The New York Times
May 22, 1861
If the necessity of perfecting the Southern blockade has not been recognized heretofore, it must be so in the light of our European advices. The ports must not only be closed, but sealed hermetically. There is no time for laxity or imperfect measures. With a small but pestilent enemy eager to get out, and a large and rapacious neutral who avows his purpose to get in, the only alternative of their success lies in the erection of a barrier hopelessly impassable to both.
It is, doubtless, through no negligence of the authorities that the blockade has not yet reached Charleston. Advices from that place announce the uninterrupted entrance of British vessels, laden in all probability with arms and supplies for the insurgents. The Niagara, on the way to the Gulf, paused off the harbor long enough to expedite the inward movement of these ships, but presently pursued her course, and we have no tidings of any other naval steamer having visited the port. That vessels were dispatched for the purpose there is every reason to believe; but it is not impossible that a clerical error, similar to the one which is said to have misdirected the Powhatan, destined to reinforce Sumter, to Fort Pickens, may have sent to Texas the detachment of the blockading squadron designed for Charleston. If the Harriet Lane is correctly reported to have sailed with dispatches to that point, the presumption of a blunder gathers probability.