le
preparatory lessons for the great conflict which was to follow. They
imposed the necessity of diligent industry and hard labor, equally
on men and soldiers. This was one of the famous schools of Roman
discipline. Fort Sullivan, better known as Fort Moultrie--was yet to be
built. When the Second Regiment entered it, it was little more than an
outline. Its shape was described upon the sand, and the palmetto rafts
lay around it, waiting to be moulded into form. The structure was an
inartificial one--a simple wall, behind which young beginners might
train guns to do mischief to a veteran enemy in front. Its form was
square, with a bastion at each angle, sufficiently large, when finished,
to cover a thousand men. It was built of logs, laid one upon another in
parallel rows, at a distance of sixteen feet, bound together at frequent
intervals with timber, dovetailed and bolted into the logs. The spaces
between were filled up with sand. The merlons were walled entirely
by palmetto logs, notched into one another at the angles, well bolted
together and strengthened with pieces of massy timber. Such was the plan
of the work; but, with all the diligence of the officers, and all the
industry of the men, it remained unfinished at the perilous moment when
a powerful British fleet appeared before its walls. The defence was
confided to Col. Moultrie. The force under his command was four hundred
and thirty-five men, rank and file, comprising four hundred and thirteen
of the Second Regiment of Infantry, and twenty-two of the Fourth
Regiment of Artillery. The whole number of cannon mounted on the
fortress was thirty-one, of these, nine were French twenty-sixes; six
English eighteens; nine twelve and seven nine pounders.*

* Weems, in his Life of Marion, represents the cannon as
made up principally of TWENTY-FOUR and THIRTY-SIX pounders;
but the official accounts are as I have given them. See
Drayton's Memoirs, vol. 2, pp. 290-1.--

General Charles Lee, who had been dispatched by the Continental
Congress, to take command of the Army of the South, would have abandoned
the fortress even before the appearance of the enemy. He was unwilling,
in such a position, to abide the conflict. He seems, naturally enough
for an officer brought up in a British Army, to have had an overweening
veneration for a British fleet, in which it is fortunate for the country
that the Carolinians did not share. In the unfinished condition of t