Speaker 1: Hey everyone, We've put together a survey for listeners of
Speaker 1: Medal of Honor and we want to hear from you.
Speaker 1: Tell us what you love about the show, what we
Speaker 1: can improve on, or stories you think we've missed. We're
Speaker 1: committed to making this show even better and you can
Speaker 1: help to take the survey. Visit bit dot lee slash
Speaker 1: MH survey. That's bit dot l y slash MH survey.
Speaker 1: The link is also in our show notes below.
Speaker 2: Pushkin.
Speaker 1: The men of the gunboat USS Marblehead woke up to
Speaker 1: the sound of cannon fire. It was blasting across the bow,
Speaker 1: splintering the wood of their ship. It was early Christmas morning,
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty three. The Marblehead was a Union Navy vessel
Speaker 1: patrolling the slow moving Stono River in South Carolina, just
Speaker 1: south of Charleston. The ship worked its way past the
Speaker 1: tidal marshlands, past rice plantations and tiny towns, scanning for
Speaker 1: rebel activity. The men on the ship had no idea
Speaker 1: that Confederate forces were hiding waiting. They had secretly placed
Speaker 1: guns in.
Speaker 2: The forest near the shore.
Speaker 1: Now those guns were pointed right at the Marblehead, firing
Speaker 1: their artillery, blowing holes in the ship and the ship's men.
Speaker 1: The Union sailors ran up from their cabins below decks,
Speaker 1: some of them still in their night shirts. They sprinted
Speaker 1: to their battle stations. In their midst was a young
Speaker 1: man named Robert Blake. He raced back and forth to
Speaker 1: the hold of the ship, bringing boxes of gunpowder to
Speaker 1: one of the main guns. The Marblehead's rifles boomed and shook,
Speaker 1: sending fire to shore. The rebel forces returned fire. Sailors
Speaker 1: fell wounded to.
Speaker 2: The ship's deck. It was a bloody scene.
Speaker 1: More than anyone aboard, Robert knew that they had to
Speaker 1: keep the Confederate forces at bay, not just to save
Speaker 1: their ship, but because Robert understood something else. If he
Speaker 1: was captured, some of those Confederate soldiers might recognize him
Speaker 1: an enslaved man who had escaped from a plantation not
Speaker 1: that far away, the kind of man those Confederates hated
Speaker 1: most of all.
Speaker 2: I'm Jr.
Speaker 1: Martinez, and this is Medal of Honor Stories of Courage.
Speaker 1: The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration in
Speaker 1: the United States, awarded for gallantry and bravery and combat
Speaker 1: at the risk of life, above and beyond the call
Speaker 1: of duty.
Speaker 2: Each candidate must be approved.
Speaker 1: All the way up the chain of command, from the
Speaker 1: supervisory officer in the field to the White House. This
Speaker 1: show is about those heroes, what they did, what it meant,
Speaker 1: and what their stories tell us about the nature of
Speaker 1: courage and sacrifice. Today we'll explore the story of Robert Blake,
Speaker 1: the first Black sailor to receive the Medal of Honor.
Speaker 2: Blake served in.
Speaker 1: A cool and brave manner, according to his commanding officer,
Speaker 1: but that doesn't make him an anomaly on that ship
Speaker 1: or any other Union vessel. He was one of many
Speaker 1: black sailors to serve honorably during the Civil War. They
Speaker 1: were forced that helped change the trajectory of the whole conflict,
Speaker 1: But they are also a group that we know very
Speaker 1: little about.
Speaker 2: At a time that was.
Speaker 1: Dangerous for any formally enslaved person in the South, these
Speaker 1: black sailors took on even more risk, and they did
Speaker 1: it to fight for a country they believe could be better.
Speaker 1: Would be better not just for them, but for everyone
Speaker 1: who came after. I'm gonna preface this episode by saying
Speaker 1: we don't know all that much about Robert Blake, which
Speaker 1: means two things. First, there's a little speculation involved, a
Speaker 1: bit more than we usually have in an E episode. Second,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like a detective story. So we found
Speaker 1: a detective. We'll meet him in a bit. Let's start
Speaker 1: with what we know for sure. Robert Blake was enslaved
Speaker 1: at the Oak Grove plantation in South Carolina. It was
Speaker 1: located on the South Santee River, just six or seven
Speaker 1: miles from the Atlantic coast.
