Happy 200th

There were times when it seemed Fort Moultrie would not survive until its 100th anniversary, much less its 200th.

On Dec. 26, 1860, Maj. Robert Anderson made the painful decision to abandon the fort shortly after South Carolina seceded from the union. Rumor had it that rebel riflemen were hiding in the dunes, ready to open fire on Moultrie.

Under the cover of darkness, Anderson and his troops retreated to the newly built Fort Sumter, the last men out burning the carriages of Moultrie's 10 columbiads and "spiking" the other cannons to prevent them from firing. As the fires raged, it looked like the end of Moultrie.

But Anderson, like many others, underestimated the fort.

Today, Fort Moultrie, commissioned Dec. 19, 1809, will celebrate its 200th anniversary. In its time, Fort Moultrie has endured wars, hurricanes and earthquakes. South Carolina's state flag was born there. It has been home to literary giants, great Indian chiefs and men who changed the course of this nation's history.

It has become a symbol of the state, and will represent South Carolina on a new quarter beginning in 2016.

"It's really just as much an icon to the history of South Carolina as Fort Sumter," said Bob Dodson, park superintendent at the Fort Sumter National Monument (of which Moultrie is a part). "This (today) is an effort to highlight it's importance in American history."

The first Fort Moultrie was hastily built in 1776 to protect Charleston from British forces. It was famously made of sand and palmetto logs, which were spongy enough to deflect enemy cannon fire. When Moultrie repelled the British a week before the Declaration of Independence was signed, it served as the colonists' first victory.

That first fort would not survive for long. The palmetto logs rotted quickly, and the site was looted by home builders. A second fort replaced it in 1798 but was destroyed by a hurricane in 1804.

Construction on the third and current fort began in 1807 and took about two years. Since then, Moultrie has been a work in progress.

The walls of the fort are pretty much the way they were when the fort was built. But step through the sally port, and the decades -- the centuries -- run together.

The passageways inside the walls are 1870s additions, the earth mounds around the parade ground cover the foundations of the old officers' quarters and powder magazine. There is a traverse, a solid structure that looks like an outbuilding, that dates to 1820. Its sole purpose was to protect the original powder magazine, which held about 25,000 pounds of ammunition, from the cannons of enemy ships.

Atop the fort's wall, the guns run counterclockwise from oldest to newest -- cannons dating back to the War of 1812, Civil War, Spanish-American War, World War I.

"You can see every era going through the fort," said Jeff Jones, a park guide. "Here you have almost equal parts."

In its 19th-century heyday, there might be up to 300 troops stationed at the fort at one time. In late 1827, a young man stayed nearly a year at the fort. He listed his name as E.A. Perry, but was in fact a young Edgar Allen Poe. The young private, using an assumed name because he had not been old enough for military service when he enlisted, spent his free time writing poetry.

In the late 1830s, the fort hosted captured Seminole chiefs who fought U.S. military forces trying to evict them from their homes. Their leader, Osceola, died there of a throat infection. He was buried on the grounds.

The most active period in the fort's history came about as a result of the Civil War. The fires left by Anderson's men alerted South Carolinians to goings-on at the fort. They took control of Moultrie, manned it and brought in new guns, 11 of which were pointed at Fort Sumter.

When war broke out in April 1861, Moultrie proved that newer is not necessarily better.

"The advantage was unquestionably upon the side of Fort Moultrie," one report from the battle stated. "In that fort not a single gun was dismounted, not a wound received, not the slightest permanent injury sustained by any of its defences, while every ball from Fort Moultrie left its mark upon Fort Sumter."

But Moultrie would suffer some effects of the war. Jones said Confederates destroyed the barracks inside the fort to cut down on possible debris that could be blown about in an attack.

"Its wounds were self-inflicted," he said.

The fort went through more renovations throughout World War I. But by the time World War II began, the old fort was becoming obsolete.

"They were already starting to see the writing on the wall," Jones said. "It started to become just the eyes of the military."

In 1947, Fort Moultrie was shut down. Little more than a decade later, Moultrie would fall into the hands of the National Park Service.

And the rest is history.