Taught by experience to suspect the promises of royalty or its representatives, the people took measures to test his sincerity. The hollowness of his professions was proven, and turning their backs upon him, the patriots proceeded in their preparations for armed resistance. A vessel was fitted out by the Committee of Safety to attempt the capture of an English sloop laden with powder, then lying at St. Augustine. The expedition was successful, and fifteen thousand pounds of powder were brought safely into Charleston, though chased by cruisers sent out by Campbell. Part of this powder, which was sent to the Continental Congress for the use of the grand army, was used by Arnold and his men in the siege of Quebec at the close of 1775.
Early in September,1775 Colonel Moultriel proceeded to take possession of the fort on Sullivan's Island, in Charleston harbor.
The small garrison made no resistance, but fled to the British sloops of war Tamar and Cherokee, then lying in Rebellion Roads, in front of Fort Sullivan. Lord Campbell, perceiving the storm of popular indignation against him daily increasing, particularly when it became known that he was endeavoring to incite the Indians on the frontier to lift the hatchet for the king, and was tampering with the Tories in the interior, also fled to these vessels for shelter, and thus "abdicated" royal power.Sept. 14
The Provincial Council now increased the defenses of the city, and organized a company of artillery. They also took measures for fortifying the harbor. Lieutenant-colonel Motte, accompanied by Captains Charles Cotes worth Pinckney, Bernard Elliot, and Francis Marion, took possession of Fort Johnson,-on James Island, and on the same evening, Captain Heyward, with thirty-five of the Charleston artillery, went down and mounted three guns in the place of those spiked by the garrison when they fled.
Three days afterward, the first Republican flag displayed at the South was floating over the main bastion of the fortress. **
* William Moultrie was a native of South Carolina. He was born in 1730. We find him first in public-service as an officer, in the expedition against the Cherokees in 1760. He was also in subsequent expeditions against that unhappy people. When the Revolution broke out, he was among the earliest in South Carolina to take the field on the Republican side. His defense of the fort on Sullivan's Island in 1776. gave him great eclat, and he was promoted to brigadier. He gained a battle over the British near Beaufort in 1779, and in May, 1780, was second in command when Charleston was besieged. He went to Philadelphia while a prisoner of war, and did not return to South Carolina until 1782. He was several times chosen governor of the state, and retired from public life only when the infirmities of age demanded repose. He published his Memoirs of the Revolution, relating to the war in the South, in two volumes, in 1802, printed by David Longworth, of New York. Governor Moultrie died at Charleston on the twenty-seventh of September, 1805, at the age of seventy-five years.