Sullivan's Island Magazine Spring/Summer 2019

10 www.SullivansIslandMagazine.com | www.SullivansIslandHomes.com I magine, for a moment, a very different Lowcountry than the one we know. It’s the dead of summer during the Revolutionary War, and the royal assembly and royal representatives were run off last fall. There is a tense state of bitter “peace” while things are run by a group of patriots. On June 28, 1776, the world’s most powerful military made its move to capture Charleston, first launching a two-pronged assault on an unfinished fort on Sullivan’s Island. The rest is history. That’s the picture Andrew deHoll, a local lawyer and history buff, painted of that fateful day. “Think about the odds we were up against. You’re a militiaman watching nine British man-of-war ships – carrying about 300 cannons – sail into the harbor and anchor as close as 400 yards from shore. There are 2,200 British troops on the ground on Long Island (now Isle of Palms), preparing to cross over the small inlet at the north end of Sullivan’s,” he explained. “You are one of only 435 people defending a fort made of sand and logs – which General Charles Lee called a ‘slaughter pen’ and recommended abandoning – which only has two walls completed, and they’re just 10 feet high. Fort Sullivan is armed with 31 cannons and the American defenses at the north end of Sullivan’s only have three. We were painfully out-manned and out-supplied. Photos courtesy of Waccamaw Light Artillery. The Battle of Sullivan’s Island Why We Celebrate Carolina Day on June 28 By Anne Shuler Toole Carolina Day at White Point Gardens, 2008. Uniforms pictured are Civil War era.