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Article: Yearning to Breathe Free: Robert Smalls of South Carolina and His Families.(Book review)
- Article from:
- The Journal of Southern History
- Article date:
- August 1, 2008
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2008 Southern Historical Association. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Yearning to Breathe Free: Robert Smalls of South Carolina and His Families. By Andrew Billingsley. Foreword by James E. Clyburn. (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, c. 2007. Pp. xxvi, 253. $34.95, ISBN 978-1-57003-686-6.)
On May 13, 1862, enslaved crew members of the Confederate ship Planter sailed the vessel, with their families, from Charleston harbor to the nearby Union naval blockade. This daring bid for freedom catapulted Robert Smalls into history as a Civil War hero and later South Carolina politician. Sociologist Andrew Billingsley examines the exceptional trajectory of Smalls's life using "human ecology theory," which posits that family and ...