Fort Moultrie National Monument
Fort Moultrie is the name of a series of forts on
Sullivan's Island, South Carolina, built to protect the city of
Charleston, South Carolina. The first fort, built of
palmetto logs, inspired the
flag and motto (Palmetto State) of
South Carolina.
The fort was unnamed and not yet complete when
Admiral Sir
Peter Parker and nine
British warships attacked it on
June 28,
1776, near the beginning of the
American Revolutionary War. Legend has it that the soft palmetto logs did not crack under bombardment but rather absorbed the shot; in any case, Charleston was saved from capture, and the fort was named for the commander in the battle,
William Moultrie.
As tensions hightened after
Great Britain and
France declared war in
1793, the United States embarked on a systematic fortification of important harbors. A new Fort Moultrie, one of twenty new forts along the Atlantic coast, was completed over the decayed original fort in
1798. Destroyed by a hurricane in
1804, it was replaced by a brick fort by
1809.
Between
1809 and
1860 Fort Moultrie changed little; the parapet was altered and the armament modernized, but newly created
Fort Sumter became the main component of Charleston's defense. Of the four forts around Charleston harbor, Moultrie, Sumter, Johnson, and
Castle Pinckney, it was Moultrie's defenders who chose to fight against the
Confederacy; they retreated to the stronger
Fort Sumter when in December
1860 South Carolina
seceded from the Union. Three and a half months later, Confederate troops shelled Fort Sumter into submission and the
American Civil War began. In April
1863, Federal
ironclads and shore batteries began a twenty-month bombardment of Forts Sumter and Moultrie; the Confederates held the forts and the harbor until February
1865, when the army evacuated the city. By then, Fort Sumter was a pile of rubble, and Fort Moultrie had been pounded below a sand hill, which subsequently protected it against Federal bombardment.
Rifled cannon had proved their superiority to brickwork fortifications, but not to the endurance of the Confederate artillerymen who manned the forts throughout.
Fort Moultrie was modernized in the
1870s, with huge rifled cannon and deep concrete bunkers; further modernization in the
1880s turned all of Sullivan's Island into a military complex, of which the old fort was just a part.
The fort evolved with the times through
World War II and beyond, but in recent years has been turned over to the
National Park Service. The fort is now constructed as a tour backwards in time through the fort's defenses, from World War II back to the palmetto log fort of William Moultrie. It has been designated the
Fort Moultrie National Monument, a unit of
Fort Sumter National Monument.
*
Expedition against Charleston*
Fort Moultrie National Monument*
Battle of Fort Moultrie
