The Daily Dispatch: May 8, 1862., [Electronic resource]

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The gunboats.

The Yankees have contrived to make their miserable gunboats loom up in the people's imagination to the dimensions of German devils. If we suffer them to impose this new humbug upon our credulity, we shall be whipped wherever a gunboat can penetrate. We shall fly from them as soon as we see the smoke of one of their chimneys. But the truth is, that, in comparison with land batteries properly constructed, they ought not to excite any apprehension. Especially upon narrow streams, properly fortified, a gunboat ought to be sunk without the slightest difficulty. In the attack upon Fort Donelson even iron clad gunboats were shivered to pieces by the heavy batteries of the fort. In the narrow portions of the James river a land battery ought to be able to knock a gunboat out of the water, whilst riflemen in the woods could pick off with ease every man upon her decks. We hope the time is at hand when, for the credit of Southern gunnery and the good of the Southern cause, this whole gunboat humbug will be literally and thoroughly exploded.