Speaker 2: Oak Grove was actually one of three.
Speaker 1: Plantations owned by a man named Arthur Middleton Blake. He
Speaker 1: came from a long line of plantation owners. His family
Speaker 1: had been enslaving people for more than one hundred years.
Speaker 1: The name Oak Grove I make it seem like some
Speaker 1: idellic setting, but the reality was very different. There were
Speaker 1: deadly mosquito born illnesses like malaria and yellow fever, poisonous snakes, alligators.
Speaker 1: But if the environment was inhospitable, the work was even
Speaker 1: worse because these were rice plantations and cultivating rice was backbreaking,
Speaker 1: dangerous work. It was done by hundreds of enslaved people
Speaker 1: of African descent, toiling without a break day after brutal day.
Speaker 1: And that's where our hero Robert Blake was born, And
Speaker 1: to add to the confusion, he wasn't the only Robert
Speaker 1: Blake who lived at Oak Grove. Many enslaved people born
Speaker 1: there were given the last name Blake. It was a
Speaker 1: way to show who their slaveholder was. Our Robert Blake,
Speaker 1: the Medal of Honor recipient, was most likely born around
Speaker 1: eighteen forty. The fact that he made it through childhood
Speaker 1: was a miracle. On rice plantations, more than half of
Speaker 1: black children did not survive to age fifteen. Like other
Speaker 1: enslaved children, he wouldn't have had any kind of formal education.
Speaker 1: Enslaved children were often separated from their parents. Maybe this
Speaker 1: was true of Robert. It's impossible to know, but what
Speaker 1: is pretty certain is that as soon as he was
Speaker 1: able to work, he would have been out in the
Speaker 1: rice fields, digging and planting and harvesting from sun up
Speaker 1: to sundown. And then, in eighteen sixty one, shots were
Speaker 1: fired just forty miles away at Fort Sumter, and the
Speaker 1: Civil War began. For Robert and the rest of the
Speaker 1: residents of Oak Grove, the world they knew was about
Speaker 1: to massively change. For one thing, Arthur Middleton Blake, the
Speaker 1: owner of Oak Grove, fled the United States. He left
Speaker 1: for England a week after Fort sumterfell in April of
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty one. The next key thing that happened. The
Speaker 1: Union decided to set up a blockade to keep trade
Speaker 1: ships from entering or leaving the Confederate States. This had
Speaker 1: two purposes, to prevent the rebels from getting supplies like ammunition,
Speaker 1: and to keep them from trade with Europe, cutting off
Speaker 1: their source of income. But while the Union wanted to
Speaker 1: create a blockade, the Confederates were equally set on breaking it.
Speaker 1: Rebel blockade runners would find holes in the Union naval lines,
Speaker 1: then they would zip through them in small boats loaded
Speaker 1: with goods for waiting European ships. So the Union Navy
Speaker 1: set up bases in Confederate territory to stop those blockade runners.
Speaker 1: In South Carolina, they went to Port Royal, close to Charleston,
Speaker 1: an area that they called the Low Country. It had
Speaker 1: a ton of plantations, including Arthur Blake's. Now you have
Speaker 1: to imagine that the enslaved people on Blake's plantation knew
Speaker 1: something big was up. The war was suddenly so close.
Speaker 1: They must have looked at the unionships on the horizon
Speaker 1: and thought, is our world about to change.
Speaker 2: Do we dare to hope.
Speaker 1: Most of the local plantation owners fled to England like
Speaker 1: Arthur did, or further inland where it was safer, which
Speaker 1: makes you wonder did those owners really think that the
Speaker 1: people that enslaved would just stay there, keep tending to
Speaker 1: the rice, wait patiently for the war to end, and
Speaker 1: they're enslavers to return. Okay, brief history refresher here. There's
Speaker 1: something called the Fugitive Slave Act. It meant anyone, even
Speaker 1: Union soldiers, were ordered by law to return escaped enslave
Speaker 1: people to their owners. And in the earliest days of
Speaker 1: the war, Union soldiers in the South followed that law
Speaker 1: and returned runaway slaves. But then something sort of incredible happened.
