Be Free or Die
by Cate Lineberry
c.2017, St. Martin’s Press
$25.99 / $36.99 Canada
272 pages
By Terri Schlichenmeyer
The Truth Contributor
It was a Sure Thing.
A can’t-miss, a safe bet that you couldn’t possibly fail –
or could you? Isn’t there always a danger of losing in a
gamble, or at least not winning? What kind of odds would
make you take a risky bet? As in the new book Be Free
or Die by Cate Lineberry, would you put your
family’s lives on the line?
Because the law in 1839 said that a slave woman’s children
were automatically enslaved, Robert Smalls was owned by
Henry McKee the minute Smalls was born. Because his mother
was a house slave, the illiterate Smalls spent his childhood
toiling inside the McKee home, rather than being put afield
to work. There, he was said to be smart, capable,
articulate, and “well-liked by the McKee family.”
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That, perhaps, is why McKee trusted Smalls enough to send
him, alone at age 12, to Charleston where he was “hired
out…and largely left to fend for himself.” There, Smalls
worked a series of odd jobs until he ultimately found work
on cargo ships. He’d gotten married by then, and his wife’s
owner promised that Smalls could buy Hannah and their
daughter for $800. With that in mind, Smalls landed work on
the Planter, a 147-foot-long paddlewheel steamer
owned by a Southern businessman and docked in Charleston,
near the Confederate general’s headquarters.
Though he was able to save the $1 a month McKee gave him,
Smalls knew that his wife’s price could change on a whim.
Hannah was pregnant, and that worried him, too.
There was only one choice.
After observing carefully for weeks, and deciding to trust
his likewise-enslaved fellow shipmates, Smalls waited for
the right time. “On a mild May evening… in 1862,” when the
white crew of the Planter disembarked, Smalls seized
control of the steamer, eased the Planter upstream to
fetch his family and a few others who’d hidden in another
ship, then snuck the Planter back downstream past
heavily-armed guards, soldiers, and Fort Sumter. He
skillfully brought the steamer out of the harbor and
delivered it, loaded with cannons and Confederacy secrets,
directly into the hands of the Union…
Oh, my, if you’re looking for a thriller for your summertime
reading, you just found one. Be Free or Die is more
exciting than any old novel.
Beginning with the daring escape itself, author Cate
Lineberry moves back-and-forward-again to tell Smalls’
story, which gives readers even more of a sense of why his
actions were so astounding. No such saga is complete without
more about the era itself, of course, which will delight
Civil War buffs – and then Lineberry storytells even
further, from the unique point of view of 1870s-era
Charlestonians, Northerners, newly-released slaves, and
Reconstructionists.
Be sure you find out what happened to the Planter.
That’s all I’m saying…
This is one of the better almost-forgotten stories from
history, and you can put it on your reading list now. Go
ahead. If you’re in search for that one book this
summer, Be Free or Die is a sure thing.
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