Isolated from other English colonies by a wide region of forest, the Charlestonians, with Spaniards to the south and Indians to the west of them, and with Cape Hatteras as a menace to commerce with the North Atlantic seaboard, were compelled from the first to think and act for themselves. In 1698, they made the first attempt to form a public library; in 1735, they organized the “Friendly Society,” their first insurance company; and as early as 1774 a Chamber of Commerce was established in Charleston. They made in 1764 the second attempt in the colonies to provide for the care of the insane. At the opening of the war of the Revolution Charleston was one of the three leading seaports of the country. Apart from its strategic value and as a base of supplies, the British government doubtless desired especially to punish the rebels of one of the most favored colonies, which by bounties on indigo and otherwise had been most generously treated by the mother country. There were many Charlestonians who were loyal to the King and who fought for England during the Revolution, sundering family ties, and, some of them, self-exiled like Bull and Moultrie, eventually dying in London. The presence of these loyal adherents of the King only served to heighten the intensity of those who were anxious to unite the colonies, and, as a consequence, as far back as 1765, South Carolina took the first steps toward a continental union before the measure had been agreed upon by any colony south of New England. “Massachusetts,” says Bancroft, “sounded the trumpet, but to South Carolina is it owing that it was attended to. Had it not been for South Carolina, no congress would then have happened.” The first independent constitution in any of the colonies was that of South Carolina, formulated in Charleston in March, 1776, though the Colony had had a virtually independent government from the 6th of July, 1774. [Illustration: DEFENCE OF FORT MOULTRIE. FROM A PAINTING BY J. A. OERTEL.] “On the 11th of January, 1775,” says Simms, “the first Revolutionary provincial Congress met and laid the foundation for the more regular meeting of the convention of March, 1776, by which the first constitution of South Carolina was formed.” On June 28, 1776, Charleston was besieged by a British fleet under Sir Peter Parker, as well as by a land army, under Sir Henry Clinton, and the first great victory of the Revolution was won by the gallant General Moultrie. The military student will tell you that Sir Peter Parker could easily have run his great fleet past the palmetto fort on Sullivan’s Island, and that he met disaster and defeat by following a military rule of that day,--never to leave an enemy in a fortified post behind you. It is interesting to know that the twenty-four pounder, the largest ball in use at the battle of Fort Moultrie, was the smallest in use during the siege of Charleston in the war between the States.