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In South Carolina, on the twenty-first day of April, a secret committee of the people, appointed for the purpose, forcibly entered the Colonial magazine and carried away eight hundred stands of arms and two hundred cutlasses. Thomas Corbett, a member of this committee, secured and opened a royal package just from England, containing orders to governors of each of the southern Colonies to “seize all arms and powder.” These were forwarded to the Continental Congress. Another despatch, dated at “Palace of Whitehall, December 23d,” stated that “seven regiments were in readiness to proceed to the southern Colonies; first to North Carolina, thence to Virginia, or South Carolina, as circumstances should point out.” These intercepted orders contained an “Act of Parliament, forbidding the exportation of arms to the Colonies,” and stimulated the zeal of the patriots to secure all within their reach. Twenty days later, the tidings from the north reached Charleston, adding fuel to the flame of the previous outbreak.