that Moultrie received. At three in the afternoon, Lee, on a report from his aide-de-camp, Byrd, sent Muhlenberg's Virginia riflemen to re-enforce Thomson. A little before five, Moultrie was able to renew his fire. At about five, the marines in the ships' tops, seeing a lieutenant with eight or ten men remove the heavy barricade from the gateway of the fort, thought that Moultrie and his party were about to retreat; but the gateway was unbarred to receive a visit from Lee. The officers, half naked, and begrimed with the hot day's work, respectfully laid down their pipes as he drew near. The general himself pointed two or three guns, after which he said to Moultrie: "Colonel, I see you are doing very well here; you have no occasion for me; I will go up to town again;" and thus he left the fort.

When, at a few minutes past seven, the sun went down in a blaze of light, the battle was still raging, though the British showed signs of weariness. The inhabitants of Charleston, whom the evening sea-breeze collected on the battery, could behold the flag of liberty still proudly waving; and they continued gazing anxiously, till the short twilight was suddenly merged in the deep darkness of a southern night, when nothing was seen but continual flashes, followed by peals as it were of thunder coming out from a heavy cloud. Many thousand shot were fired from the shipping, and hardly a hut or a tree on the island remained unhurt; but the works were very little damaged, and only one gun was silenced. The firing from the fort continued slowly; and the few shot they were able to send were heard to strike against the ships' timbers. Just after nine o'clock, a great part of his ammunition being expended in a cannonade of about ten hours, his people fatigued, the Bristol and the Experiment made nearly wrecks, the tide of ebb almost done, with no prospect of help from the army, Sir Peter Parker resolved to withdraw. At half-past nine his ships slipped their cables, and dropped down with the tide to their previous moorings.

Of the four hundred and thirty-five Americans in the fort who took part in this action, all but eleven remained alive, and but twenty-six were wounded. At so small a cost of life had Charleston been defended, and the colony saved.

When, after a cannonade of about ten hours, the firing

ceased, the inhabitants of Charleston remained in suspense, till a boat from Moultrie announced his victory. At morning's dawn the Acteon frigate was seen fast aground at about four hundred yards from the fort. The Syren had got off, and so too had the Sphinx, yet with the loss of her bowsprit. Some shots were exchanged, but the company of the Acteon soon set fire to her, and deserted her. Men from the fort boarded her while she was burning, pointed and discharged two or three of her guns at the commodore, and loaded their three boats from her stores. In one half of an hour after they abandoned her she blew up; and, to the eyes of the Carolinians, the pillar of smoke over the vessel took the form of the palmetto.

The Bristol had forty men killed and seventy-one wounded. Lord William Campbell received a contusion in his left side, of which, after lingering two years, he died. Sir Peter Parker was slightly injured. About seventy balls went through his ship; her mizzen-mast was so much hurt that it fell early the next morning; the main-mast was cut away about fifteen feet below the hounds; and the broad pendant streamed from a jury-mast lower than the foremast. But for the stillness of the sea she must have gone down. On board the Experiment twenty-three were killed and fifty-six wounded; Scott, her captain, lost his left arm, and was otherwise severely wounded; the ship was much damaged, her mizzen gaff was shot away. The loss of the British fleet, in killed and wounded, was two hundred and five. The royal governors of North and of South Carolina, as well as Clinton and Cornwallis and seven regiments, were witnesses of the defeat. The commodore and the general long indulged in reciprocal criminations. Nothing remained for the army but to quit the sands of Long Island, yet three weeks more passed away before they embarked in transports for New York, under the single "convoy of the Solebay frigate, the rest of the fleet being under the necessity of remaining still longer to refit."

The success of the Carolinians saved not a post, but the state. It kept seven regiments away from New York for two months; it gave security to Georgia, and three years' peace to Carolina; it dispelled throughout the South the dread of British superiority; it drove the loyalists into obscurity. To the

other colonies it was a message of brotherhood and union from South Carolina as a self-directing republic.

On the morning of the twenty-ninth Charleston harbor was studded with sails and alive with the voices of men hastening to congratulate the victors. They crowded round their deliverers with transports of gratitude; they gazed on the uninjured walls of the fortress; they enjoyed the sight of the wreck of the Acteon, of the discomfited men-of-war riding at anchor at two and a half miles' distance; they laughed at the commodore's broad pendant, scarcely visible on a jury maintopmast, while their own blue flag crowned the merlon. Letters of congratulation came down from Rutledge and from Gadsden; and Lee gave his witness that "no men ever did or could behave better."

On the afternoon of the thirtieth Lee reviewed the garrison, and renewed to them the praise that was their due. While they were thus drawn out the women of Charleston presented to the second regiment a pair of silken colors, one of blue, one of red, richly embroidered by their own hands; and Susanna Smith Elliott, a scion of one of the oldest families of the colony, who, being left an orphan, had been brought up by Rebecca Brewton Motte, stepped forth to the front of the intrepid band in matronly beauty, young and stately, light-haired, with eyes of mild expression, and a pleasant countenance, and, as she put the flags into the hands of Moultrie and Motte, she said in a low, sweet voice: "Your gallant behavior in defence of liberty and your country entitles you to the highest honors; accept these two standards as a reward justly due to your regiment; and I make not the least doubt, under heaven's protection, you will stand by them as long as they can wave in the air of liberty." The regiment, plighting the word which they were to keep sacredly at the cost of many of their lives, answered: "The colors shall be honorably supported, and shall never be tarnished."

On the fourth of July, Rutledge came to visit the garrison. There stood Moultrie, there Motte, there Marion, there Peter Horry, there William Jasper, and all survivors of the battle. When Rutledge, in the name of South Carolina, returned thanks to the defenders, his burning words adequately ex

pressed the impassioned gratitude of the people. To Jasper was offered a lieutenant's commission, which he modestly declined, accepting only a sword.

South Carolina, by her president and the common voice, spontaneously decreed that the post on Sullivan's Island should, for all future time, be known as Fort Moultrie; her assembly crowned her victorious sons with applause. The tidings leaped from colony to colony on their way to the North, and the continental congress voted their thanks to Lee, Moultrie, Thomson, and the officers and men under their command. But, at the time of that vote, congress was no more the representative of dependent colonies; the victory at Fort Moultrie was the bright morning star that harbingered American independence.

CHAPTER XXVI.

VIRGINIA PROCLAIMS THE RIGHTS OF MAN AND PROPOSES INDEPENDENCE.

MAY-JUNE 1776.

On the sixth of May forty-five members of the house of burgesses of Virginia met at the capitol in Williamsburg pursuant to their adjournment; but, as they were of the opinion that the ancient constitution had been subverted by the king and parliament of Great Britain, they dissolved themselves unanimously, and thus the last vestige of the king's authority passed away.

The delegates of Virginia who on the same morning met in convention were a constituent and an executive body. Not less than one hundred and thirty in number, they represented the oldest of the colonies, whose institutions had been fashioned after the model recommended by Bacon, and whose inhabitants for nearly a hundred and seventy years had maintained the church of England as the establishment of the dominion, and had been heartily loyal to their kings.

Its people, having in their origin a perceptible but never an exclusive influence of the cavaliers, had sprung mainly from adventurers, who were not fugitives for conscience' sake, or sufferers from persecution. The population had been recruited by successive infusions of Scotch-Irish Presbyterians; Huguenots, and the descendants of Huguenots; men who had been so attached to Cromwell or to the republic that they preferred to emigrate on the return of Charles II.; Baptists and other dissenters; and in the valley of Virginia there was a very large German population.