Ten minutes later another shell followed, with like results.  For awhile we forgot all about hunger in the excitement of watching the messengers from “God’s country.”  What happiness to be where those shells came from.  Soon a Rebel battery of heavy guns somewhere near and in front of us, waked up, and began answering with dull, slow thumps that made the ground shudder.  This continued about an hour, when it quieted down again, but our shells kept coming over at regular intervals with the same slow deliberation, the same prolonged warning, and the same dreadful crash when they struck.  They had already gone on this way for over a year, and were to keep it up months longer until the City was captured.

The routine was the same from day to day, month in, and month out, from early in August, 1863, to the middle of April, 1865.  Every few minutes during the day our folks would hurl a great shell into the beleaguered City, and twice a day, for perhaps an hour each time, the Rebel batteries would talk back.  It must have been a lesson to the Charlestonians of the persistent, methodical spirit of the North.  They prided themselves on the length of the time they were holding out against the enemy, and the papers each day had a column headed: 

“390th day of the siege,”

or 391st, 393d, etc., as the number might be since our people opened fire upon the City.  The part where we lay was a mass of ruins.  Many large buildings had been knocked down; very many more were riddled with shot holes and tottering to their fall.  One night a shell passed through a large building about a quarter of a mile from us.  It had already been struck several times, and was shaky.  The shell went through with a deafening crash.  All was still for an instant; then it exploded with a dull roar, followed by more crashing of timber and walls.  The sound died away and was succeeded by a moment of silence.  Finally the great building fell, a shapeless heap of ruins, with a noise like that of a dozen field pieces.  We wanted to cheer but restrained ourselves.  This was the nearest to us that any shell came.

There was only one section of the City in reach of our guns and this was nearly destroyed.  Fires had come to complete the work begun by the shells.  Outside of the boundaries of this region, the people felt themselves as safe as in one of our northern Cities to-day.  They had an abiding faith that they were clear out of reach of any artillery that we could mount.  I learned afterwards from some of the prisoners, who went into Charleston ahead of us, and were camped on the race course outside of the City, that one day our fellows threw a shell clear over the City to this race course.  There was an immediate and terrible panic among the citizens.  They thought we had mounted some new guns of increased range, and now the whole city must go.  But the next shell fell inside the established limits, and those following were equally well behaved, so that the panic abated.  I have never heard any explanation of the matter.  It may have been some freak of the gun-squad, trying the effect of an extra charge of powder.  Had our people known of its signal effect, they could have depopulated the place in a few hours.