Charleston, and his caustic manner ruffled others. Lee might be “a strange animal,” one South Carolina officer concluded, but “we must put up with ten thousand oddities in him on account of his abilities and his attachment to the rights of humanity.” Nothing worried Lee more than the vulnerability of Fort Sullivan, which he considered a flimsy palmetto “slaughter pen” for its defenders. “I never could … understand on what principle Sullivan’s Island was first taken possession of and fortified,” he told John Rutledge, the newly elected president of South Carolina.
