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

About the same time, while a party of the One Hundred and Fourth Pennsylvania Volunteers were asleep at night in the bomb-proof of Gregg, a shell fired from James Island entered the door and exploded, killing and wounding seven. Many things likewise occurred that were amusing. One day a small negro boy was leading a horse, hitched to a cart, up to the head of the island; Moultrie paid her respects to the young African, and, a large shell bursting near him, killed his horse, knocking the head off of it, leaving the boy unharmed, with the bridle in his hand.

The siege of Morris Island, or, as it will be known in history, “The operations against the defenses before Charleston,” is, in many respects, one of the most wonderful in military annals. In the future the student of military science will study it with marked attention and interest. Here was first developed the power of the modern long-range gun, and the experiments proved the Parrott rifled projectile to be superior to any other in the world. Instead of battering down walls of masonry at the distance of a few hundred yards, Gillmore taught the world that American guns could do it nearly three miles. Whoever before heard of a first-class fortification being destroyed over the head of intermediate works, two miles removed from it? And where do we find a city bombarded from a battery that was five miles distant? This was the first operation in modern times, on land, where guns of a heavier calibre than the one hundred-pounder were used to any extent. It introduced the two hundred and three hundred-pounder rifle, never before used in siege operations, and demonstrated their great superiority over every other arm in use. It was all that was required to make the United States the first nation in the world in all things that pertain to the art of war.

That part of the operations devoted to Sumter opened a new chapter in military engineering. Hitherto batteries to breach walls of masonry had seldom, if ever, been erected one mile from the place to be battered down, and a gun that carried a projectile that weighed sixty-four pounds was the heaviest metal used. In the days of Vauban, in his time the first military engineer in the world, and almost the father of the present system of permanent fortification, as well as the system of attack and defense of fortified places, it was laid down as a rule that the first parallel should not be opened at a greater distance than six hundred yards from the salient angle of the covered way. With him it was customary to establish breaching