THE

FORT MOULTRIE.

[From the Same.]

It

HE people of Charleston, as they looked from the battery with senses quickened by the nearness of danger, beheld the Sphinx, the Acteon, and the Syren, each of twenty-eight guns, sailing as if to get between Haddrell's point and the fort, so as to enfilade the works, and, when the rebels should be driven from them, to cut off their retreat. was a moment of danger, for the fort on that side was unfinished; but the pilots, keeping too far to the south, ran all the three upon a bank of sand, known as the Lower Middle Ground. Seeing the frigates thus entangled, the beholders in the town were swayed alternately by fears and hopes; the armed inhabitants stood every one at his post, uncertain but that they might be called to immediate action, hardly daring to believe that Moultrie's small and ill-furnished garrison could beat off the squadron, when behold! his flag disappears. Fearing that his colors had been struck, they prepared to meet the invaders at the water's edge.

In the fort, William Jasper, a sergeant, perceived that the flag had been cut down by a ball from the enemy, and had fallen over the ramparts. "Colonel," said he to Moultrie, "don't let us fight without a flag."

"What can you do?" asked Moultrie; "the staff is broken off."

"Then," said Jasper, "I'll fix it to a halberd, and place it on the merlon of the bastion next the enemy;" and, leaping through an embrasure, and braving the thickest fire from the ship, he took up the flag, returned with it safely, and planted it, as he had promised, on the summit of the merlon.

The sea gleamed with light; the almost vertical sun of midsummer glared from a cloudless sky; and the intense heat was increased by the blaze from the cannon on the platform. All of the garrison were without coats during the action, and some were nearly naked; Moultrie and several of the officers smoked their pipes as they gave their orders. They knew that their movements were observed from the house-tops of Charleston; by the veteran Armstrong and the little army at Haddrell's point; by Gadsden, who at Fort Johnson was chafing with discontent at not being in the centre of danger. Exposed to an incessant cannonade, which seemed sufficient to daunt the bravest veterans, they stuck to their guns with the greatest constancy.

Hit by a ball which entered through an embrasure, Macdaniel cried out to his brother soldiers: "I am dying, but don't let the cause of liberty expire with me this day." Jasper removed the mangled corpse

from the sight of his comrades, and cried aloud: "Let us revenge that brave man's death!"

The slow and skilfully directed fire against the Bristol shattered that ship, and carried wounds and death. Neither the tide nor the wind suffered the British squadron to retire. Once the springs on the cables of the Bristol were swept away; as she swung round with her stern toward the fort, she drew upon herself the fire of every gun that could be brought to bear upon her. Of all who in the beginning of the action were stationed on her quarter-deck, not one escaped being killed or wounded. For a moment, it is said, the commodore stood alone. Morris, his captain, having the fore-arm shattered by a chain-shot, and receiving a wound in the neck, was taken into the cockpit; but, after submitting to amputation, he insisted on being carried on the quarterdeck once more, where he resumed command till he was shot through the body, when, feeling dissolution near, he commended his family to the providence of God and the generosity of his country. Meantime, the eyes of the commodore and of all on board his fleet were "frequently and impatiently" and vainly turned toward the army. If the troops would but coöperate, he was sure of gaining the island; for at about one o'clock he believed that he had silenced the guns of the rebels, and that the fort was on the point of being evacuated. But the pause was owing to the scarcity of powder, of which the little that remained to Moultrie was reserved for the musketry, as a defence against an expected attack from the land forces. Lee should of himself have replenished his stock; Moultrie had seasonably requested it, but in the heat of the action he received from Lee this answer: 66 If you should unfortunately expend your ammunition without beating off the enemy or driving them on ground, spike your guns and retreat."

A little later a better message came from Rutledge, at Charleston: "I send you five hundred pounds of powder. You know our collection is not very great. Honor and victory to you and our worthy countrymen with you. Do not make too free with your cannon. Be cool and do mischief." These five hundred pounds of powder, with two hundred pounds from a schooner lying at the back of the fort, were all the supplies that Moultrie received. At three in the afternoon, Lee, on a report from his aide-de-camp, Byrd, sent Muhlenberg's Virginia riflemen to reenforce Thomson. A little before five, Moultrie was able to renew his fire. At about five, the marines in the ships' tops, seeing a lieutenant with eight or ten men remove the heavy barricade from the gateway of the fort, thought that Moultrie and his party were about to retreat; but the gateway was unbarred to receive a visit from Lee. The officers, half naked, and begrimed with the hot day's work, respectfully laid down their pipes as he drew near. The general himself pointed two or three

guns, after which he said to Moultrie: "Colonel, I see you are doing very well here; you have no occasion for me; I will go up to town again;" and thus he left the fort.

When, at a few minutes past seven, the sun went down in a blaze of light, the battle was still raging, though the British showed signs of weariness. The inhabitants of Charleston, whom the evening sea-breeze collected on the battery, could behold the flag of liberty still proudly waving; and they continued gazing anxiously, till the short twilight was suddenly merged in the deep darkness of a southern night, when nothing was seen but continual flashes, followed by peals as it were of thunder coming out from a heavy cloud. Many thousand shot were fired from the shipping, and hardly a hut or a tree on the island remained unhurt; but the works were very little damaged, and only one gun was silenced. The firing from the fort continued slowly; and the few shot they were able to send were heard to strike against the ships' timbers. Just after nine o'clock, a great part of his ammunition being expended in a cannonade of about ten hours, his people fatigued, the Bristol and the Experiment made nearly wrecks, the tide of ebb almost done, with no prospect of help from the army, Sir Peter Parker resolved to withdraw. At half-past nine his ships slipped their cables, and dropped down with the tide to their previous moorings.