Speaker 1: A Union general in Virginia decided, I'm not playing by
Speaker 1: that rule anymore. He refused to return three escaped enslave
Speaker 1: men to their Confederate slaveholder. He figured that a Virginia
Speaker 1: had seceded from the Union, so federal laws like the
Speaker 1: Fugitive Slave Act no longer applied, and b just like
Speaker 1: anything else the Union army might seize from the enemy,
Speaker 1: those escaped slaves were contraband, so there was no point
Speaker 1: in slaveholders asking for them back. The Union army would
Speaker 1: hang on to them and give them freedom. Thanks word
Speaker 1: traveled fast. Soon enslaved people across the South were escaping
Speaker 1: and joining Union troops wherever they could find them. This
Speaker 1: generated a ton of good press and goodwill in the North.
Speaker 1: Pretty soon the whole point of the conflict began to change.
Speaker 1: It became a war to free the slaves, which brings
Speaker 1: us back to Oak Grove Plantation. By June of eighteen
Speaker 1: sixty two, it had become a posting for a regiment
Speaker 1: of Confederate soldiers. Since it was on the Santee River,
Speaker 1: it was a perfect spot for blockade runners to sneak
Speaker 1: their cargo past the Union naval fleet. Naturally, the Navy
Speaker 1: wanted to stop this kind of activity, so they had
Speaker 1: ships from the base at Port Royal patrolling the coastline
Speaker 1: and rivers, and on June twenty fifth.
Speaker 2: Three Union ships steam past Oak Grove.
Speaker 1: The Confederate troops were heading but they couldn't help themselves.
Speaker 1: They fired on the last ship and the convoy. There
Speaker 1: were marines on those Union ships, and you know marines,
Speaker 1: they were very happy to get off the boats and
Speaker 1: bring the fight to land. As the Union ships returned fire,
Speaker 1: a group of sixty marines and sailors got into rowboats
Speaker 1: and came ashore. They raced to a Confederate battery, a
Speaker 1: gun position in the woods, but when they got there
Speaker 1: it had been deserted. The rebels shooters had fled. Then
Speaker 1: the Union troops went to the plantation itself. They discovered
Speaker 1: a cache of weapons and proof that the spot had
Speaker 1: been used by blockade runners, so they burned the house,
Speaker 1: the mill, and a reported one hundred thousand bushels of rice.
Speaker 1: The enslaved people of Oak Grove watched the fire burn
Speaker 1: Arthur Blake's property. They saw the Union men in their
Speaker 1: sharp navy blue uniforms, and they realized now is the
Speaker 1: time to escape. So four hundred of them, pretty much
Speaker 1: everyone enslaved at Oak Grove grab what they could. They
Speaker 1: raced to the Union ships, and in their midst was
Speaker 1: a young man named Robert Blake. As I mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: we know so little about Robert Blake that we needed
Speaker 1: the help of a detective.
Speaker 2: He's Joseph P.
Speaker 1: Ready, Professor emeritus at Howard University. He is the expert
Speaker 1: on the experiences of black men in the Navy, during
Speaker 1: the Civil War. And yet even he thinks Robert Blake
Speaker 1: is a mystery. There's so much we don't know.
Speaker 3: We don't know he was married and if she had
Speaker 3: any children. I'm what have you.
Speaker 1: Here's what we can tell you about Robert Blake. He
Speaker 1: stood five feet five and had a dark complexion.
Speaker 2: What we're not so.
Speaker 1: Sure about his exact age, but Professor Reidy checked the
Speaker 1: records on this.
Speaker 3: Now when her shows up on a muster roll, he's
Speaker 3: listed as age twenty two. That seems to be the
Speaker 3: sensible age that he was.
