Comte de Paris, History of the Civil War in America. Vol. 3.
Henry Coppee , LL.D., Ed.

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[152] Sullivan's Island, and Fort Sumter, which stands upon a sandbank, a continuation of the southern bank called Morris Island. A space of fifteen hundred yards separates the two forts. A third work, built of masonry, called Castle Pinckney, formerly constituted the entire defences of Charleston; it stood upon a low island in the inner bay, very close to the city. This bay has a length of not less than four miles; and, although the surrounding shores are far apart, at some points more than two miles and a half, the navigable portion has a width of only one mile and a quarter; it becomes still narrower south of Castle Pinckney in consequence of a sandbank which, under the name of Middle Ground, divides it into two unequal passes, the widest of which is at the south. At the upper end of the bay, at the junction of the two rivers, Ashley and Cooper, which empty their waters into it, stands the city of Charleston, once rich and prosperous, but now existing only for the war and through the war. Her wharves were no longer frequented except by blockade-runners, which chiefly brought her arms and ammunition, and whose arrivals the increase of the Federal fleet had for some time rendered much more rare. Too far from the entrance to be reached by the projectiles of the enemy, she was near enough for her inhabitants to see the struggle which was about to decide their fate, while the high steeples, which in the evening were clearly defined between a burning sky and the sombre profile of Fort Sumter, seemed to the Union sailors like a tempting vision which an invulnerable guardian forbade them to approach.

The system of defence against naval attacks had, in fact, been completed by General Ripley with the close of the year 1862. Two batteries had been erected, so as to flank eastward and westward the half circle of sandbanks of which Moultrie occupied the most salient part: the first, named Beauregard, commanded the approaches to the open sea; the other, called Bee, flanked the fronts of Sumter north-east and north-west. The latter was much the weaker, never having been finished. Morris Island was occupied by two new works: one, in front of Sumter, at Cummings Point, which was at a later period to take the name of Battery Gregg; the other commanded a narrow strip of solid ground between the marsh and the sea; it was then a