Fort Moultrie, when once it is reached, is not a pretentious place,—the old works, that is,—being simply a star-shaped fort of brownish-red brick on which the hot southern sun pours down in quantity. It overlooks a rumpled beach and the sea on one side and flat uninteresting land on the other. To the seaward one can gaze upon Fort Sumter and find it not more interesting of aspect close at hand than it is at a distance. Beside the gate of Fort Moultrie is a small marble shaft which marks the grave of Osceola, the Seminole chieftain. If one has devoured Indian tales in his youth he will no doubt be more interested in this simple memorial than in the immediate aspect of military things around him. It was in Fort Moultrie that Osceola was jailed after his capture in Florida and it was here that he died,—from a broken heart, if one is still interested in Indian stories!
The present Fort Moultrie was started in 1841 on the site of a famous old palmetto structure of the same name which had stood since early Revolutionary days. In 1903, with the exquisite tact which it displays occasionally, army headquarters in Washington decided to change the name of the fort to Fort Getty in honor of some deserving soldier whose career is recorded in the files of the Army Department, but the loud chorus of indignation that greeted this move carried all the way from Charleston to Washington, and the name of that delightful old Revolutionary character, William H. Moultrie, is still preserved at the spot where his first battle was fought.
The foundations of Fort Moultrie were laid in January, 1776, when a Mr. Dewees, owner of the island which bears his name, was ordered to deliver at Sullivan’s Island palmetto logs eighteen to twenty feet long and not less than ten inches in diameter in the middle; and Colonel Moultrie was ordered to superintend the erection of a fort from this material. It was not completed in June when the British came into view. In design a double square pen it was built of palmetto logs piled one upon the other and securely bolted together; the space between the outer and inner pen was about sixteen feet and this was filled in with sand; there were square bastions. The walls were intended to be ten feet high above the gun platforms where were mounted 64 guns.
The British fleet bearing a land force was under the command of Admiral Sir Peter Parker, and reached Cape Fear early in May, where it was joined by Sir Henry Clinton from New York with a portion of the troops which had participated in the Battle of Bunker Hill. Clinton assumed command of all the land forces. On the 4th of June the fleet appeared off Charleston bar and a small force of men was landed on Long Island, the island just north of Sullivan’s Island, and on the 28th of June advanced under Sir Peter Parker to give battle to Fort Sullivan, as Moultrie was then known. There were brought into action in this engagement the following English vessels: The Bristol and Experiment of 50 guns each; the frigates Active, Solebay, Acteon, Siren, and Sphinx of 28 guns each; the Thunderbomb and Ranger, sloops, of 28 guns; and the Friendship of 22 guns, in all, a very powerful squadron. The Americans had their unfinished palmetto fort, 64 guns and 1200 men. Several days before the battle the fussy General Charles Lee, whom Washington afterwards in his only recorded uncontrolled exhibition of temper called, at the battle of Monmouth, “a damned poltroon,” had removed to another defence of the city half of the small quantity of gunpowder which Moultrie had been given for the defence of his fort.
The command of the defence of Charleston had been given to General Lee by the Continental Congress, and General Lee had appeared in the city on the same day that the British fleet was sighted off the bar. From the first he seems to have been in conflict with Moultrie. Moultrie’s fort, he said, was poorly designed, and doubtless it was; Moultrie should provide a means of retreat for his men, and Moultrie replied that they would never use it; and Moultrie this and that. Moultrie himself, his admirers were forced to admit, was “a man of very easy manners, leaving to others many things which he had better have attended to himself.”
But the point is that Moultrie carried this same easiness of manner and mental poise into battle with him and was on this account an ideal officer to direct a fight. He had, moreover, the unlimited confidence and affection of his men and he knew the people he was working with.
The British appeared off Fort Sullivan just when the feeling between General Lee and Moultrie was at an acute stage. We find Moultrie now at face with the problem of defending his “slaughter pen” fort against an overwhelming force with the insufficient quantity of gunpowder which General Lee had left him.
The ships formed in double column and poured a terrific fire upon the fort. Moultrie feared that the concussion of the shells would rock his guns off their platforms. “Concentrate upon the Admiral, upon the fifty-gun ships!” This was Moultrie’s direction to his men. The Americans, expert marksmen that they were, obeyed his commands and the Bristol and the Experiment suffered fearfully, the captains of these two great ships being mortally wounded.
The Americans now began to run short of powder. Colonel Moultrie sent a despatch for more. He was in pressing need, but no one would have guessed it from his message which read as follows:
I think we shall want more powder; at the rate we go on I think we shall. But you can see for yourself; pray send more if you think proper.