On Sunday, February 10th at 3 P.M., the Franklin Civil War Round Table will present FCWRT member and Battle of Franklin blogger Kraig McNutt to speak on “Robert Smalls and the C.S.S. Planter.”
Robert Smalls’ remarkable escape from slavery came when, as a ship’s pilot he escaped with other slaves out of Charleston Harbor in 1862. While the C.S.S. Planter’s officers elected to sleep on shore, Smalls orchestrated an escape piloting the ship past Confederate fortifications including Fort Sumter. They eventually encountered a Union vessel where they surrendered the ship and escaped to freedom.
McNutt has been a blogger on the Civil War for over 15 years and on Franklin since 2006. In 1997, he founded the Center for the Study of the American Civil War which houses and archives his extensive personal collection of Civil War books and hundreds of other documents from that era. He holds degrees from Indiana University and the University of Kentucky.