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This story is the retelling of Robert Smalls' escape from slavery with his entire family in tow. With a plan "as dangerous as it was brilliant," Smalls commandeers a Confederate ship and successfully navigates it out of Charleston's blockaded port and into the hands of the Union army.

In Boston, widely regarded as the center of the abolitionist movement, black leaders called on citizens to resist the newly passed Fugitive Slave Law in 1850 in order “to make Massachusetts a battlefield in defense of liberty.”