batteries at advantageous points, for rapidly built by a force of mechanics the protection of Charleston. Posses- and negro laborers, in view of a threatsion was taken of Fort Johnson, on ened naval expedition from New York. James' Island, and this advantageous The material of which it was position commanding the harbor on the structed was admirably adapted for south, was supported by a neighboring purposes of defence, consisting of logs camp and battery. A flag being need- of the palmetto, a wood of a peculiarly ed for purposes of signals, Moultrie spongy character, capable of receiving devised one, "the first American flag a shot without a fracture. In April, displayed in South Carolina." The General Armstrong arrived from the color was blue, adopted from the cloth-north, followed on the fourth of June ing of the State troops, with a crescent by General Charles Lee, who was put in the dexter corner, taken from a in command, and from whom everybadge worn in their caps by two regi- thing was expected. One of Lee's first ments who garrisoned the fort. After employments, of course, was to visit the this position was secured, the mainte- harbor defences, which, under the milinance of Sullivan's Island, in front of tary officers of the committee of safety the town, commanding the seaward had assumed very respectable propor approaches to the harbor, was to be tions. looked after. This was partly sepa rated from the mainland by a cove which it was necessary to keep open from the enemy, and for this purpose a battery was erected by Moultrie at Haddrell's Point, an advantageous position on the shore commanding the bay. Moultrie himself directed the military'slaughter pen,' and wished to with party, including "a great many gentle man volunteers," who, on "a dark and very cold" December night, executed this work in the face of two British vessels in the port. The latter then drew off, but the arrival of others off the bar, kept the defenders in a wholesome state of agitation. All this while Moultrie had the chief military command. In February, Colonel Gadsden, of the first regiment, arrived, and entered upon his duties, and on the second of March, Moultrie was ordered to take command of the fort in process of erection on Sullivan's Island. It was being When he came to Sullivan's Island, where he found Moultrie with his fort well advanced, he, says the latter officer in his "Memoirs," "did not like the post at all, saying that there was no way to retreat, that the garrison would be sacrificed; nay, he called it a draw the garrison and give up the post, of it, and a good historian may, very likely, find more to applaud in the one than to condemn in the other. The position of the defenders, indeed, looked desperate enough. On the morning of June 28th; a few days before the Declaration of Independence by Congress, the enemy, hav ing been reinforced by another fiftygun ship, the Experiment, the actual attack commenced from the chief vessels of the squadron. Moultrie, who was at the east end of the island, visiting Thompson's encampment, saw the first signs of the movement, and hastened to his post. To meet the seemingly overwhelming force of the enemy, within easy range to the south, he had four hundred and thirty-five men, all told. The fortification had thirty-one guns, but the supply of powder, the ridiculous defect of the early battles of the war, was short. There were but twenty-eight rounds for twenty-six cannon. him to the necessity of a retreat." He accordingly, armed with the authority of Rutledge, held the position in preparation for the coming invasion. The British forces, indeed, were already in the vicinity. A fleet of some forty or fifty vessels, ships of war and transports, under the command of Sir Peter Parker, bringing seven regiments, with Sir Henry Clinton at their head, arrived off the harbor on the fourth, and were now making preparations for the assault. Clinton being disadvantageously posted with his troops on the neighboring Long Island, the main attack was left to Sir Peter Parker, who advanced to the work with his formidable fleet. He had with him his flagship, the Bristol, fifty guns, four ships of twenty-eight guns each, one of twenty, another of eighteen, with various subordinate vessels-a sufficient force it might have been thought, without over confidence, to cope with a log fort, manned by unpractised soldiers, unused to any weapon heavier than a The action commenced with a disrifle. Indeed, it was generally expected charge of shells, which produced little by the British, that a discharge or two effect, some falling short, others being of a broadside would destroy the fort, buried in the sand. The cannonading and the admiral, besides, had his men then began, the flag-ship and three of practised in entering embrasures-a the heavier vessels pouring their broadservice they were not called upon to sides into the fort at a distance of about perform. While such was the confi- three hundred and fifty yards. The dence of the foe, there were not want- sailors were doubtless astonished at the ing those on shore who doubted of the inadequate result; the balls hitting the result. If Moultrie had the least hesi- mark, indeed, but sinking, as they tation in his breast, he would have struck, harmlessly imbedded in the soft found a welcome for his timidity in the palmetto. On the other hand, the fire counsel of his superior officer, the gal- they received told with fearful empha lant major-general. It may not be, sis. Carefully husbanding his scanty however, that Lee was so much behind ammunition, Moultrie, coolly smoking the occasion as Moultrie was in advance his pipe, directed his men, who were stripped to their work, to single out the till the murderous Provost, taking confidence from the defeat of General Ashe at Briar Creek, took up his march for the metropolis. Moultrie, in command at the lower military station at Purysburg, conducted a Parthian retreat, checking the invaders at various points, but unable to cope with the reckless audacity of the superior force, scattering itself, and burning and plundering as it proceeded. Of his thousand militia men, he entered the city with about six hundred. Once within, he held the command, and inspiriting the people by his bravery, took every measure for the defence of the town, while Rutledge, at the head of the civil authority, gained time in negotiation, till news arrived of Lincoln's approach, when Provost took his departure, disappointed of his expected prize. In the retreat, a position was taken at John's Island, at the Stono River, which Moultrie made the object of a concerted attack. The post was gallantly as sailed, and would have been taken had not the British received reinforcements, which turned the fortunes of the day, or had not the command of Moultrie been delayed by insufficient means of transportation, which prevented his arrival in time for the conflict. In recognition of his defence on Sullivan's Island, Moultrie was made, by Congress, a brigadier general of the regular army. No medal was