Speaker 1: So Robert, along with hundreds of other enslaved people, left
Speaker 1: Oak Grove as the plantation burned. They got on one
Speaker 1: of those three Union ships. They were taken to a
Speaker 1: refugee camp near the naval base in Port Royal. It
Speaker 1: was called North Island. Refugee camps for escaped slaves had
Speaker 1: popped up everywhere the Union troops were. They were nicknamed
Speaker 1: contraband camps. They were away for communities to stay together,
Speaker 1: to take care of one another, raise crops, and get jobs,
Speaker 1: paid jobs, probably for the first time ever. Of course,
Speaker 1: the contraband camps were still deep in Confederate territory, so
Speaker 1: they weren't really safe. In July of eighteen sixty two,
Speaker 1: Union commanders learned that five hundred rebels were preparing to
Speaker 1: attack North Island quote with the intention of destroying the contrabands,
Speaker 1: which number seven hundred men, women and children. But it
Speaker 1: was far far better than life on implantation, and it
Speaker 1: showed people that the Navy and the Union wasn't just
Speaker 1: a way to escape slavery. It was the basis for
Speaker 1: a whole new life and a whole new cause.
Speaker 3: It didn't take long to realize that, especially on coast
Speaker 3: the or along the river banks, that US naval vessel
Speaker 3: potentially were a place of refuge, and that presented an
Speaker 3: opportunity for them to say, we will do whatever we
Speaker 3: can to help defeat the slaveholder's rebellion.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, the Navy looked at the men in
Speaker 1: the contraband camps and thought we would love their help.
Speaker 3: One of the officials and Lincoln's administration realized that African
Speaker 3: Americans were fleeing slavery and seeking the refuge upon naval vessel.
Speaker 3: They realized here was a source of manpower that they
Speaker 3: could put the good use.
Speaker 1: So they started recruiting them to join. This wasn't an
Speaker 1: entirely surprising turn of events for Starters. The Navy had
Speaker 1: long allowed black men to enlist, and they weren't even
Speaker 1: segregated like they were in the Army back then. They
Speaker 1: couldn't be because of the cramp orders on the ships.
Speaker 1: At first, their numbers were small, like five percent, but
Speaker 1: as the war heated up, so did enlistments. By the
Speaker 1: summer of eighteen sixty two, when we meet Robert, it
Speaker 1: was more like fifteen percent. In fact, more than eighteen
Speaker 1: thousand black men served in the Union Navy during the
Speaker 1: Civil War. Many came from up North and had always
Speaker 1: been free. They were allowed to work their way up
Speaker 1: the ranks, from boy the lowest to signal quartermaster. But
Speaker 1: the newer conscripts, the formerly enslaved ones, were given a
Speaker 1: new designation, not boy, but contraband. Unfortunately, these new sailors
Speaker 1: were treated as if they were less intelligent and even
Speaker 1: less strong. They were weak, the reasoning went, because they'd
Speaker 1: been worked almost to death on the plantations. But that
Speaker 1: was by no means true. One Union commander said, quote,
Speaker 1: they fought energetically, bravely, none more so they felt that
Speaker 1: they were working on the deliverance of their own race.
Speaker 1: Giving black men the chance to fight for the Union
Speaker 1: felt like a path towards civil rights. The famous statesman
Speaker 1: Frederick Douglass wrote quote, Let the black man get an
Speaker 1: eagle on his button and a musket on his shoulders,
Speaker 1: and bullets in his pockets, and there is no power
Speaker 1: on earth or under the earth that can deny that
Speaker 1: he has earned the right to citizenship in the United States.
Speaker 1: We've seen this so many times before in this series,
Speaker 1: from Mary Walker to Macario Gottacia, people seeing their military
Speaker 1: survey as a way to become more fully part of
Speaker 1: America with all of its rates, from voting to citizenship
Speaker 1: to freedom itself.
Speaker 2: The Union Navy used.
Speaker 1: That pitch as they walked through the Contraband camp in
Speaker 1: North Island.
Speaker 3: Military and naval recruiters were suggested to the men, you
Speaker 3: must wipe for your freedom. That's the way you're going
Speaker 3: to secure it. You're going to help the UITs defeat
Speaker 3: the Confederacy, and then of course of doing that, you
Speaker 3: will free yourselves and you will free your pamia.
