On April 21, 1775 the ‘rebellion’ came to South Carolina in the form of preemptive ‘actions’…

Thursday, April 20th, 1775, the members of the General Committee of the South Carolina Provincial Congress convened in Charleston. After discussing the latest news received from England, and the intelligence contained in the private mail stolen from the post office the preceding night, the president of the Provincial Congress, Colonel Charles Pinckney (1732–1782) appointed William Henry Drayton (1742–1779) to head a “Secret Committee” to execute a series of preemptive covert actions.

Around 11 p.m. on the evening of Friday, April 21st, a silent party of rebellious Americans, dressed in their normal civilian clothes, convened at the corner of Broad and Meeting Streets to remove as many of the government-owned weapons as possible from the attic of the State House at the northwest corner of that intersection. On the opposite side of Broad Street stood the town’s Watch House, or police station, but the rebel thieves encountered no resistance. Did they break open the door to the armory?

Over a period of several hours, they quietly removed at least 800 muskets with bayonets, 200 cutlasses, all of the leather cartridge boxes, and a quantity of match and gun flints. Imagine a bucket brigade of rebels stretching from the attic of the State House, down the stairs, out the north door of the building, and into the courtyard. Waiting there was probably a queue of carts or wagons ready to shuttle the weapons off to multiple secret hiding places, so the entire cache would not be found if the authorities suddenly interrupted the scene.

Who were the men who participated in this raid on the State House armory? In his 1821 Memoirs, John Drayton provides a list of “respectable gentlemen” who “attended” at the State House on that evening, “among whom were Colonel Charles Pinckney, President of the Provincial Congress—Col. Henry Laurens, Chairman of the General Committee—Thomas Lynch, one of the Delegates to the Continental Congress—Benjamin Huger, William Bull, and William Henry Drayton. To this list of “gentlemen,” Joseph Johnson, in 1851, added the names of several “mechanics,” or tradesmen, including Daniel Cannon, William Johnson, Anthony Toomer, Edward Weyman, and Daniel Stevens.

Down by the Cooper River, operatives were making preparations to steal the government’s supply of gunpowder from the nearby magazines. Under cover of darkness, two groups, perhaps numbering six to ten men each, embarked in two large rowboats from some point on the Charleston waterfront—probably from the town’s northernmost wharf, owned by Christopher Gadsden. The route from Gadsden’s wharf up the Cooper River to the magazine at the head of Shipyard Creek on the Neck was approximately four and a half miles. The route from Gadsden’s Wharf to the magazine at Hobcaw Point, up the Wando River, near the mouth of Molasses Creek, was almost exactly three miles. To economize their rowing efforts, the two crews probably coordinated their respective journeys with the changing tides. The incoming flood tide would have facilitated the trip from the wharf upriver, while a few hours later the ebbing tide would have carried the powder-heavy barges back downstream to Gadsden’s Wharf with a minimum of effort.

William Johnson and Edward Weyman, a member of the Secret Committee, took part in the expedition to break into the magazine next to Robert Cochran’s shipyard. When they arrived at the target, however, they found the magazine empty. It appeared that Captain Cochran had divined their mission and preemptively removed the powder and hidden it nearby.

Needless to say, the Lieutenant Governor, Bull was not happy- Issuing the following proclamation on the afternoon of Saturday, April 22nd, offering a reward of £100 sterling to “to any Person that shall give Information, so that he or they may be brought to condign [formal or fitting] Punishment, hereby strictly commanding all his Majesty’s Justices of the Peace, Constables, and other Civil Officers, to use their best endeavours to make discovery thereof. . . . GOD Save the KING.”

That reward was never collected…