US Supreme Court, resulting in both the exclusion of African Americans from political participation and the crippling of the Republican Party throughout the region. In the late 1890s, he began to suffer from diabetes. He turned down an offer of a colonelcy of a Black regiment in the Spanish–American War and an appointment to the position of minister to Liberia. Local politics Though Smalls was not officially involved with politics on the local level, he had some influence. In 1913, in one of his final actions as community leader, he played an important role in stopping a lynch mob from killing two Black suspects in the murder of a white man. He pressured the mayor, saying that Blacks he had sent throughout the city would burn the town if the mob was not stopped. The mayor and sheriff stopped the mob. Family With his first wife Hannah Jones Smalls, whom he married on December 24, 1856, Robert Smalls had three children: Elizabeth Lydia (1858–1959; m. Samuel Jones Bampfield, nine living children); Robert Jr. (1861–1863), who died at age two; and Sarah Voorhies (1863–1920, m. Dr. Jay Williams, no children). Hannah Jones Smalls had two daughters before she met and married Robert Smalls: Charlotte Jones (m. Willie Williams) and Clara Jones (m. James Rider). Smalls and his family were affiliated with the Baptist Church and attended Berean Baptist Church when living in Washington, D.C. Smalls was a Prince Hall mason as a member of Sons of Beaufort Lodge #36. Hannah Smalls died on July 28, 1883. On April 9, 1890, Robert Smalls married Annie E. Wigg, a Charleston schoolteacher, who bore him one son, William Robert Smalls (1891–1970). Annie Smalls died on November 5, 1895. Smalls died of malaria and diabetes on February 23, 1915, at the age of 75. He was buried in his family's plot in the churchyard of the Tabernacle Baptist Church in downtown Beaufort. The monument to Smalls in this churchyard is inscribed with his 1895 statement to the South Carolina legislature: "My race needs no special defense, for the past history of them in this country proves them to be the equal of any people anywhere. All they need is an equal chance in the battle of life." Honors and legacy Fort Robert Smalls was named in his honor; it was built by free Blacks in 1863 on McGuire's Hill on the South Side of Pittsburgh