USA > South Carolina > The history of South Carolina in the Revolution, 1775-1780 > Part 14
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On the 8th General Lee, without consulting or advising with President Rutledge, assumed command and began issuing orders directly to Colonel Moultrie on Sullivan's Island. The South Carolina regular troops had not then, it should be observed, been taken into the Continental line, nor were they until the following September. They were all still upon the establishment of the colony and under the immediate orders of President Rutledge as Com- 1 Gentleman's Magazine (1776), vol. XLVI, 380, 458.
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mander-in-chief of South Carolina. To avoid, however, any conflict of authority or want of unity of action, Presi- dent Rutledge on the 9th announced that the command of all the forces, regular and militia, was vested in Major General Charles Lee, and that orders issued by him were to be obeyed.1 In doing this, however, President Rut- ledge, fortunately, did not by any means give up the entire control of affairs.
Fort Sullivan as the fort was then called, but which name it was soon to exchange for that of Fort Moultrie, in honor of the hero who was to defend it, was a square with a bastion at each angle, sufficiently large to contain when finished one thousand men. It was built of pal- metto logs laid one upon the other, in two parallel rows at sixteen feet distance, bound together at intervals with timber dovetailed and bolted with logs. The spaces be- tween the two lines of logs were filled up with sand, and the merlons were walled or revetted with palmetto logs notched into one another at the angles, well bolted to- gether, and strengthened with pieces of timber. The walls were sixteen feet thick, filled in with sand, and ten feet high above the platforms ; the platforms were sup- ported by brick pillars.2
The fort was only finished on the front or southeast curtain and bastions, and on the southwest curtain and
1 Memoirs of the Revolution (Drayton), vol. II, 280.
2 The palmetto, of the logs of which the fort was principally built, is the representative form taken by the palm on the coast of the Southern States of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, and is probably the most hardy of the palms. It sometimes attains a height of fifty feet, and a diameter of twelve or fifteen inches. It is usually very straight, without branches, but covered upon the top with large leaves. Its wood is very porous, soft, and spongy, and thus was singularly suited to the purposes of defence against guns of the caliber in use at the time of the Revolution, a cannon ball entering making no splinters nor extended fractures, but burying itself in the wood without doing hurt to the parts adjacent.
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bastion ; the northeastern curtain and the northwestern curtain and bastions were unfinished, being logged up only about seven feet high. The platform, therefore, as finished extended along only the southeastern front of the fort and its southwestern side. Upon these platforms the guns were mounted. On the southeast bastion the flagstaff was fixed, having a blue flag on which was emblazoned the word "Liberty," and three eighteen- and two nine-pounders were mounted there. On the southeastern curtain six French twenty-six-pounders and three English eighteen-pounders were placed, and on the western bastion connected with it three French twenty-six-pounders and two nine-pounders. On the southwestern curtain six cannon were mounted, twelve- and nine-pounders. Connected with the front angle of each rear bastion of the fort, lines of defence then termed cavaliers, which would now be known as epaulements, - hastily constructed sideworks to cover and protect the men and guns, - were thrown up at a small distance on the right and left of the fort, and three twelve-pounders were mounted on each of them ; so the whole number of guns mounted in the fort on each side was thirty-one, of which only twenty-five at any possible time could bear upon the enemy stationed in front of the fort, and even then four nine-pounders in the two inner sides of the front bastions could be scarcely used. Narrow platforms or banquettes were placed along the walls where the plank was raised against them for the men to stand upon and fire through the loopholes.
Such was the condition of the fort on the 28th of June, the day the battle was fought ; but at the time General Lee took command the front and western side of the fort only were finished ; the rear of the fort and the eastern side were not built more than a few feet high, and the fort was not closed. The troops destined for its defence,
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to wit : the Second South Carolina Regiment of Infantry amounting to 413, and a detachment of the Fourth South Carolina Regiment, artillery, of 22 men ; the whole 435, of whom 36 were sick and unfit for duty, under the command of Colonel William Moultrie, were encamped in its rear, in huts and booths covered with palmetto leaves. This was called " The Camp"; only the guards were stationed in the fort. Indeed, there was no room for the troops, the mechanics and laborers still at work upon it were so numerous.1
Nearly midway between Fort Sullivan and Charlestown, on the southern side of the harbor, was Fort Johnson hav- ing upward of twenty heavy cannon of French twenty- six- and English eighteen-pounders. Its garrison consisted of the First South Carolina Regiment of Infantry amount- ing to about 380 men and a small detachment of artillery, the whole under the command of Colonel Christopher Gadsden. Nearer the town on the shore of James Island were about twelve heavy guns which raked the channel approaching Charlestown from Fort Johnson. At this battery Captain Thomas Pinckney was stationed with his company of Colonel Gadsden's regiment.
