it remained unfinished at the perilous moment when a powerful British fleet
appeared before its walls. The defence was confided to Col. Moultrie.
The force under his command was four hundred and thirty-five men,
rank and file, comprising four hundred and thirteen of the Second Regiment
of Infantry, and twenty-two of the Fourth Regiment of Artillery.
The whole number of cannon mounted on the fortress was thirty-one,
of these, nine were French twenty-sixes; six English eighteens;
nine twelve and seven nine pounders.*

--
* Weems, in his Life of Marion, represents the cannon as made up principally
of TWENTY-FOUR and THIRTY-SIX pounders; but the official accounts
are as I have given them. See Drayton's Memoirs, vol. 2, pp. 290-1.
--

General Charles Lee, who had been dispatched by the Continental Congress,
to take command of the Army of the South, would have abandoned the fortress
even before the appearance of the enemy. He was unwilling,
in such a position, to abide the conflict. He seems,
naturally enough for an officer brought up in a British Army,
to have had an overweening veneration for a British fleet,
in which it is fortunate for the country that the Carolinians did not share.
In the unfinished condition of the fort, which really presented little more
than a front towards the sea, his apprehensions were justifiable,
and, could the fort have been enfiladed, as the British designed,
it certainly would have been untenable. From the moment of his arrival,
to the very moment when the action was raging, his chief solicitude
seems to have been to ensure the defenders of the fortress a safe retreat.
It is to their immortal honor that this mortifying measure was unnecessary.