Cornwallis, with troops, was sent over under convoy of Sir Peter Parker's fleet, to give Clinton the army he needed. The fleet did not reach North Carolina till May. In March, [Charles] Lee, while in New York, had wished to be ordered to the command in Canada, as 'he was the only general officer on the continent who could speak and think in French.' He was disappointed, and ordered farther south. By May he was in Virginia, ridding the country of Tories, and trying to find out where Parker intended to land. It was expected that Clinton would return north to New York in season to operate with Howe, when he opened the campaign there in the early summer, as that general expected to do, and the interval for a diversion farther south was not long. Lee had now gone as far as Charleston (South Carolina), and taken command in that neighborhood, while in charge of the little fort at the entrance of the harbor was William Moultrie, upon whom Lee was inculcating the necessity of a slow and sure fire, in case it should prove that Parker's destination, as it might well be, was to get a foothold in the Southern provinces, and break up the commerce which fed the rebellion through that harbor. The people of Charleston had been for some time engaged on their defences, and 'seem to wish a trial of their mettle,' wrote a looker-on. The fort in question was built of palmetto logs, and was unfinished on the land side. Its defenders had four days' warning, and the neighboring militia were summoned. On the 4th of June the hostile fleet appeared, and having landed troops on an adjacent island, it was not till the 27th that their dispositions were made for an attack. Their ships threw shot at the fort all day, which did very little damage, while the return fire was rendered with a precision surprising in untried artillerists, and seriously damaged the fleet, of which one ship was grounded and abandoned. The expected land attack from Clinton's troops, already ashore on Long Island, was not made. A strong wind had raised the waters of the channel between that island and Sullivan's Island so high that it could not be forded, and suitable boats for the passage were not at hand. A few days later the shattered vessels and the troops left the neighborhood, and Colonel Moultrie had leisure to count the cost of his victory, which was twelve killed and twice as many wounded. The courage of Sergeant Jasper, in replacing on the bastion a flag which had been shot away, became at once a household anecdote." _J. Winsor, The Conflict Precipitated (Narrative and Critical History of America. volume 6, chapter 2)._ _ALSO IN: H. Flanders, Life of John Rutledge, chapter 10 (Lives of the Chief Justices, volume 1)._