Oil on canvas; 20 1/2 x 29 7/16in. (52.1 x 74.8cm). Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Colonial Williamsburg, VA.
The fort on Sullivan's Island, South Carolina, was incomplete when Commodore Sir Peter Parker of the Royal Navy and nine British men-of-war attacked it on 28-Jun-1776. But the ships were forced to retire after a nine-hour battle and Charlestown was saved from British occupation. The fort was subsequently named in honor of its commander, Colonel William Moultrie.
By 1789 many of the Federalists, particularly Hamilton, had no confidence whatsoever left in the virtue or the natural sociability of the American people as adhesive forces: to rely on such wild schemes and visionary principles, as radicals like Jefferson and Paine did, to tie the United States together, the Federalists said, was to rely on nothing. Hence Hamilton and the other Federalist leaders had to find things other than republican virtue and natural sociability to make the American people a single nation.
Tying people together, creating social cohesiveness, making a single nation out of disparate sections and communities without relying on idealistic republican adhesives — this was the preoccupation of the Federalists, and it explains much of what they did — from Washington’s proposals for building canals to Hamilton’s financial program.