WEBVTT NOTE 19. The British Assault on Charleston 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:12.000 Volume 4, Part 3. The War in the First Half of 1776. Volume 4, Chapter 19. The British Assault on Charleston. 2 00:00:12.000 --> 00:00:23.000 Bereft of hope for loyalist aid in the South and ordered to return north in a short while, General Clinton still had his powerful expeditionary force. 3 00:00:23.000 --> 00:00:53.000 And there was no point in not using it. He decided, not unexpectedly, to attack and seize the key southern port of Charleston, or at least Fort Sullivan in its harbor, which the British could then use as a firm base for invasion of the entire Southland, aided by General Charles Lord Cornwallis, over 3,000 regulars and a strong fleet of over 50 warships under Commodore Sir Peter 4 00:00:53.000 --> 00:01:00.120 Dr. Harker, Clinton sailed against Charleston to assault it by land and by sea. 5 00:01:00.120 --> 00:01:05.960 The American leadership knew that General Charles Lee was perhaps the only man who could 6 00:01:05.960 --> 00:01:07.440 save Charleston. 7 00:01:07.440 --> 00:01:14.200 Indeed, Lee was in urgent demand everywhere as John Adams wrote to him, We want you at 8 00:01:14.200 --> 00:01:15.320 New York. 9 00:01:15.320 --> 00:01:17.440 We want you at Cambridge. 10 00:01:17.440 --> 00:01:20.000 We want you in Virginia. 11 00:01:20.000 --> 00:01:24.920 George Washington wanted him in New York to counter the expected transfer there of the 12 00:01:24.920 --> 00:01:32.040 main British force from Boston. As Washington, later to be Lee's mortal enemy, wrote to his 13 00:01:32.040 --> 00:01:38.960 brother at the time, he, Lee, is the first officer in military knowledge and experience 14 00:01:38.960 --> 00:01:44.680 we have in the whole army. If he could have been spared, Lee probably would have been 15 00:02:14.680 --> 00:02:21.400 John Adams and Franklin and the unpredictable Hancock sent him glowing and optimistic letters 16 00:02:21.400 --> 00:02:28.400 of congratulation. But no sooner had he accepted the post and asked his assistance for either 17 00:02:28.400 --> 00:02:35.280 General John Sullivan or the able young General Nathaniel Green, an admirer of Lee, who had 18 00:02:35.280 --> 00:02:41.840 served under him at Boston, then Congress changed its mind. The Southern leaders were 19 00:02:41.840 --> 00:02:47.640 were now beginning to dread a British attack on the South, so at the end of February, the 20 00:02:47.640 --> 00:02:54.160 Southern members persuaded Congress to name Lee Head of a newly established Southern military 21 00:02:54.160 --> 00:03:00.080 department covering Virginia, the Carolinas and Georgia. 22 00:03:00.080 --> 00:03:05.560 Lee hastily left New York, where he'd been cowing the Tories in strengthening defenses 23 00:03:05.560 --> 00:03:11.720 to assume his Southern military post, virtually independent of Washington. Indeed, with the 24 00:03:11.720 --> 00:03:20.720 In his imminent retirement of aging Artemis Ward, Lee was soon to be the second ranking general in the Continental Army. 25 00:03:20.720 --> 00:03:37.720 Taking up his post at Williamsburg at the end of March, Lee, in veteran scourge of the Tories, was horrified to find Maryland's royal governor, Robert Eden, basking unmolested in wide personal popularity. 26 00:03:37.720 --> 00:03:47.720 Learning from captured dispatches that Eden intended to help a British invasion of the South, Lee urged Maryland to arrest him. 27 00:03:47.720 --> 00:04:03.720 When Maryland's newly constituted rebel authorities refused, Lee, with the support of the Virginia Council of Safety, boldly went over their heads to appeal for Eden's arrest to Samuel Perveance, Chairman of the Baltimore Committee of Safety. 28 00:04:03.720 --> 00:04:12.720 Perveance and the Baltimore Committee readily agreed and sent a small troop to the capital at Annapolis to arrest Eden. 29 00:04:12.720 --> 00:04:25.720 The angry conservatives of the Maryland Council of Safety at Annapolis prevented Perveance and his men from fulfilling their task and issued condemnations of the actions of the Baltimore Committee. 30 00:04:25.720 --> 00:04:36.720 The Council of Safety would do no more than place Eden on parole, and even an order of the Continental Congress could not persuade the Council to place him under arrest. 31 00:04:36.720 --> 00:04:47.720 Instead, in June, the Maryland Convention peacefully suggested the Eden leave for England, allowing him to depart, unsearched and unseized. 32 00:04:47.720 --> 00:05:00.720 Soon after his arrival, Lee learned of Clinton's projected invasion of North Carolina from captured documents and swiftly organized defenses and armed forces in the South. 33 00:05:00.720 --> 00:05:09.720 The Tories, having been crushed in North Carolina, it was clear to him that Clinton would soon strike in force either at South Carolina or Virginia. 34 00:05:09.720 --> 00:05:26.720 When Clinton appeared off North Carolina in early May, Lee moved his 1300 Virginia troops south to New Bern, slowly, so as not to be committed erroneously to a South Carolina theater of war while neglecting Virginia. 35 00:05:26.720 --> 00:05:40.720 By the beginning of June, Lee had learned that the British were probably sailing to Charleston, and he rushed down to the defense of that city in a battle that would decide the fate of the South for several years at the least. 36 00:05:40.720 --> 00:05:47.720 Both the Americans and the British fleet arrived at Charleston in early June 1776. 37 00:05:47.720 --> 00:05:54.840 Leigh found the defenses at Charleston hopelessly inadequate. President John Rutledge of South 38 00:05:54.840 --> 00:06:00.880 Carolina's rebel government, in charge of the South Carolina militia, refused to abandon 39 00:06:00.880 --> 00:06:07.600 Fort Sullivan on Sullivan's island in Charleston Harbor, which Leigh found to be in an exposed 40 00:06:07.600 --> 00:06:14.080 and unsound position. Fortunately, however, bad weather and harbor conditions delayed 41 00:06:14.080 --> 00:06:20.240 The British attack for several weeks, allowing Lee to shore up the defenses of the fort and 42 00:06:20.240 --> 00:06:27.320 Charleston Harbor with great energy. On June 28, the British fleet attacked, but clumsy 43 00:06:27.320 --> 00:06:33.160 piloting ran several of their frigates aground. The gallant band at the fort under Colonel 44 00:06:33.160 --> 00:06:40.400 William Moultrie were almost miraculously able to outgun and batter the vaunted British 45 00:06:40.400 --> 00:06:45.600 of the British Fleet, even though they were badly short of ammunition, and there were 46 00:06:45.600 --> 00:06:52.280 very few American casualties. After a few weeks of hesitation, the British abandoned 47 00:06:52.280 --> 00:06:58.720 their plans and sailed north. Lee, Moultrie and their heroic men at Fort Sullivan had 48 00:06:58.720 --> 00:07:07.080 saved Charleston and with it much of the south. Paul Smith, in opposition to other historians, 49 00:07:07.080 --> 00:07:14.080 makes a quite unconvincing case for deprecating the importance of the Battle of Sullivan's Island.