At the time General Lee took command there were
1 Memoirs of the Revolution (Drayton), vol. II, 290-291.
The following is the roster of officers present in the fort during the battle : -
Colonel : William Moultrie ; Lieutenant Colonel : Isaac Motte; Major : Francis Marion ; Adjutant : Andrew Dellient.
Captains : Peter Horry, Nicholas Eveleigh, James McDonald, Isaac Harleston, Charles Motte, Francis Huger, Richard Ashby, Richard Shu- brick, William Oliphant, John Blake.
Lieutenants : William Charnock, Thomas Lesesne, Thomas Moultrie, Daniel Mazyck, Jacob Shubrick, Thomas Dunbar, William Moultrie, Jr., Thomas Hall, Henry Gray, Isaac Dubose, Richard B. Baker, Adrian Proveaux, Richard Mason, Peter Gray, Basil Jackson, Gab. Marion. - Moultrie's Memoirs, vol. I, 183.
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twelve hundred men on Sullivan's Island and but ten thousand pounds of powder. He from the first dis- approved the plan of the defence of the island, and if it had been left to him would have abandoned it. He soon reduced the number of troops and removed a quantity of powder, openly declaring in the fort itself "that it could not hold out half an hour, and that the platform was but a slaughtering stage." He proposed to the Presi- dent to abandon the fort and island, but this President Rutledge rejected with indignation, declaring that he would cut off his right arm before he would write such an order.1
General Lee, learning that a body of the enemy had landed on Long Island, at once, at six o'clock A.M., on the 8th, ordered Colonel Moultrie to reconnoitre them, adding that perhaps Colonel Moultrie would see the practicability of attacking the force from the main - an order showing how little he understood the situation. To attack from the main would have required the troops to cross miles of the marsh already described. By eight o'clock he had, how- ever, discovered the impossibility of such a movement, and then ordered Colonel Moultrie immediately to detach Colonel Thomson's, the Third, and Colonel Sumter's, the Sixth, regiments, Captains Alston's, Mayham's, and Coutu- rier's companies to Long Island with orders to attack and if possible to dislodge the enemy there ; but he cautioned him that all care should be taken to secure the retreat of the force across the beach from Long Island to Sullivan's Island, and for this purpose he desired Colonel Moultrie to move two field-pieces down to the point commanding the beach. This order, however, was not received until two days after, at seven o'clock, June 10. Moultrie then at
1 Moultrie's Memoirs, vol. I, 141; Memoirs of the Revolution (Dray- ton), vol. II, 283.
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once prepared to obey it, and intended to embark the troops for this purpose that night ; but by this time it was ascertained that the whole of the British forces were on Long Island, amounting to near three thousand men, under the command of Sir Henry Clinton, who had under him Major General Lord Cornwallis and Brigadier Gen- eral Vaughn.
Sir Henry Clinton having landed on Long Island with all his troops, made preparations for passing the inlet between that and Sullivan's Island. He threw up two works, one for mortars and the other for cannon ; in addi- tion to which he had an armed schooner and some float- ing batteries. Against these Captain De Brahm, the colonial engineer, had erected breastworks of palmetto logs on the northeastern point of Sullivan's Island, dis- tant about a mile, supported by a battery of one eighteen- pounder and one brass field-piece six-pounder. Those were supported by Colonel Thomson's regiment, the Third, or regiment of Rangers, the same which came so near mutinying the year before, now consisting of upward of 300 men ; by Lieutenant Colonel Clark with 200 North Carolina regulars, Colonel Daniel Horry with 200 South Carolina troops, the Raccoon Company of 50 Riflemen, and a small detachment of militia ; the whole amounting to about 780 men being under the command of Colonel Thompson. This officer, with the Rangers, had just returned from the expedition under Colonel Richardson.
