Charleston Daily Courier

December 7, 1864

Page 1

JOHN H. FOREMAN, of the Alabama Artillery, on duty near Mobile, has ventured to devise “a novelty in warfare,” which promises good results if it can be applied ad used before all the papers have given the hint to the Yankees. Some papers give details which could have been prudently withheld, and are not, therefore reprinted here. We allow the fullest “freedom of the press,” but would much prefer a freedom restrained and guided by law and discretion, and regard to sound policy, rather than a mere license of doing and saying anything not positively forbidden by law, or by a fear of appeal by the pistol or the club.

We admire and approve freedom of utterance and exhortation and opinion in favor of all possible appeals to our own resources, but we doubt the policy of premature reports of military inventions or designs or suggestions, of which many promising reports have been given in Confederate journals, without corresponding results in performance.

[Transcribed by Sharon Strout]