s, fourteen English eighteens, nine twelve and
seven nine pounders. Finding the fort could be easily enfiladed, Gen.
Lee advised abandoning it; but the governor refused, telling Moultrie
to keep his post, until he himself ordered the retreat. Moultrie, on
his part, required no urging to adopt this more heroic course. A
spectator happening to say, that in half an hour the enemy would knock
the fort to pieces. "Then," replied Moultrie, undauntedly, "we will
lie behind the ruins, and prevent their men from landing." Lee with
many fears left the island, and repairing to his camp on the main
land, prepared to cover the retreat of the garrison, which he
considered inevitable.

[Footnote 1: From a work now in press, and shortly to be published,
entitled "_The Military Heroes of the United States. By C. J.
Peterson. 2 vols. 8vo. 500 pp._"]

There was, perhaps, more of bravado than of sound military policy in
attacking this fort at all, since the English fleet might easily have
run the gauntlet of it, as was done a few years later. But Fort
Moultrie was destined to be to the navy what Bunker Hill had been to
the army. It was in consequence of excess of scorn for his enemy, that
Sir Peter Parker, disdaining to leave such a place in his rear,
resolved on its total demolition. He had no doubt but that, in an hour
at the utmost, he could make the unpracticed Carolinians glad to sue
for peace on any terms. Accordingly on the 28th of June, 1776, he
entered the harbor, in all the parade of his proud ships, nine in
number, and drawing up abreast the fort, let go his anchors with
springs upon his cables, and began a furious cannonade. Meanwhile
terror reigned in Charleston. As the sound of the first gun went
booming over the waters toward the town, the trembling inhabitants who
had been crowding the wharves and lining the house-tops since early
morning, turned pale with ominous forebodings. Nor were the feelings
of the defenders of the fort less anxious. Looking off, over the low
island intervening between them and the city, they could see the
gleaming walls of their distant homes; and their imaginations conjured
up the picture of those dear habitations given to the flames, as
another Charlestown had been, a twelve-month before, and the still
dearer wives that inhabited them, cast houseless upon the world. As
they turned from this spectacle, and watched the haughty approach of
the enemy, at every motion betraying confidence of success,