General Lee was most anxious and restless about the troops on Sullivan's Island, and their means of retreat in case of the fall of the fort, which he deemed inevitable. He proposed to have a bridge built from the island to Haddrell's Point on the main. There were numerous objections to this scheme. In the first place there was no time to build it, and in the second a bridge of nearly
VOL. III. - L
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a mile long could be rendered useless by a few shots from the vessels, which he justly expected to reach and take position on the western end of Sullivan's Island to enfilade the fort - the occasion upon which he looked for its de- struction and the consequent evacuation of the island. But as there was no time to build a proper bridge, he at- tempted to improvise one consisting of two planks buoyed up by empty hogsheads and boats anchored across the cove. The inefficiency of such a bridge was at once de- monstrated when Lieutenant Colonel Clark with his two hundred North Carolinians attempted to cross upon it going to reënforce Colonel Thomson. It sank before the detachment was half across, and General Lee was obliged to content himself with boats as the means of communi- cating with the island if retreat became necessary. Upon this subject Colonel Moultrie had no fears, and General Lee's anxieties in regard to it seemed rather to amuse him. "I never was uneasy," he says in his Memoirs, " be- cause I never imagined that the enemy could force me to the necessity (of retreating). I always considered myself as able to defend the post against the enemy." We have seen how little General Lee understood the topography of the situation when he proposed to cross troops from the main to attack the enemy on Long Island; under the same mistaken idea he was now possessed by the fear that Sir Henry Clinton would cross his troops from Long Island to the main for the purpose of seizing Haddrell's Point and moving against the town from that quarter. To do this the British would have had to cross at least two miles of marsh, in the mud of which they would have sunk but a few yards from the shore. But Lee was so infatuated upon this point that he strongly reinforced Haddrell's Point with Continental troops under the com- mand of Brigadier General Armstrong, which was in
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effect simply withdrawing so much of his forces from any possible participation in the coming battle.
There was still another cause for anxiety, however, in the mind of General Lee and on which he was clearly right. The fort was so situated that the bend of the island permitted approaches to be made on its right flank by the water which extended round the curve of the shore into the cove. Should any vessel, therefore, suc- ceed in passing around and taking position at this point, the platform of the forts on which the guns were placed would be easily enfiladed from that quarter. He there- fore directed a flèche 1 and screens to be erected to pro- tect the men from such an attack, and a traverse in rear to secure the garrison in case of an attack from the rear. Neither of these works for the protection of the platform was ever attempted.2 In this matter General Lee undoubt- edly had just cause of complaint against Colonel Moultrie. In letter after letter he urged Moultrie to carry out his orders in regard to these necessary precautions, but in vain. It is not surprising, therefore, to learn that Gen- eral Lee contemplated removing Colonel Moultrie from the command of this fort. On the night of the 27th of June he instructed Colonel Nash of the North Carolina line to report to him the next morning for written orders to take the command of Fort Sullivan, and Colonel Nash was on his way to receive them when the battle began; and even then on the morning of the action General Lee informed President Rutledge as he was leaving to pass over to Haddrell's Point that he was determined to super- sede Colonel Moultrie that day if on going down he did
1 Flèche : the most simple kind of field-work, usually constructed at the foot of a glacis, consisting of two faces forming a salient angle point- ing outward from a position taken.
2 Memoirs of the Revolution (Drayton), vol. II, 284, 285.
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not find certain things done which he had ordered. Colonel Moultrie was an able and exceedingly gallant officer in action ; but he was of easy manners and careless disposition, content to leave to others the performance of duties which should have received his own personal supervision. He was a poor disciplinarian and lacked the elementary soldierly characteristic of promptness and punctuality. We must not omit to mention, however, in extenuation of his neglect in this matter that before and during the action he was suffering with gout.1 Had it not been for his firm and gallant conduct Sullivan's Island would have been abandoned and the glorious victory of Fort Moultrie would not now adorn the history of South Carolina ; but nevertheless by his indifference and care- lessness that victory was jeoparded, and may have been lost had not the enemy's vessels got aground while attempting to round the cove in order to enfilade the fort as Lee anticipated. Had it not been for his indomitable spirit Charlestown would have been surrendered to Gen- eral Prévost in May, 1779; while it was owing to the same defect of his character that the battle of Stono was lost in June of that year. But however justly General Lee was determined to resent Moultrie's indifference to orders, he fortunately forbore his determination. Colonel Moultrie was allowed to remain in command, and the victory was won.