Of the four hundred and thirty-five Americans in the fort who took part in this action, all but eleven remained alive, and but twenty-six were wounded. At so small a cost of life had Charleston been defended, and the colony saved.

EUROPE AND AMERICA AT THE TIME OF WASHINGTON'S INAUGURATION.

To

[From the Same.]

O the president's inaugural speech one branch of the legislature thus responded: "The senate will at all times cheerfully co-operate in every measure which may strengthen the union and perpetuate the liberties of this great confederated republic."

The representatives of the American people likewise addressed him : "With you we adore the invisible hand which has led the American people through so many difficulties; and we cherish a conscious responsi bility for the destiny of republican liberty. We join in your fervent supplication for our country; and we add our own for the choicest blessings of heaven on the most beloved of her citizens."

In the same moments of the fifth day of May, 1789, when these words

were reported, the ground was trembling beneath the arbitrary governments of Europe as Louis XVI. proceeded to open the states-general of France. The day of wrath, against which Leibnitz had warned the monarchs of Europe, was beginning to break, and its judgments were to be the more terrible for the long delay of its coming. The great Frederick, who alone of them all had lived and toiled for the good of his land, described the degeneracy and insignificance of his fellow-rulers with cynical scorn. Not one of them had a surmise that the only sufficient reason for the existence of a king lies in his usefulness to the people. Nor did they spare one another. The law of morality was never suffered to restrain the passion for conquest. Austria preyed upon Italy until Alfieri could only say, in his despair, that despotic power had left him no country to serve; nor did the invader permit the thought that an Italian could have a right to a country. The heir in the only line of protestant kings on the continent of Europe, too blind to see that he would one day be stripped of the chief part of his own share in the spoils, joined with two other robbers to divide the country of Kosciuszko. In Holland dynastic interests were betraying the welfare of the republic. All faith was dying out; and self, in its eagerness for pleasure or advantage, stifled the voice of justice. The atheism of the great, who lived without God in the world, concealed itself under superstitious observances which were enforced by an inquisition that sought to rend beliefs from the soul, and to suppress inquiry by torments which surpassed the worst cruelties that savages could invent. Even in Great Britain all the branches of government were controlled by the aristocracy, of which the more liberal party could in that generation have no hope of being summoned by the king to frame a cabinet. The land, of which every member of a clan had had some share of ownership, had been for the most part usurped by the nobility; and the people were starving in the midst of the liberality which their own hands extorted from nature. The monarchs, whose imbecility or excesses had brought the doom of death on arbitrary power, were not only unfit to rule, but, while their own unlimited sovereignty was stricken with death, they knew not how to raise up statesmen to take their places. Well-intentioned friends of mankind burned with indignation, and even the wise and prudent were incensed by the bitterest consciousness of wrong; while the lowly classes, clouded by despair, were driven sometimes to admit the terrible thought that religion, which is the poor man's consolation and defence, might be but an instrument of government in the hands of their oppressors. There was no relief for the nations but through revolution, and their masters had poisoned the weapons which revolution must use.

In America a new people had risen up without king, or princes, or nobles, knowing nothing of tithes and little of landlords, the plough be

ing for the most part in the hands of free holders of the soil. They were more sincerely religious, better educated, of serener minds, and of purer morals than the men of any former republic. By calm meditation. and friendly councils they had prepared a constitution which, in the union of freedom with strength and order, excelled every one known before; and which secured itself against violence and revolution by providing a peaceful method for every needed reform. In the happy morning of their existence as one of the powers of the world, they had chosen justice for their guide; and while they proceeded on their way with a well-founded confidence and joy, all the friends of mankind invoked success on their unexampled endeavor to govern states and territories of imperial extent as one federal republic.

ORG

Amos Bronson Alcott.

BORN in Wolcott, Conn., 1799. DIED in Boston, Mass., 1888.

THE ORCHARD.

[Tablets. 1868.]

RCHARDS are even more personal in their charms than gardens, as they are more nearly human creations. Ornaments of the homestead, they subordinate other features of it; and such is their sway over the landscape that house and owner appear accidents without them. So men delight to build in an ancient orchard, when so fortunate as to possess one, that they may live in the beauty of its surroundings. Orchards are among the most coveted possessions; trees of ancient standing, and vines, being firm friends and royal neighbors forever. The profits, too, are as wonderful as their longevity. And if antiquity can add any worth to a thing, what possession has a man more noble than these? so unlike most others, which are best at first and grow worse till worth nothing; while fruit-trees and vines increase in worth and goodness for ages. An orchard in bloom is one of the most pleasing sights the eye beholds; as if the firmament had stooped to the treetops and touched every twig with spangles, and man had mingled his essence with the seasons, in its flushing tokens. And how rich the spectacle at the autumnal harvest:

"Behold the bending boughs, with store of fruit they tear,

And what they have brought forth, for weight they scarce can bear."

VOL. VI.-2