Fayetteville (NC) Observer, “What Can We Believe?,” April 29, 1861

WHAT CAN WE BELIEVE? – The disregard of truth is awful. The most monstrous fabrications are the order of the day. Telegraphic dispatches were received at Baltimore a few days ago, that a battle was raging between that city and Fort McHenry, which is a mile or two distant, and that the latter was throwing shells into the city to destroy it. It was news to the people of Baltimore. At the same moment it was generally believed that Jeff. Davis was rapidly advancing Northward at the head of 100,000 troops and might be expected in Richmond in a few days; the advance guard of 5000 South Carolinians to reach Norfolk in a day or two at farthest. For this, strangely enough, the telegraph was not responsible, but “a private letter from well-informed Southern sources.”

Next we are assured that Lincoln proposes an armistice for sixty days. This does not appear to have the slightest foundation.

The Norfolk correspondent of the Petersburg Express wrote on the 24th a long and circumstantial account of preparations by the federal troops for the destruction and evacuation of Fortress Monroe at Old Point, stating that “there can be no doubt of the truth of the information furnished, if human testimony can be credited.” Yet there appears to be no foundation whatever for the story.