overseeing the port of Charleston today.

William Brisbane is another South Carolinian whose legacy shines brighter than ever today.

He was born into a slaveholding family in St. Peter’s Parish, now Beaufort County, in 1806. After becoming a Baptist preacher and medical doctor who edited a pro-slavery paper in Charleston in the mid-1830s, Brisbane decided that slavery was wrong, sold his slaves, and moved to Cincinnati, where he became a leading abolitionist until he moved his family to Wisconsin in 1853.

In the early 1840s Brisbane repurchased and emancipated two dozen former slaves, bringing them to freedom in Ohio. Brisbane preached in black Baptist churches after being dismissed by the white Baptist church that brought him to Cincinnati.

In 1847, he published “Slaveholding Examined in the Light of the Holy Bible,” after which he and his wife were chased out of South Carolina by a mob when visiting relatives in Lawtonville and Robertville. In the early 1850s, Brisbane organized annual anti-slavery conventions that brought Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison to Cincinnati.

Brisbane’s life intersected with that of Robert Smalls when he returned to Beaufort County as a Federal Tax Commissioner under President Lincoln in 1862. On January 1, 1863, he had the honor of reading the Emancipation Proclamation at Camp Saxton in Port Royal to a large audience that included the first regiment of black Union troops in South Carolina.

For the rest of the decade Brisbane’s main responsibility was to sell plantation land abandoned or forfeited by former slaveholders to free blacks at $25 per 10-acre plot.

In 1865 Brisbane helped Smalls purchase the Beaufort home of the man who had enslaved him. In 1868 Smalls asked for Brisbane’s help in drafting language for use in the state’s constitutional convention and legislative session. In 1876, Smalls, Brisbane, and Frederick Douglass represented South Carolina, Wisconsin, and the District of Columbia at the Republican National Convention in Cincinnati. Douglass warned the party against withdrawing federal troops from the South. If you visit his Cedar Hill home in Washington, D. C., be sure to see the engraving of “The Steamer Planter” in the dining room.

On January 12, 2017, President Barack Obama authorized the Reconstruction Era National Monument in Beaufort County. As the national monument takes shape on various sites, perhaps there will be a place to honor Smalls and Brisbane together.

Robert K. Wallace is a Regents Professor of English at Northern Kentucky University.

This story was originally published July 12, 2020 at 5:30 AM.