that the governor and three of his council should leave the town;
and that Lieut. Gov. Gadsden and five others should remain. The ships of war,
in the harbour of Charleston, being quite inadequate to oppose
the force which had passed Fort Moultrie, were divested of their guns,
to reinforce the batteries, and were sunk nearly opposite the exchange,
to impede the passage of the enemy up Cooper river. Soon after this,
Sir Henry Clinton, being reinforced by two thousand five hundred men,
under Lord Cornwallis, pushed them over Cooper river,
and enclosed the besieged on the side of St. Thomas' parish and Christ church;
and the town was now completely invested by land and water. About this time,
the American forces in the field having been defeated, as hereafter
to be narrated, and the British having completed their second parallel,
an offer to capitulate was made by Lincoln, to Sir Henry Clinton,
and rejected. The batteries of the besiegers, having now obtained
a decided superiority over those of the besieged, when the third parallel
had opened its cannonade, and the British having crossed the wet ditch by sap,
they opened a fire of rifles within twenty-five yards of the Americans.
The caution of Sir Henry Clinton, in advancing so slowly, had been extreme,
and the unsuspecting security of the Americans was still great;
but Gen. Duportail, a French officer of engineers, having arrived in town
before the communication was closed with the country, declared,
that the works of the besieged were not tenable, and might have been stormed
ten days before. This disclosed his true situation, and induced Gen. Lincoln
to listen to a capitulation, which was proposed to him on the 8th of May.
From that until the 10th, the negociation was continued.
On the 11th, the capitulation was agreed to, and, on the next day,
the Americans marched out and grounded their arms. After a siege
of a month and fourteen days, 2500 men submitted to an army of 12,000;
and it was only surprising they held out so long. The continental
troops and sailors were to remain prisoners of war until exchanged;