Speaker 1: On July third, the Navy asked for sixty volunteers to
Speaker 1: go to Port Royal for duty on the USS Vermont.
Speaker 1: Robert was one of them. Almost all of the enlisted
Speaker 1: men on the Vermont had African ancestry, and they had
Speaker 1: originally come from plantations up and down the coast. They
Speaker 1: worked as laborers because the Vermont wasn't a warship. It
Speaker 1: was a supply station, a warehouse for all the things
Speaker 1: as sailor would need, clothing, ammunition, or letters from home.
Speaker 1: It was also the entry point for men just joining
Speaker 1: the naval service. That's where Robert would have been trained.
Speaker 1: It had another benefit to it kept him close to
Speaker 1: his community.
Speaker 3: The people who escaped from the Blade plantation with them,
Speaker 3: whom he would have considered a family of thought. If
Speaker 3: they were nearby when he was stationed on the Vermont,
Speaker 3: the possibility of interacting with them could have meant that
Speaker 3: he and other men could have maintained that sense of
Speaker 3: community even while they were enabled servants.
Speaker 1: And in a world that had been so hard and
Speaker 1: so painful, you can imagine how much that community might
Speaker 1: mean to Robert. So he worked on the USS Vermont,
Speaker 1: most likely as a longshoreman, hauling supplies onto the ship.
Speaker 1: Not glamour, of course, but a solid pain job that
Speaker 1: only lasted about two months. Then he was assigned to
Speaker 1: a gunship, the USS Marblehead. There he would be fighting
Speaker 1: for his liberty and his life. Just around daybreak on
Speaker 1: December twenty fifth, eighteen sixty three, the sound of cannon
Speaker 1: fire burst through the quiet South Carolina morning. Shot after
Speaker 1: shot came from shore, catching everyone on the crew by
Speaker 1: total surprise. The Captain Richard W. Mei came running up
Speaker 1: from his cabin. He was only twenty six, a skinny
Speaker 1: guy with big, sad eyes and a wispy handlebar mustache.
Speaker 2: Mead was still.
Speaker 1: Wearing his night shirt and slippers, gripping his sword in
Speaker 1: one hand and his revolver in the other. The Marblehead
Speaker 1: was on duty in the Stono River. It was part
Speaker 1: of the blockade protecting troops who were working nearby, and
Speaker 1: it was completely unprepared for battle. For one thing, the
Speaker 1: crew was shorthanded down to seventy men from the usual
Speaker 1: one hundred, and the ship was partly disabled. One of
Speaker 1: the boilers was being repaired, and the crew had been
Speaker 1: getting ready to wash down the deck, so they had
Speaker 1: pointed their largest gun inward towards the middle of the ship,
Speaker 1: not out towards the enemy. The shots kept coming from shore.
Speaker 1: The Confederates had hidden cannons behind some earthworks in the woods.
Speaker 1: They had been planning this attack for a while. The
Speaker 1: goal was to disable the Marblehead and capture its men,
Speaker 1: that included the roughly one hundred and fifty Union troops
Speaker 1: stationed nearby. Captain Mead shouted for his men to assume
Speaker 1: battle stations, and Robert Blake went to work. He was
Speaker 1: a powder man, sometimes called the powder boy. His job
Speaker 1: was to carry gunpowder from the powder magazine to the
Speaker 1: guns on the deck. The magazine was tucked away and
Speaker 1: designed to avoid explosions or fires by keeping the gun
Speaker 1: powder safe. So powder men were usually young, small and fast.
Speaker 1: They had to be able to squeeze between the tight
Speaker 1: spots on the ship where the powder was kept. Mead
Speaker 1: ordered the Marblehead to quickly move clars closer to the
Speaker 1: shore and to the Confederates. That way, the ship would
Speaker 1: be harder to hit. Then he ordered the Marblehead's guns
Speaker 1: to be fired. As the sailors got ready, blast kept
Speaker 1: coming from shore. Steel and wood fragments splintered across the deck.
