Fort Moultrie

• 1. Introduction

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  Fort Moultrie sits on Sullivan's Island, South Carolina, guarding the approach to Charleston harbor. It is not one fort but a series of fortifications built, destroyed, rebuilt, and modernized across nearly two centuries. The story it tells begins with palmetto logs that bounced cannonballs, and ends on the 15th of August, 1947, when soldiers lowered the American flag for the last time after 171 years of continuous service. How did a half-finished log structure on a barrier island stop the Royal Navy? Why did the palmetto tree become the symbol of an entire state? And how did a fort that survived British bombardment, hurricanes, and the Civil War end up as a tour stop managed by the National Park Service? These questions run through Fort Moultrie's long and layered history.

• 2. The Palmetto Fort

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  On the 2nd of March, 1776, Colonel William Moultrie took command of Sullivan's Island with a garrison of 413 men from the 2nd South Carolina Regiment and 22 artillerymen from the 4th South Carolina Regiment. The fort they occupied was far from finished. Captain De Brahm was supervising construction at the southern tip of the island, and only the southeast curtain walls and bastions were complete by late June. The northern portion stood just 7 feet high. The intended design called for parallel rows of palmetto logs 10 feet apart, filled in with 16 feet of packed material between them.

  On the 28th of June, 1776, Royal Navy Admiral Sir Peter Parker led nine warships against the incomplete fort. His gunners expected to reduce the walls quickly. Instead, the soft palmetto logs absorbed the shot rather than shattering, and cannonballs reportedly bounced off the structure entirely. Moultrie and his roughly four hundred men fought through a full day of bombardment. Parker's fleet ended the engagement heavily damaged and withdrew. The fort's name was changed to Fort Moultrie in the colonel's honor afterward.

  Flying from the southeast bastion during the battle was a blue flag with the word 'Liberty' on it, designed by Moultrie himself and authorized by the colonial government. That flag became known as the Moultrie flag, or Liberty flag, and took on enduring significance across the southern colonies. The palmetto log construction inspired South Carolina's nickname, 'The Palmetto State', and the flag that flew over the fort that day shaped what would eventually become the state flag. Charleston still marks the 28th of June with a local observance called Carolina Day.

• 3. Occupation and Aftermath

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  Britain's eventual capture of Fort Moultrie came not through a naval assault but through the broader Siege of Charleston in the spring of 1780. Under British control, the fort was renamed Fort Arbuthnot. The name stuck until 1782, when British troops departed South Carolina following the Patriot victory in the wider war. General Nathanael Greene, commander of the southern Regulars, presented the flag in Charleston at that time.

  With the British gone, the fort's physical condition deteriorated. American authorities eventually launched a nationwide program to reinforce important harbors, known as the first system of fortifications. A new fort was completed atop the decayed original in 1798, and the Army garrisoned it with Captain Jonathan Robeson's company of the Regiment of Artillerists by 1802. The Antigua-Charleston hurricane of 1804 destroyed that structure entirely. A second rebuilding followed under the Second System of fortifications in 1808-09, directed by Army engineer Alexander Macomb. A report by the Secretary of War in December 1811 described the rebuilt fort as an irregular brick structure with batteries on three sea-facing sides and capacity for roughly five hundred soldiers, mounting 40 guns. Fort Moultrie also began recording meteorological observations in the early 1820s, adding a scientific function alongside its military one.

• 4. Osceola's Imprisonment

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  For fifty years the Army used Fort Moultrie to hold Native American prisoners. Osceola, one of the most prominent leaders of Seminole resistance in Florida, was captured in late 1837 along with several fellow Seminoles and transferred to the fort. He had resisted American expansion for years and was a well-known figure across the country by the time of his capture.

  Osceola died of malaria in January 1838, at Fort Moultrie. The Army buried his body at the front gate of the fort and maintained his grave there afterward. His imprisonment and death at Fort Moultrie made the site a place of national attention beyond its military purpose, and his grave remained a marked feature of the fort long after his death.

• 5. The Civil War Years

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  As secession approached in 1860, John L. Gardner commanded Fort Moultrie and repeatedly asked Secretary of War John B. Floyd for reinforcements. Floyd ignored each request. Floyd later joined the Confederacy and had been planning to transfer the Charleston harbor forts to secessionist forces. South Carolina formally left the Union on the 20th of December, 1860, shortly after Abraham Lincoln won the presidency.

