wonderful issue. The affair approaches too near the marvellous to have been admitted into these Memoirs had it not been uniformly asserted, as uniformly accredited, and never contradicted.

Congress, undismayed by the gloom which the unexpected issue to the siege of Savannah had spread over the South, took immediate measures to re-enforce Lincoln; and Sir Henry Clinton, encouraged by his success, determined to press to completion its subjugation.

In pursuance of a resolution of Congress, the North Carolina line was ordered to South Carolina; and solemn assurances were given of effectual support to the languishing resistance in the South.

Sir Henry Clinton having withdrawn the British garrison from Newport, thereby restoring the elastic patriotism of the State of Rhode Island to its wonted energy and freedom, and being re-enforced from England, prepared a respectable detachment of chosen troops to be led by himself for the reduction of South Carolina. Waiting for the departure from the American coast of the French fleet, he was no sooner apprised of this event than he began the embarkation of his army; which being completed, Admiral Arbuthnot, the British naval commander on the American station, took upon himself the direction of the escorting fleet, and sailed from Sandy Hook on the 26th of December.

The voyage was tempestuous and tardy; some of the transports were lost, and others taken; all the horses for the cavalry and artillery perished: and the fleet, being much crippled in its stormy passage, never reached Tybee, its destined point, until the end of January. Here the damaged ships were repaired with all practicable haste; and the admiral put to sea, steering his course for North Edisto Sound, in South Carolina. The armament arrived there on the 10th of February ;. and the next day was employed in disembarking the army on John's Island.

Sir Henry Clinton was now on terra firma, within thirty miles of Charleston. He took immediate measures for advancing, but with the utmost circumspection, sacrificing much time in fortifying intermediate posts to hold safe his communication with the fleet. There are occasions and situations when such conduct is entitled to commendation, indeed when the omission would be highly reprehensible. But this was not the case now; no possible interruption was practicable on the part of Lincoln, whose regular force consisted of about two thousand men, including the North Carolina regulars, and four hundred Virginians, who had lately joined him under Lieutenant-Colonel Heth. To these the militia of

1780.

the town only is to be added; for that of the country was much indisposed to shut themselves up in a besieged fortress. The recollection of the repulse which himself and Admiral Parker had sustained at this spot, in 1776, must have inspired Sir Henry Clinton with more respectful considerations of the power of his enemy, and the strength of his defences, than accurate information would warrant. Determined to avoid a second rebuff, the general pursued with unvarying pertinacity, the most cautious system.* The necessary boats for the transportation of the army, passing along the interior navigation to Waapoocut, entered into Ashley River under the command of Captain Elphinston. On the 29th of March the van of the British reached the banks of the river, having marched thirty miles since the 11th of February, and never meeting, during the whole period, with the smallest resistance, except in the solitary instance of a rencontre between Lieutenant-Colonel Washington, commanding Baylor's diminished regiment of cavalry, and Lieutenant-Colonel Tarleton, whose dragoons, having been remounted, or horses procured by Sir Henry Clinton since his landing, covered the left flank of a division advancing from Savannah. This first meeting terminated favorably for Lieutenant-Colonel Washington, who in the sequel took a few prisoners; among whom was Lieutenant-Colonel Hamilton, of the royal regiment of North Carolina.

On the 30th Sir Henry Clinton passed Ashley River above Charleston, and on the following day sat down in front of our works. On his march the van of the leading column was gallantly attacked by Lieutenant-Colonel Laurens with a corps of light infantry; in which skirmish the Earl of Caithness, aid-de-camp to Sir Henry Clinton, was wounded. It is possible that the extraordinary delay, with which the movements of the British general were made, might have been intended with the double view of excluding the possibility of failure, and of seducing his enemy to continue in Charleston. If so, he succeeded completely in both objects. He certainly secured himself from insult; and his delay as certainly fixed the fate of the

* In the whole course of the American war, there seems to have been a systematic sacrifice of time by the British generals. Excepting where Lord Cornwallis commanded, I do not recollect any operations wherein the British resorted to forced marches. Washington, in 1776, was hurried through the Jerseys. Upon this occasion Lord Cornwallis was the operating general; and we all remember how he pushed Morgan, and afterward Greene, in the Carolinas. The delay of Sir Henry Clinton in this short march of thirty miles is inexplicable, unless from habit, or from a wish to induce the American general to shut himself up in Charleston.

Southern army, which never could have been inclosed in the untenable town, had not the sound mind of Major-General Lincoln been bent from its own resolve by the wishes of all the influential characters of the State, and by the confident expectation of adequate support; neither of which considerations would have influenced him but for the long lapse of time which intervened between the day of disembarkation, 11th of February, and the 30th of March, the day of beginning investiture.

At the bottom of the short and narrow isthmus, as has been observed, made by the rivers Ashley and Cooper, stands Charleston, the metropolis of South Carolina, and the emporium of the Southern commerce. The rivers uniting south of the town make a convenient bay which glides by a slight current into the sea, assisting to form some handsome islands in its flow, and creating, by its resistance to the overbearing surge of the ocean, a bank of sand, emphatically called the Charleston Bar. On two of these islands, Sullivan's and James's, defences had been erected in the beginning of the war: on the first, Fort Moultrie, on the last, Fort Johnston. In 1776 Colonel Moultrie, by his intrepid resistance on Sullivan's Island, repulsed a formidable fleet and army, as has been before recited.

Estimating the defence of the approach from sea as momentous to the safety of South Carolina, Congress had prepared a small squadron, under Commodore Whipple, to co-operate with the insular fortifications. United to those of the State, our naval force, then in Charleston harbor, consisted of nine sail, the largest mounting forty-four guns. From the successful resistance made by Colonel Moultrie, in 1776, it was confidently, and with much reason, presumed that the difficulty of passing the bar, the co-operation of the squadron with the Forts Moultrie and Johnston, and the numerous batteries erected to protect the harbor, the British fleet would meet obstacles not easily to be surmounted. Fort Moultrie, with its appendages, was committed to Colonel Pinckney,* fitted in heart and head to uphold its splendid fame.

Confiding in his defences by water, the American general bestowed his unremitted attention to strengthen and enlarge those on land. The two rivers which form Charleston neck, like all the rivers in that country, are lined on both shores with extensive swamps, deep in water and in mud, and impervious to the passage of troops. Profiting by these natural impediments, a canal at a

* Charles Cotesworth Pinckney.