See Drayton's Memoirs, vol.2, pp.

290-1 .-- General Charles Lee, who had been dispatched by the Continental Congress, to take command of the Army of the South, would have abandoned the fortress even before the appearance of the enemy.

He was unwilling, in such a position, to abide the conflict.

He seems, naturally enough for an officer brought up in a British Army, to have had an overweening veneration for a British fleet, in which it is fortunate for the country that the Carolinians did not share.

In the unfinished condition of the fort, which really presented little more than a front towards the sea, his apprehensions were justifiable, and, could the fort have been enfiladed, as the British designed, it certainly would have been untenable.