  Union Major Robert Anderson chose a different course. On the 26th of December, 1860, he moved his garrison from Fort Moultrie to the stronger Fort Sumter nearby. Confederate troops shelled Fort Sumter into submission in April 1861, and the Civil War began. Fort Moultrie, Fort Sumter, Fort Johnson, and Castle Pinckney collectively formed the defensive ring around Charleston harbor. Federal ironclads and shore batteries began bombarding the harbor forts in April 1863, and over the following twenty months of sustained shelling, Fort Sumter was reduced to rubble and Fort Moultrie was pounded down below the level of a sand hill, which then shielded it from further bombardment. That sand hill proved more protective than brickwork; Confederate artillerymen continued manning the position throughout. In February 1865, as General Sherman moved through South Carolina, Confederate forces finally abandoned what remained of Fort Moultrie and evacuated Charleston.

• 6. The Endicott Era

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  Beginning in 1897, Fort Moultrie underwent a comprehensive modernization under the Endicott Program, a large-scale national coast defense initiative. Eight reinforced-concrete batteries were completed by 1906. The largest single element was Battery Capron, which originally held sixteen 12-inch mortars. In 1906 it was divided into two units, Capron and Butler, each operating eight mortars. Batteries Jasper and Thomson added longer-range firepower with a total of six 10-inch disappearing guns. When the Spanish-American War broke out in April 1898, several of the fort's smaller batteries were still years from completion, so Batteries Logan and Bingham were added quickly, largely equipped with weapons purchased from the United Kingdom.

  Each battery carried a name drawn from military history and tied to the region. Battery Jasper honored Sergeant William Jasper of the 2nd South Carolina Regiment, a hero of the 1776 attack on the same fort. Battery Gadsden was named for Brigadier General Christopher Gadsden of South Carolina. Battery Lord honored Assistant Surgeon George Edwin Lord, killed at the Battle of the Little Big Horn in 1876. Battery McCorkle honored 1st Lieutenant Henry McCorkle of the 25th US Infantry Regiment, killed at the Battle of El Caney during the Spanish-American War. Battery Capron was named for Captain Allyn K. Capron of the Rough Riders, the first US Army officer killed in that war. Battery Butler honored Colonel Pierce M. Butler of the Palmetto Regiment, killed at the Battle of Churubusco in the 1847 Mexican-American War.

  The guns did not all stay. After the United States entered World War I, Battery Gadsden's four 6-inch guns were removed for use on the Western Front in 1917 and never returned. Records confirm the guns arrived in France, but no regiment equipped with 6-inch guns completed training in time to see action before the Armistice. Two of Battery Jasper's four 10-inch guns were pulled in 1918 as potential railway guns; they too never came back, though replacements arrived from Fort Washington in 1919. Batteries Bingham and McCorkle lost their guns in 1919-20 as part of a broader drawdown, and half of Battery Capron-Butler's mortars were removed in 1920 to reduce overcrowding during reloading.

• 7. World War II and Decommissioning

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  When World War II began in Europe in 1939 and France fell in 1940, the United States undertook a sweeping upgrade of its coastal fortifications. Fort Moultrie was garrisoned by the 13th Coast Artillery Regiment of the Regular Army and the 263rd Coast Artillery Regiment of the South Carolina National Guard. A sub-post called the Marshall Military Reservation was established in the northeast part of Sullivan's Island to house the new installations.

  The centerpiece of the wartime expansion was BCN 520, a long-range battery armed with two 12-inch guns originally removed from Battery Kimble at Fort Travis in Galveston, Texas. BCN 520's capabilities rendered virtually all of Fort Moultrie's earlier armament obsolete, and almost everything was scrapped in 1942. A Harbor Entrance Control Post to coordinate Army and Navy harbor defenses was also established at the old fort; it has since been preserved as an exhibit. On the 15th of August, 1947, the Army lowered Fort Moultrie's flag for the last time, ending 171 years of military service. Advances in submarines and nuclear weapons had made seacoast defense of the American mainland an unworkable strategy.

  In 1960 the Department of Defense transferred the fort to the National Park Service, which now manages it as part of Fort Sumter and Fort Moultrie National Historical Park. The Park Service presents the site as a tour through time, moving visitors backward from the World War II defenses to the original palmetto log construction. The National Register of Historic Places added the Fort Moultrie Quartermaster and Support Facilities Historic District on the 6th of September, 2007. In 1999, a 38-foot private home built next to the fort had blocked the sightline to Fort Sumter; the American Battlefield Trust, the National Park Service, the Trust for Public Land, and local residents joined forces to buy the 0.23-acre plot and remove the building, restoring the historic view between the two forts.