The fortifications of the town consisted of a line of batteries, flèches, and bastions beginning on the land just south of what is now known as Bennett's or Halsey's mill pond on the Ashley, then known as Cummins's Point, and extending along South Bay and East Bay to Gads- den's wharf on Cooper River, now the foot of Calhoun Street. The Fourth or South Carolina Artillery Regi- 1 Moultrie's Memoirs, vol. I, 173.
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ment and a part of the militia acting as artillery were detailed in detachments to man the guns at these points.1 The remainder of the town militia were to form at the State House. The militia from the country were to form in that part of Lynch's pasture which was nearest the town, under the command of Brigadier General Howe. The North Carolina troops were to be posted in the rear of the South Carolina country militia, under the immedi- ate command of General Lee. Fire vessels were also prepared for annoying the British vessels, should they be able to pass the forts and present themselves before the town.
The North Carolina troops here mentioned were a part of the 1400 continentals from that State, 200 of whom, as we have seen, were posted with Colonel Thomson on the eastern end of Sullivan's Island to resist the crossing of the British at that point. The whole force now as- sembled for the defence of Charlestown numbered 6522, to wit : North Carolina continentals 1400, South Caro- lina regulars 1950, Virginia continentals 500, Charlestown militia 700, country militia 1972.2
The British force consisted of 2200 British regulars under Sir Henry Clinton, and a fleet of two fifty-gun ships, five frigates, and four other vessels, carrying in all 270 guns.3
1 The militia mentioned as acting as artillery were in all probability the battalion of artillery of which Thomas Grimball was then Captain, but we can find no more particular mention of them than that in this list.
2 Memoirs of the Revolution (Drayton), vol. II, 282.
3 Sir Peter Parker's squadron consisted of the following ships and vessels, viz. : -
Bristol
guns 50
Captain John Morris
Experiment
50
Alexander Scott
Active
28 William Williams
Solebay
66 28 Thomas Symonds
( Sir Peter Parker
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The fleet lay within the bar within a league of the fort. On the morning of the 28th of June Colonel Moultrie, riding to the eastern end of Sullivan's Island to visit the post there under Colonel Thomson, observed the enemy's boats in motion at the back of Long Island, as if they in- tended a descent upon that advanced post, and at the same time he perceived the men-of-war loose their topsails. This being the signal of their getting under way he hurried back to the fort, and on his arrival immediately ordered the long roll to be beaten and the officers and men to their posts.
The guns were scarcely manned and powder issued from the magazine when the British ships were perceived under sail bearing down upon Fort Sullivan, and at the same time, between ten and eleven o'clock, the Thunder bombship1 covered by the Friendship armed vessel of twenty-two guns anchored at the distance of. a mile and a half and began to throw shells upon the fort, one of which fell upon the magazine, but did no considerable damage. The flood tide being strong and the wind fair from the southwest, the Active twenty-eight guns, the Bristol fifty guns, the Experiment fifty guns, and the Solebay twenty-eight guns soon came within easy range of the fort, when its garrison opened fire upon them from the southwestern bastion. But the leading ship,
Actæon
28 Christopher Atkins
Syren
66
28 Tobias Furneau
Sphynx .
20 Anthony Hunt
Friendship, armed vessel
22 Charles Hope
Ranger, sloop
8 Roger Willis
Thunder, bomb
St. Lawrence, schooner . .
8 James Reid Lieutenant John Graves
- The Remembrancer, Part II, for the year 1776 (London), 191 ; Gentle- man's Magazine and Historical Chronicle (London), 1776, vol. XLVI, 380, 381.
1 Bombship : a small vessel very strongly built for carrying the mor- tars used in bombarding fortifications from the sea. - Craig-Worcester.
