The Battle for Sullivan’s Island

As Thomas Jefferson and the Committee of Five presented their first draft of the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia on June 28, 1776, several British warships and thousands of troops were massing around Sullivan's Island in South Carolina. The pitched battle for the sandy barrier island at the mouth of Charleston Harbor that played out over the course of that June day was one of the most significant in the early stages of the Revolutionary War. By nightfall, largely untested colonial troops had decisively defeated the British, an outcome that helped save Charleston from occupation and buoyed American spirits at a critical stage of the war. The Landsat 8 satellite captured this image of the island on June 3, 2026. Two hundred fifty years earlier, the sandy beaches, salt marshes, and general shape of the island would have looked similar, though with less evidence of roads or other signs of human development. There certainly would have been some signs of human activity on the island, however. Quite noticeable would have been Fort Sullivan, a large square structure built from palmetto logs on the southern tip of the island, near the entrance to the harbor. Though one side of the fort, assembled largely by enslaved people, was still unfinished at the time of the battle, the other sides had 16-foot-wide walls packed with sand and containing planked gun platforms that mounted 31 cannons. …