ordered by that body, but in the Palmetto seal of his own State-a device adopted after his defence-his victory has a lasting commemoration. In the military events in the State which succeeded his great battle, we find him always at his post, ready to give a good account of himself according to the occasion and his opportunity. It was a period of gathering misfortune, as the strength of the native defenders was wasted in unprofitable enterprises. One disaster followed after another. First came Lee's wasting midsummer march to Florida, succeeded, after an interval of comparative repose, by the repetition of the calamity under General Howe, and his still more ruinous defeat at Savannah. General Lincoln then took the field, and attempted unsuccessfully to operate upon the borders of Georgia, plying Next came the siege of Savannah by his soldiers unprofitably in the upper the combined forces of the French country, while Moultrie was left, with under D'Estaing, and the Americans inadequate resources, to defend the under Lincoln, another disastrous affair open lower road to Charleston. The-Savannah being a Savannah being a fated region skill and resources of the latter were for the American arms. This took taxed in the work to the uttermost. place in October, 1779. In the ensu He made a gallant defence of Beaufort ing February, Sir Henry Clinton reagainst the assault of Colonel Gardner, turned at the head of an invading which delayed the invasion for a time, force, and made good his landing on the แ coast below Charleston. The fleet, this he was regularly exchanged," so time, passed Fort Moultrie, with mode- reads his certificate of discharge, “with rate loss, and the city was invested. a number of other Americans, by comLincoln had the chief command, but to position, for Lieut.-General Burgoyne, Moultrie, his second, doubtless, fell of the British forces, and late a priequal, if not superior care and anxiety, soner of war to the United States of as he stimulated the efforts and wit- America." Thus liberated, he shortly nessed the privations and sufferings of after returned to South Carolina, his devoted fellow-citizens. On one where, taking his plantation by the occasion he narrowly escaped death, as way, he visited the camp of Marion a shot entered his apartment and and Greene, and bore an exulting part lodged in the bed from which he had in the evacuation of Charleston. He just risen. When provisions were found his estate plundered, but his exhausted, and the lines were no negroes had been true to him, and they longer tenable, and not till then, the now received their honest master with capitulation took place. That the a welcome dear to his heart. Nor town should have held out so long-did the State forget its brave defender. the siege lasted nearly three months- According to a habit, of which there deserves to be considered a better have been many instances in American proof of valor, on the part of the history, from the Presidency downSouth Carolinians, than many a bril- ward, Moultrie was, in 1785, chosen liant victory gained under circum- Governor of South Carolina, and again stances of less endurance. in 1794. His later years were occupied with the preparation of his memoirs of the "American Revolution, so far as it related to the States of North and South Carolina and Georgia, compiled from the most authentic materials, the author's personal knowledge of the various events, including an Epistolary Correspondence on Public Affairs with Civil and Military Officers, at that period;" a most useful work for the understanding of the inner history of the defence of the South, a repository of original documents, with brief and simple comments of the writer. It was published in New York, "for the author," in 1802. Three years later, September 27, 1805, Major-General Moultrie died at Charleston, in the seventy-fifth year of his age. Moultrie was now a prisoner on parole. In his correspondence, we find abundant proof of the consideration in which he was held in various consultations and military arrangements grow ing out of the surrender. One of these pages possesses a peculiar personal interest, that in which he replies to the proposition of Lord Charles Montague to quit the service, and leave with him for Jamaica, where, on the score of old friendship, he would put him in possession of a regiment to which he had himself been appointed. Moultrie's answer was such as became the man and his position. A few months after, in June, 1781, he sailed for Philadelphia, where he passed his time on parole till February of the following year, when JONATHAN TRUMBULL. with the Reverend Solomon Williams, the pastor of Lebanon. He even re ceived his license, and began to preach in the church at Colchester, and would, without doubt, have continued to the end a zealous, simple-minded "parson of a town," had he not been called by the death of his elder brother to assist his father, who was a trader as well as farmer, in his business operations. The young divine thus became a merchant. JONATHAN TRUMBULL, the Governor | object of which was the inculcation of of Connecticut during the Revolution, religious duty and brotherly affection and friend of Washington, was one of among its fellows. So strongly was a numerous family which has conferred this zeal implanted in him, that he honor upon the State in more than one appeared evidently a youth marked out department of exertion. His first for the church; and, indeed, forthwith American ancestor, John Trumbull, commenced his studies for the ministry came from Cumberland County, England, to Rowley, Massachusetts, whence his son, bearing the same name, removed to Suffield, Connecticut. The latter was the father of four sons, who were established in different parts of the State. The eldest, John, who became a clergyman in Watertown, was the father of the author of "M'Fingal." Joseph, the second, settled at Lebanon, where he pursued the career of a prosperous farmer, and was the father of Jonathan, the subject of our sketch, who came into the world on the twelfth of October, 1710. We hear nothing of the youth till his entrance at Harvard, at the age of thirteen, when he appears modest, earnest, studious, fully prepared to avail himself of the advantages of the place. Beside the classics and various directions. mathematics with which he became ship operations, after the death of familiar, he carried away with him his father, in 1755, he was interested when he graduated in 1727, some in several branches in his own State, knowledge of Hebrew. More than all, in negotiations with houses in Boston, he was distinguished by his piety. He Nantucket, Halifax, the West Indies; was a member of a secret society, the with Bristol, London, and Amsterdam. The business carried on by Joseph Trumbull, and afterwards profitably extended by his son, consisted of direct importations from the mother country in vessels chartered and laden by themselves, with the productions of the country. His store was at Lebanon, but his operations were extended in In his partner |