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the Active, regardless of the fire, continued her course until within four hundred yards of the fort, where she anchored with springs on her cable and poured in her broadside. The Bristol, Experiment, and Solebay ranging up in the rear of the Active anchored in like manner, leaving intervals between each other. The Syren and Actcon of twenty-eight guns each and Sphynx of twenty, forming a second parallel line, took positions in rear oppo- site the intervals. The example of the Active was followed by the other ships as they took their stations, and a heavy and incessant bombardment began from their batteries, while from the fort a slow but sure return was made. All the while the Thunder bombship was throwing thir- teen-inch shells in quick succession, several of which fell into the fort. They were, however, immediately buried in the loose sand, so that very few of them burst upon the garrison.
General Lee was not alone in predicting that the fort could not hold out half an hour before such a bombard- ment. Captain Lemprière, a brave and experienced sea- man, who had been master of a man-of-war and was then the captain of a privateer in the service of the colony, the same who had taken the powder the year before off St. Augustine, while visiting Colonel Moultrie after the British ships had crossed the bar, walking on the platform and looking at the fleet, said to him, " Well, Colonel, what do you think of it now ?" Colonel Moultrie replied simply, "We should beat them."- "Sir," said he, "when those ships (pointing to the men-of-war) come to lay alongside of your fort, they will knock it down in half an hour." Then said Colonel Moultrie, " We will lay behind the ruins and prevent their men from landing." And now that these ships were before him, pouring in their broadsides of two hundred and seventy guns besides
-
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the mortars from the bombship, -against his twenty-five guns in the fort, - now that these vessels, two of which had twice as many guns as the fort could bring to bear, and four others had each three guns more than he could reply with, and though under great physical suffering, he was still of the same quiet mind and steadfast opinion. He did not for a moment doubt that he "should beat them."
As soon as the engagement of the fleet had begun, General Sir Henry Clinton made dispositions for crossing the inlet and attacking the troops under Colonel Thom- son at the other end of Sullivan's Island. With two thousand regulars he accordingly marched down from his encampment on Long Island to the edge of the inlet, where it was usually fordable except at high water. He was flanked on his right by an armed schooner, the Lady William, and a sloop which had been lying between Long Island and the main, and on the left toward the sea by a flotilla of armed boats from the fleet. These had orders to reach the landing on Sullivan's Island and rake the plat- form of the redoubt held by Thomson, while the army crossed over the inlet and stormed the little fort, which was entirely open on the west. Colonel Thomson with his garrison of North and South Carolinians had but two cannon, and they were manned only by his Rangers, who had never before fired a gun larger than a rifle, but who with small arms were the very best of marksmen. The flotilla advanced bravely to the attack, cheered on by the army paraded on the shore within speaking distance of the boats, but Colonel Thomson opened on them so well directed a fire that the men could not be kept at their posts -every ball raked their decks. The flotilla made repeated attempts to reach their destined point, and did come within the range of grapeshot which cleared the decks and dispersed the flotilla.
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In the meanwhile Clinton, who had besides his regulars some six or seven hundred marines and boatmen, thus mak- ing his force two thousand more than all Thomson had with which to meet them, halted and remained on the shore of Long Island, a quiet spectator of the battle without mak- ing any further effort to cross. His excuse was that he found the inlet which he had been led to suppose was fordable, impassable, and that he had no boats in which to cross his men. It appears that the passage at that time was more difficult than usual because of a long series of easterly winds which had increased the height of the tide. But this explanation was not received at home as a sufficient excuse for the disaster which befell the expe- dition because of Sir Henry's failure to cooperate with the fleet. To suppose, it was said, that the generals and the officers under their command should have been nine- teen days in that small island without ever examining until the very instant of action the nature of the only passage by which they could render service to their friends and fellows, fulfil the purpose of their landing, and answer the ends for which they were embarked upon the expedition, would seem a great defect in military pru- dence and circumspection.1
1 Annual Register (London), 1776, vol. XIX, 162 ; Botta's History, vol. I, 338. The opposition papers in England ridiculed the excuse, one of them, the St. James Chronicle, in an epigram : -
"A MIRACLE ON SULLIVAN'S ISLAND
" By the Red Sea the Hebrew host detained Through aid divine the distant shore soon gained ; The waters fled, the deep a passage gave ; But thus God wrought a chosen race to save.
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