it assisted
Fort Sumter, inasmuch as from its position it kept the enemy at a
distance, but after its capture, or rather destruction, the latter fort
was exposed to a tremendous fire from ships and batteries, and its solid
front was terribly crumbled.

Surrounded, however, with water as it was, it would have been most
difficult to take by assault; and from what I could learn, certain
destruction would have met any body of men who had attempted it
latterly. There it stood, sulkily firing a shot or shell now and then,
more out of defiance than anything else. The blockading, or rather
bombarding, squadron was lying pretty near to it on the western side of
the entrance to the harbour; but on the east side, formidable batteries
belonging to the Southerners kept them at a respectable distance.
Blockade-running into Charleston was quite at an end at the time I am
writing about. Not that I think the cruisers could have kept vessels
from getting in, but for the reason that the harbour was a perfect
network of torpedoes and infernal machines (the passage through which
was only known to a few persons), placed by the Southerners to prevent
the Northern fleet from approaching the city.

Having had a good look at the positions of the attacking and defending
parties, I went down from the tower and paid a visit to a battery where
two Blakely guns of heavy calibre, that had lately been run through the
blockade in the well-known 'Sumter' (now the 'Gibraltar'), were mounted.
These guns threw a shot of 720 lbs. weight, and were certainly
masterpieces of design and execution. Unhappily, proper instructions for
loading had not accompanied them from England, and on the occasion of
the first round being fired from one of them, the gun not being properly
loaded, cracked at the breech, and was rendered useless; the other,
however, did good service, throwing shot with accuracy at great
distances. I saw much that was interesting here, but more able pens than
mine have already described fully the details of that long siege, where
on one hand all modern appliances of war that ingenuity could conceive
or money purchase were put into the hands of brave and determined
soldiers; on the other hand were bad arms, bad powder, bad provisions,
bad everything; desperate courage and unheard-of self-denial being all
the Southerners had to depend upon.

These poor Southerners never began to open their eyes to the
hopelessness of their cause till Sherman's alm