![Des Barres, Joseph F. W. A sketch of the operations before Charlestown, the capital of South Carolina. [London, 1780] Map. Library of Congress.](https://www.thenmusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/iiif-service_gmd_gmd391_g3914_g3914c_ar155900-full-pct_12.5-0-default-copy-1.jpg)
![Plan de la ville de Charlestown, de ses retranchements et du siege faits par les Anglois en. [1780] Map.](https://www.thenmusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/map4.jpg)
![Fennigan, Patrick. Plan of the siege of Charles Town in South Carolina under command of His Excellence Sir Henry Clinton and under direction of … Collonel Mount-Crieff as chief ingener, this town was surrendered with capitulation the 12. Mayafter 6 weeks and 3 days siege. [1780] Map. Library of Congress.](https://www.thenmusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/map5.jpg)
After the Americans rejected a formal surrender demand, Clinton’s army began siege works on 2 April with nighttime sapping parties of conscripted black slaves and white soldiers. The British made steady progress despite the heat and constant American fire, although Patriot spirits were temporarily boosted when Virginia Continental reinforcements sailed into the city on 8 April. Brig. Gen. Louis Antoine Jean Le Bègue de Presle Duportail, chief Continental engineer, arrived on 25 April to assess the situation. He realized the city was indefensible and urged an immediate evacuation before the British completed the encirclement. Pressure from city officials however kept Lincoln from withdrawing evacuation was impossible. American quartermasters soon thereafter reduced the daily ration to rice after the preserved meat supply was found spoiled. Morale fell further with the surrender of Sullivan’s Island and a second British demand for surrender. By 10 May 1780, Clinton’s army was poised to assault the final defensive line of earthworks covering the 18-foot high tabby (concrete) Hornwork, the centerpiece of the American fortifications.
"I have received [your earlier letters] and am much obliged to you for the Military details they contain. I sincerely lament that your prospects are not better than they are. The impracticability of defending the bar, I fear, amounts to the loss of the town & garrison. At this distance it is difficult to judge for you, and I have the greatest confidence in General Lincoln’s prudence; but it really appears to me that the propriety of attempting to defend the Town depended on the probability of defending the bar, and that when this ceased the attempt ought to have been relinquished. In this however I suspend a definitive judgment & wish you to consider what I say confidential. Since you last [wrote] to me I have received one from General Lincoln . . . in which he informs me that the enemy had gotten a 64-gun ship with a number of other Vessels over the bar & that it had been determined to abandon the project of disputing the passage by Sullivan’s Island—and to draw up the Frigates to the Town and take out their Cannon. This brings your affairs nearer to a dangerous crisis & increases my apprehensions."
General George Washington to Lt. Col. Henry Laurens, 26 April 1780Founders Online, https://founders.archive.gov/documents/Washington/03-25-02-0345.