Throughout a considerable portion of the country the news of the Declaration of Independence was accompanied by the news of a brilliant success at the South. After the defeat of Macdonald at Moore's Creek, and the sudden arming of North Carolina, Clinton did not venture to land, but cruised about in the neighbourhood, awaiting the arrival of Sir Peter Parker's squadron from Ireland. Harassed by violent and contrary winds, Parker was three months in making the voyage, and it was not until May that he arrived bringing with him Lord Cornwallis. As North Carolina had given such unmistakable evidence of its real temper, it was decided not to land upon that coast for the present, but to go south and capture Charleston and Savannah. Lord William Campbell, refugee governor of South Carolina, urged that there was a great loyalist party in that colony, which would declare itself as soon as the chief city should be in the hands of the king's troops. That there would be any serious difficulty in taking Charleston occurred to no one. But Colonel Moultrie had thrown up on Sullivan's Island, commanding the harbour, a fortress of palmetto logs strengthened by heavy banks of sand, and now held it with a force of twelve hundred men, while five thousand militia were gathered about the town, under command of General Charles Lee, who had been sent down to meet the emergency, but did little more than to meddle and hinder. In his character of trained European officer, Lee laughed to scorn Moultrie's palmetto stronghold, and would have ordered him to abandon it, but that he was positively overruled by John Rutledge, president of the provincial congress, who knew Moultrie and relied upon his sound judgment. The British commanders, Clinton and Parker, wasted three weeks in discussing various plans of attack, while the Americans, with spade and hatchet, were rapidly barring every approach to Charleston, and fresh regiments came pouring in to man the new-built intrenchments. At last Clinton landed three thousand men on a naked sand-bank, divided from Sullivan's Island by a short space of shallow sea, which he thought could be forded at low tide. At the proper time Sir Peter Parker was to open a lively fire from the fleet, which it was expected would knock down the fort in a few minutes, while Clinton, fording the shoals, would drive out the Americans at the point of the bayonet. The shoals, however, turned out to be seven feet deep at low water, and the task of the infantry was reduced to a desperate conflict with the swarms of mosquitoes, which nearly drove them frantic. The battle thus became a mere artillery duel between the fort and the fleet. The British fire was rapid and furious, but ineffective. Most of the shot passed harmlessly over the low fortress, and those which struck did no harm to its elastic structure. The American fire was very slow, and few shots were wasted. The cable of Parker's flagship was cut by a well-aimed ball, and the ship, swinging