FORT MOULTRIE, _Sullivan’s Island_: A glorious day in the annals of South Carolina was the twenty-eighth of June, 1776. A partially built fort of palmetto logs repulsed the proud British fleet under Sir Peter Parker. Above this rude fort floated a South Carolina flag with a blue field in which was one crescent and the word LIBERTY. It was this flag that Sergeant Jasper rescued, his gallant deed commemorating his name. The first government of any of the thirteen American colonies was established at Charlestown, March, 1776, with John Rutledge as president, Henry Laurens as vice-president and William Henry Drayton as chief justice. Against Colonel William Moultrie’s rude fort on that June day in 1776 was pitted a trained fleet of eleven armed vessels carrying 270 guns. Moultrie’s garrison comprised 435 men. While Moultrie was engaged with Sir Peter Parker, Colonel William Thomson with 800 men and two cannons prevented Sir Henry Clinton from landing his soldiery. In the Battle of Fort Moultrie the defenders suffered only thirty-seven casualties while the fleet suffered more than 200, and the loss of a frigate. It was from Fort Moultrie that Major Robert Anderson on the night of December 26, 1860, removed his Union garrison into Fort Sumter. The Confederates used Fort Moultrie against the invading Union forces until Fort Sumter was abandoned by the South’s defenders. Before Anderson left Moultrie, he had spiked the guns and burned their carriages. Fort Moultrie helped make Morris Island an unhappy place for Union troops under General Gilmore. At the entrance to the old fort is the grave of Osceola, chief of the Seminoles, who was brought a captive after the war in Florida a hundred years ago. In these years the fort gives name to a reservation which is the headquarters of the Eighth Infantry, a small detail of Coast Artillerymen being on duty with the coast defense guns.