March 11, 1863, The Charleston Mercury
The Charleston correspondent of the Mobile Advertiser and Register, in alluding to the constant threats of the Yankees in regard to the attacked upon this place, says:
The struggle, when it comes, will certainly be of a fearful character. It will be the shock of tremendous forces, the relative powers of which are yet untried. The long mooted question of the fighting value of ships against batteries will be brought to a test more conclusive than any to which human warfare has yet subjected it. In other words, the Monitor iron-clads, which the Yankees claim to be the most impenetrable vessels ever constructed, will necessarily come within point blank range of the most numerous and powerful batteries that have ever yet been used in a single engagement. We have good reason, too, to believe that our guns will be managed with admirable tact and precision. The more important batteries are manned by the South Carolina regulars, for whom the credit is claimed, and I think justly, of being the most expert and practiced heavy artillerists in the Confederate army. The forts are well officered, and General Ripley, who has made the study of heavy ordnance a specialty for years, and whose excellence in that particular branch of military knowledge is an admitted fact, will, I hear, make his headquarters at Fort Sumter as soon as the enemy makes his appearance.
It is scarcely possible that any floating thing can breast unharmed the concentrated storm of heavy metal from the guns of Sumter, Moultrie and Battery Bee, the three principal works commanding the throat of the harbor. Nor can the peril of running this terrible gauntlet be diminished by an attempt to pass under cover of the darkness, as has been the case at Vicksburg and New Orleans. So tortuous and intricate is the channel leading to the forts that the most experienced pilots of the harbor would not venture to bring in a vessel by night, under the conditions which the enemy cannot escape, viz: without a light or landmark to guide the way. Even when the blockade-running vessels leave the harbor, it is always necessary to aid their exit by previously arranged lights (shaded) and signals; so that it is reasonably certain that the attacking iron-clads must either enter in open day, or incur the imminent hazard of getting aground upon one of the most treacherous bars on the Southern coast, which seldom yields a vessel once it has grasped the keel. But if, perchance, despite of mazy channel, multiplied torpedoes, and the combined batteries of the forts, some of the nine Monitors should chance to get into port, they would still have to encounter a concentrated fire from other batteries, which, as the Yankee papers have learned from contrabands, […..] the shores of the interior of the harbor.’
And then will come the […..] of war’ which will determine the possession of the honored old city.