PALMETTO AND POWDER: Remember the day Carolina held the line
There are dates that many South Carolinians carry in the blood whether or not they ever learned them in a classroom, and June 28, 1776, is one of them. Two hundred and fifty years later, the story of Sullivan’s Island still reads like something too improbable to be history — and yet there it stands, plain as the palmetto on our state flag.
Picture the scene: a half-finished square of spongy palmetto logs and packed sand, squatting at the mouth of Charleston Harbor, manned by 435 South Carolinians under Colonel William Moultrie.
Bearing down on them, nine British warships under Commodore Sir Peter Parker, carrying close to 270 heavy guns between them — a firepower advantage of nearly eight to one. General Charles Lee, sent down by Congress to oversee the defense, took one look at the unfinished fort and called it a “slaughter pen,” urging it be abandoned. SC President John Rutledge refused him outright, ordering Moultrie to obey Lee “in everything, except in leaving Fort Sullivan.”
It is a very Carolina kind of stubbornness, and it paid off.
At 11:30 that morning, the British fleet opened fire. For the better part of ten hours, the Royal Navy poured roughly 17 tons of gunpowder into the fort, hurling more than a thousand rounds its way. And here is where the story turns strange, then wonderful: the cannonballs simply would not cooperate. The soft, fibrous palmetto wood absorbed the shot rather than splintering, and a marshy hollow in the fort’s center swallowed shells that came down inside the walls before they could burst. Moultrie himself later marveled that the logs took cannon fire “like sponges.”
Meanwhile, Moultrie’s gunners — rationed to a mere 28 rounds for 26 guns — made every shot count, raking the British flagship Bristol until her captain was killed, and tearing into the Experiment so badly its captain lost an arm. When a British ball snapped the fort’s flagstaff and sent the blue Liberty flag tumbling to the beach, Sergeant William Jasper leapt down under fire, retrieved it, and ran it back up lashed to a sponge staff — a single act of nerve that Carolinians have told their children about for two and a half centuries.
By 9:30 that night, the British had had enough. Their ships limped back out to sea; one, the Actaeon, was left grounded and burning. Charleston, untaken, erupted in celebration once word reached the city. Six days later, delegates in Philadelphia adopted the Declaration of Independence — a document this scrappy stand on a sandbar helped make possible, by buying the rebellion time and giving proof that it could win against tremendous odds.
Every June 28th, many still remember and mark Carolina Day. It is worth remembering why: not just a battle won, but a lesson in what happens when you’re underestimated, undersupplied, and dug in anyway — and the palmetto holds.