Speaker 1: In the first fifteen minutes, three Union sailors had been killed,
Speaker 1: several more were wounded. Mead later wrote that quote the
Speaker 1: decks were slippery with blood. Robert was the powder man
Speaker 1: for a twenty pounder rifle. It looked like a cannon,
Speaker 1: and it was located at the front of the ship,
Speaker 1: out in the open, totally unprotected from enemy fire. He
Speaker 1: would have been running back and forth from the powder
Speaker 1: magazine to the rifle, up and down, over and over,
Speaker 1: exposed to fire every time he reached the deck. Robert
Speaker 1: had been on that boat since September. He knew, of course,
Speaker 1: that he would face danger, and he was ready.
Speaker 3: It was not yet we're fighting for the freedom of
Speaker 3: enslaved South Carolinian or all enslaved people throughout the country. No,
Speaker 3: it was literally their family and their homes and people
Speaker 3: that they knew and they loved, and they hoped to
Speaker 3: spend their reck with their lives.
Speaker 1: With That love and commitment must have been an engine
Speaker 1: for his courage. But there was something else sparking that
Speaker 1: bravery as well, a knowledge of what waited for him
Speaker 1: if they failed, if he was captured. Being a prisoner
Speaker 1: during the Civil War was horrific. The death rate of
Speaker 1: POW's was as high as thirty percent, but the fate
Speaker 1: of men like Robert who were formerly enslaved fighting for
Speaker 1: the Union was much much worse. The battle went on,
Speaker 1: a sailor was cut into by a round from the
Speaker 1: Confederate cannon. The men must have been screaming, screaming orders,
Speaker 1: screaming from the pain, but according to later reports, Robert
Speaker 1: kept us cool.
Speaker 3: He was fulfilling years at Zion duty under extremely stressful
Speaker 3: and dangerous circumstances, and he was able to keep doing
Speaker 3: it at a rather extraordinary pace throughout the engagement.
Speaker 1: Years later, me described quote the excellent manner in which
Speaker 1: he served his gun, his coolness, intrepidity, and high spirits,
Speaker 1: and the merry laugh with which he cheered his comrades
Speaker 1: under this severe and galling fire of the enemy.
Speaker 2: He seemed wholly insensible to fear.
Speaker 1: He would cut jokes with his comrades as he passed
Speaker 1: along to the magazine with his box under his arm.
Speaker 1: He showed a marked degree of intelligence and forethought. During
Speaker 1: the hottest part of the fight. The battle went on
Speaker 1: for an hour and a half. Robert's gun fired seventy
Speaker 1: two times, a super high number when you consider how
Speaker 1: much work it took to fire a gun back then.
Speaker 1: But his energy didn't flag, and by eight am the
Speaker 1: skirmish was over. The men of the Marblehead were victorious.
Speaker 1: Three days after the battle, Mead went ashore with his
Speaker 1: men and took the rebels guns. It was the first
Speaker 1: Union naval victory in more than two years, and Robert
Speaker 1: would get the credit he deserved. Need was determined that
Speaker 1: Robert would be honored for his brave actions of Christmas
Speaker 1: Day eighteen sixty three. First, he ensured that Robert got
Speaker 1: a promotion to seamen, leaving his contraband label behind him
Speaker 1: for good. And Robert, along with three other sailors, received
Speaker 1: the Medal of Honor. The Order for the Metal reads quote,
Speaker 1: Robert Blake, serving as powder boy, displayed extraordinary courage, alacrity,
Speaker 1: and intelligent in the discharge of his duties under trying circumstances,
Speaker 1: and merited the admiration of all. Robert Blake would be
Speaker 1: the first Black sailor to receive the Medal of Honor.
Speaker 1: Robert re enlisted. He was on the USS Vermont, where
Speaker 1: he had started the war, at least through the summer
Speaker 1: of eighteen sixty four, and then well, our trail goes cold.
Speaker 1: Robert Blake just vanishes. One possibility is that he stayed
Speaker 1: in South Carolina. So many formally enslaved people did after
Speaker 1: the war. That was the place they knew, filled with
Speaker 1: the people they loved, and record keeping back then wasn't great,
Speaker 1: particularly for black folks. But maybe Robert didn't stay in
Speaker 1: South Carolina. Our detective Professor Reedy points out that by
Speaker 1: now Robert was a seasoned sailor.
