From the London Times

By this time the battle before Richmond has been as fully discussed as the meagerness of the news received by telegraph will allow.  The impression which this great military event has made on English society is not to be mistaken.  If there were any before who thought that the resistance of the South was likely to be overcome by the exploits of General McClellan’s army before Richmond, they are now undeceived.  It cannot be doubted that a battle of the highest importance has been fought, and that the Federal army has been thrown back a considerable distance – several miles indeed – from its former position.

But if the Virginia campaign has ended in a manner which shows that the Confederates are able to carry out a long war, the fighting at Charleston shows that even at isolated points, they are prepared to receive an enemy.  The ambiguity of the telegraph prepared as to believe that the battle before Charleston ended in a victory for the South.  The thing is now made clear.  A Federal general plainly ignorant of the enemy he was to attack, and the defenses he was likely to meet, advanced with some 1,200 men to the attack of a battery, and he seems to have been as completely defeated as the British were at New Orleans, and perhaps much in the same manner.

The moral to be deduced from these events is clear.  There is probably at the present moment, in Europe, but a single society where the defenders of this hateful and atrocious war could make themselves [heard].  The impartial opinion of every civilized nation is being more and [illegible due to fold in the paper] enterprise in which the Federals are embarked.  The orators of the Northern States may inveigh as much as they please against the interference of England, and the mob may shout scorn of England advice and defiance of English arms, but English opinion is after all, the opinion of the world, and we may hope that, in spite of affected indignation and high flown eloquence, the good sense which has uniformly marked our counsels in the affair may at length prevail.

– Published in The Daily Rebel, Chattanooga, Tennessee, Saturday, August 9, 1862, p. 1