The Annals of the Civil War Written by Leading Participants North and South
Alexander Kelly McClure, Ed.

[110] batteries on the glacie. General Gillmore overturned the theories and practice of the schools, and set at naught the teachings of the oldest masters. He erected his breaching batteries miles away from the point of attack, and under the most favorable circumstances did not wish to approach nearer than a mile before he let the enemy feel the weight of his metal. He looked upon the old forty-twos and sixty-fours as discarded engines of war, fit to be laid up as “bruised monuments,” but no longer to figure in war's active operations. He chose instead the new projectiles of Parrott, and hurled at this proud fortress of the sea shot and shell that weighed two and three hundred pounds each. His operations astonished both friend and foe. Then, again, Wagner was approached over ground much less in width than the front of the work, a thing very unusual, if not almost entirely unknown. A narrow sand ridge, bounded on each side by the sea, and only a few hundred feet across in its widest part, was all the space to develop the trenches and parallels. There was another peculiarity in these operations; the communications of both parties were open to the rear, and could not be interfered with. When the history of the war comes to be written, General Gillmore will be pronounced its foremost engineer, and his operations on Morris Island considered one of its most creditable performances.