Speaker 3: He had naval experienced at that point, and this is
Speaker 3: not the say he stayed in the navy, because he
Speaker 3: apparently did not, But he could have continued to work
Speaker 3: at the Mariner.
Speaker 1: According to a report that Captain Meade wrote decades after
Speaker 1: the battle, Robert got one hundred dollars along with his medal.
Speaker 1: That's worth more than two thousand dollars today. That's enough
Speaker 1: money to kick start a new life. He was still
Speaker 1: serving on the Vermont in the summer of eighteen sixty four,
Speaker 1: and the Vermont left Port Royal for the Brooklyn Navy
Speaker 1: Yard on August two of that year. Could he have
Speaker 1: still been on it heading to New York. We just
Speaker 1: don't know, but I think it's an amazing idea. At
Speaker 1: that time, there were close to a million people living
Speaker 1: in New York City. He could have slipped into those
Speaker 1: crowded streets. Or Robert could have just boarded the next
Speaker 1: boat off to points unknown, skimming across the ocean.
Speaker 2: Who knows.
Speaker 1: We have no records of him. It's possible that he
Speaker 1: changed his name and left Blake, the name of his
Speaker 1: former slaveholder behind. And if you're wondering what happened to
Speaker 1: Old Arthur Middleton Blake, here's this gem. For years after
Speaker 1: the Civil War ended, Arthur had the audacity to petition
Speaker 1: the government asking to be paid back for the slaves
Speaker 1: who had been quote unquote taken from him, a sum
Speaker 1: that he said amounted to at least four hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: One man on Arthur's list of property is named Robert.
Speaker 1: He's valued at eleven hundred dollars, almost twice the average
Speaker 1: of other enslaved people. Whether that was our Robert Blake
Speaker 1: or the other Robert Blake is unclear. In eighteen seventy five,
Speaker 1: the US Congress unequivocally rejected Arthur's petition.
Speaker 2: Good God Arthur.
Speaker 1: Captain Mead also wondered what became of Robber, As he
Speaker 1: later wrote, quote whatever became of him? Does not appear,
Speaker 1: as there is no record of him in the books
Speaker 1: at the Navy Department. But if he is still alive,
Speaker 1: he is doubtless as cheery as ever. No man ever
Speaker 1: deserved a medal of Honor more truly than this gallant
Speaker 1: young negro from the Captain down. Every man on the
Speaker 1: marblehead honored the ex slave Robert Blake. I personally love
Speaker 1: the idea of Robert having a totally fresh start, a
Speaker 1: new city, maybe even a new name. But whether he
Speaker 1: left the South or not, I hope he felt that
Speaker 1: his courage was rewarded not by the medal of Honor,
Speaker 1: not by the one hundred dollars, but by the hope
Speaker 1: for a country that might liver on its promise of life, liberty,
Speaker 1: and the pursuit of happiness for everyone.
Speaker 2: Hope for a.
Speaker 1: New version of America, Hope a long last for freedom.
Speaker 1: Medal of Honor Stories of Courage is written by Meredith
Speaker 1: Robins and produced by Meredith Rollins and Jess Shane. Our
Speaker 1: editor on this episode is Amy Gaines McQuaid. Sound design
Speaker 1: and additional music by Jake Gorsky. Our executive producer is
Speaker 1: Gonstanza Gotta. Though fact checking by Arthur Gomperts and original
Speaker 1: music by Eric Phillips. Production support by Suzanne Gamber Special
Speaker 1: thanks to the Congressional Medal of Honor Society. Don't forget
Speaker 1: We want to hear from you. Send us your personal
Speaker 1: story of courage or highlight someone else's bravery. Email us
Speaker 1: at Medal of Honor at Pushkin dot fm. You might
Speaker 1: hear your stories on future episodes of Metal of Honor,
Speaker 1: or see them on our social channels at Pushkin Pods.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, JR.
Speaker 2: Martinez