Abram Allston

Abram Allston was a freedom-seeker on the Planter, who then served in the US Navy

NPS/C. Barr

Quick Facts

Significance:

Freedom Seeker on the Planter

Place of Birth:

Baker Plantation, North Charleston, SC

Date of Birth:

January 25, 1818

Place of Death:

Beaufort, South Carolina

Date of Death:

March 16, 1905

Place of Burial:

Beaufort, South Carolina

Cemetery Name:

Beaufort National Cemetery, Section 3 Grave 8783

He piloted his way to freedom, and then spent years navigating a bureaucracy and politics. 

Abram Allston was born January 25, 1818, at the Baker Plantation near Charleston, South Carlina, where he was enslaved. By the outbreak of the Civil War, he was an experienced sailor on the waters on the Lowcountry, and was enslaved as a pilot at Fort Moultrie. Knowing the waters and tides of the Charleston Harbor, it was Allston’s responsibility to pilot navigate Confederate vessels to and from Sullivan’s Island. He wasn’t the only person in his family doing similar work – a family connection that would change Allston’s fate forever. 

Allston’s brother, Jack Gibbs, was on the regular crew of the Planter, a small ship the Confederates had contracted to move supplies around the harbor. In the Spring of 1862, the crew of the Planter hatched a plan to sail the vessel to freedom. It was risky, and Gibbs chose to stay in Charleston, but not before introducing the Planter crew to his brother, the pilot Abram Allston. Allston left Fort Moultrie and made his way to downtown Charleston. On the night of May 12, the crew of the Planter, with Allston at the helm, began to pull away. Allston was the wheelman, while Robert Smalls portrayed the captain as the crew slipped past Confederate fortifications towards the US Navy.

After freedom, Allston joined the US Navy, and stayed on as the wheelman for the Planter. For most of 1862, the vessel was operated under the Department of the Navy, with sailors like Allston working on board. His service was short-lived. While navigating the Planter up the Edisto River that fall, the ship came under fire from a Confederate battery. In the effort to rapidly reverse and turn the vessel, the ship’s wheel spun uncontrollably, jamming into Allston’s groin. He suffered a severe hernia and was discharged. 

After the Civil War, Allston settled in Beaufort, where he worked as both a carpenter and as a hired pilot. In 1880 he lived on Scott Street in downtown Beaufort, and in 1900 he was living at the intersection of Washington and West Street. By the 1890s, the US Government had begun to rapidly expand the pension program for US veterans of the Civil War. Allston applied for pensions based on his service and lingering effects of his injury – but that proved to be difficult.

Navigating the pension system was a challenge for any veteran or their family. There was added difficulty for Black sailors like Allston for whom records were scarce, and questions remained as to whether they had officially enlisted in the navy, or if they had been hired civilians. Allston’s pension files are filled with correspondence between officials trying to verify enlistments, discharges, or even verifying if he had been paid as a civilian and if he was due any unpaid wages. Complicating the problem for Allston was that the pension bureaus were corresponding with the last person Allston wanted them to talk to – the now former Congressman, Robert Smalls. 

When the Planter sailed to freedom in 1862, tensions were already brewing between the two men. According to Smalls's version of the story, Allston just happened to have been at the docks that day, and since he was an experienced sailor, he proved helpful as a last minute addition to the endeavor. According to Allston, it had been Jack Gibbs and the other crew who planned the escape, and that it was Smalls who was the late addition. In Allston’s version of the story, he had been in command of the vessel that night, and that the freedom-seekers had all agreed that they would share equally in the credit. According to Allston, Smalls told the officers that he was was the captain in command of the vessel. As a result Allston and most of the other men received $400, while Smalls’s share of the prize came to $1,500. Time did not heal Allston’s feelings towards Robert Smalls.

In 1870, as Smalls was running for the state legislature, Abram Allston and William C. Morrison, another of the Planter freedom-seekers, signed on to a letter to the editor in a Charleston newspaper. The affidavit, published in the October 13, 1870 issue of the Charleston Daily Courier, was entitled “A Jackass in Lion’s Skin” and echoed Allston's claims that Robert Smalls lied about the Planter and was unfit for public office. Morrison and Allston went so far as to accuse Smalls of cowardice that night in Charleston. Twenty years later, Allston wrote in his pension affidavit, “Bob Smalls is a regular fake, and he did not steal the Planter. I did that myself.” Unfortunately for Allston, the easiest person to contact to verify military service of anybody associated with the Planter, was Robert Smalls. 

When the pension board reached out to Smalls to confirm Allston’s service, Small’s verified that Allston had been on the Planter, but challenged many of Allston’s claims, writing that “[Allston] has told this story so often that I think he is beginning to believe it himself.” Allston spent the rest of his life telling his version of the story – and fighting the system for the recognition and the pension he felt he had earned as a veteran. The challenges faced by veterans navigating a complicated and political bureaucracy is one of the lesser-known, but incredibly important, stories of Reconstruction.

Abram Allston died on March 16, 1905 in Beaufort. Although the pension boards had questions about Allston’s service, the national cemetery apparently did not. Abram Allston is buried in Beaufort National Cemetery in Section 3, Grave 8783. Located near the entrance to the cemetery, countless people have driven or walked past this Navy veteran who sailed his way to freedom, and who served his country.

Special thanks to Dr. Adam Domby, Rich Condon, and Kimberly Morgan for their assistance in helping park staff to research the story of Abram Allston and the other freedom seekers on the Planter.