Lincoln reached Charleston on the fourth of December,1778and proceeded immediately to re-enforce the scattered army of Howe, after the fall of Savannah.Dec. 29, 1778 On the first intimation of the designs of the British upon the South, North Carolina raised about two thousand men, and placed them under Generals Ashe and Rutherford. They did not arrive in time to aid Howe at Savannah, but helped to augment the small force of Lincoln. These had entered the state; and to the concentration of these troops, and the raising of South Carolina militia, Lincoln bent all his energies. He chose Major Thomas Pinckney * as his chief aid, and on the twenty-sixth of December, he marched from Charleston with about three hundred levies of that vicinity, and about nine hundred and fifty levies and militia of North Carolina, for the Georgia frontier. On the way, they met the flying Americans from the disastrous battle at the capital of Georgia, and on the third of January Lincoln established his head-quarters at Purysburg, on the north side of the Savannah River. He had been promised seven thousand men; he had only about fourteen hundred. He had been promised supplies, instead of which the new levies, and militia conscripts who were brought to head-quarters, were destitute of tents, camp utensils, or lead, and had very little powder, and no field-pieces. The South Carolina militia, under Richardson, were insubordinate, and rapidly melted away by desertion, or became useless by actual refusal to be controled by any but their immediate commanders. Happily, their places were supplied by the arrival of General Ashe with eleven hundred North Carolinians at the close of January.Jan. 31, 1779
* Thomas Pinekney was born at Charleston on the twenty-third of October, 1750. His early years were passed in England. At the close of his studies there, he returned to Charleston, and, with his brother, Charles Cotesworth Pinekney, was among the earliest and most efficient military patriots in the provincial regiment raised there. Assured of his talents and worth, Lincoln appointed him his aid, and in that capacity he served at the siege of Savannah by the Americans and French in October, 1779. He distinguished himself in the battle at Stono Ferry. He was aid-de-camp to General Gates in the battle near Camden, where he was wounded and made a prisoner. When sufficiently recovered, he was sent to Philadelphia. In 1787, Major Pinckney succeeded General Moultrie as governor of South Carolina; and in 1792, was appointed by Washington, Minister Plenipotentiary to the Court of St. James. In November, 1794, he was appointed Envoy Extraordinary to the Spanish court, and repaired to Madrid the following summer. He effected a treaty by which the free navigation of the Mississippi was secured to the United States. He returned to Charleston in 1796. At the beginning of the war of 1812, President Madison appointed him to the command of the Southern division of the army, and it was under General Pinckney that General Andrew Jackson distinguished himself. After the war, General Pinekney retired into private life. He died on the 2d of November, 1828, aged seventy-eight years. He married the daughter of Rebecca Motte.
Battle on Port Royal Island.—Prevost's March toward Charleston.—Preparations to receive him.
While Lincoln was recruiting and organizing an army near Purysburg, General Prevost joined Campbell at Savannah, with seven hundred regular troops from St. Augustine. Hoping to follow up Campbell's success by striking Charleston, he sent forward Major Gardiner with two hundred men, to take post on Port Royal Island, within about sixty miles of the capital of South Carolina. General Moultrie, with about an equal number of Charleston militia, and two field-pieces, attacked and defeated Gardiner on the morning of the third of February.1779 The British lost almost all of their officers, and several privates were made prisoners. The loss of the Americans was trifling. Gardiner, with the remnant of his force, escaped in boats and fled to Savannah, while Moultrie, crossing to the main, pressed forward and joined Lincoln at Purysburg.
Strengthened by a party of Creeks and Cherokees, for whom a communication with Savannah was opened by the defeat of General Ashe on Brier Creek (see page 713), and informed that Lincoln, with his main army, was far up the river, near Augusta, Prevost determined to attempt the capture of Charleston. With about two thousand chosen troops, and a considerable body of Loyalists and Indians, he crossed the Savannah at Purysburg,April 25 and pushed forward by the road nearest the coast, toward Charleston.
When Lincoln was informed of this movement of Prevost, he considered it a feint to draw him from Georgia. With that view he crossed the Savannah, and for three days marched down its southern side, directly toward the capital of that state, hoping either to bring Prevost back or to capture Savannah. In the mean while, he detached Colonel Harris, with three hundred of his best light troops, to re-enforce Moultrie, who was retreating before Prevost, toward Charleston. Governor Rutledge, who had gone up to Orangeburg to embody the militia, advanced at the same time with six hundred men of that district, and when Lincoln recrossed the Savannah in pursuit of Prevost, the interesting spectacle was presented of four armies pressing toward Charleston. *
When Prevost commenced his invading march, Charleston was quite unprepared for an attack by land. The ferries of the Ashley were not fortified, and only some weak defenses guarded the Neck. Intelligence of the invasion aroused all the energies of the civil and military authorities in the city, and night and day the people labored in casting up intrenchments across the Neck from the Ashley to the Cooper, under the general direction of the Chevalier De Cambray, an accomplished French engineer. The Assembly, then in session, gave Rutledge power only a little less than was conferred upon him a few months afterward, when he was made dictator for the time, and the utmost energy was every where displayed. Lieutenant-governor Bee, with the council, aided the efforts to fortify the town by necessary legal orders. All the houses in the suburbs were burned, and within a few days a complete line of fortifications with abatis was raised across the Neck, on which several cannons were mounted. Colonel Marion, who commanded the garrison at Fort Moultrie, was re-enforced, and the battery on Haddrell's Point was well manned. These arrangements were effected before the arrival of Prevost, who halted, in hesitation, for three days at Pocataligo, on account of conflicting intelligence. This delay was fatal to his success, for it allowed the people of Charleston time to prepare for an attack.