The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777 (The Revolution Trilogy Book 1)

by Rick Atkinson

praise of South Carolina’s militia even as he strutted a bit himself. “It would take a volume to tell you how many clever things were said of you,” the physician and congressman Benjamin Rush would write Lee from Philadelphia. “It has given a wonderful turn to our affairs.” “Glorious news from So. Carolina,” a headline in the Virginia Gazette proclaimed. “Huzza!” Victory at Sullivan’s Island was a welcome antidote to the disconsolate news from Canada. It further diminished the loyalists, proved the Royal Navy vulnerable, thwarted British ambitions in the South, and boldly punctuated the new assertions of independence emanating from Philadelphia. Reports of Parker’s shredded britches provoked a savage snatch of doggerel: “If honor in the breach is lodged / It may from thence be fairly judged, / Sir Peter’s honor’s gone.” One brief battle would hardly defeat the Royal Navy or deflect the empire’s determination to remain intact.