The Sun.
London, England, 1865-01-14 00:00:00

THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA,

(From the Times' Correspondent.)
NEW YORK, Dec. 30.
When it was announced on Wednesday, an hour
prior to the departure of the new Cunard steamer,
the Cuba, detained by the thick fog in the bay,
that the expedition against Wilmington had re-
turned to Fortress Monroe, foiled, if not defeated,
the premium on gold rose 7 per cent. General Dix,
having had no official notification from Secretary
Stanton, treated the statement as a fabrication, and
ordered the placards at the newspaper offices and
telegraphic stations to be taken down, at the same
time directing the evening journals either to con-
tradict the story or to suppress it altogether. It
now appears that there was much more truth in the
matter than General Dix suspected, and that al-
though the naval part of the expedition had not re-
turned to Fortress Monroe, General Butler and the
co-operating land force had failed in their work
and returned to their point of departure wiser and
sadder men. The whole of the faets are clearly set
forth this morning in the long official despatch of
Admiral Porter to Mr. Stanton, and the correspon-
dence between the Admiral and General Butler.
The narrative is somewhat humiliating to the pride
of the North; and although the results thus far
scarcely amount to a triumph for the South, they
are such as to show that Wilmington, like Charles-
ton and Mobile, is invulnerable from the water side,
and that if Butler or any other Federal commander
is to immortalise his name by its capture he must
approach it, as Sherman did Savannah, from the
land side, and leave the fleet to play as secondary
a part as that played by Admiral Dahigren's before
the stronghold of the Georgians.
The story of Butler's repulse and Porter's failure
occupies considerable space in the wordy despatch
of the - Admiral, but stripped of unimportant
details may be briefly narrated. Calculating that he,
as well as Gen. Sherman, would be able to present
a splendid " Christmas gift" to the Yankee nation,
the Admiral commenced operations on Friday, the
23d inst., without waiting for General Butler. On
the evening of that day a vessel laden with 215 tons
of gunpowder was towed in the darkness as close to
Fort Fisher as possible—the Confederates mis-
taking her for a blockade-runner, which she was
painted and otherwise disguised to resemble. At a
quarter before 2 in the morning, Admiral Porter
and his fleet having withdrawn to the safe distance
of 12 miles, lest the awful explosion which was an-
ticipated should prove as disastrous to its concoctors
as to its intended victims, the train was fired. The
shock, greatly to the Admiral's surprise, did little
or no damage, and its fury was either expended
under water or vertically in the air. At all events,
Fort Fisher, which it was intended to destroy, was
unhurt by the concussion. Disappointed, but un-
daunted, the Admiral set his fleet in motion at day-
light on Saturday morning, took up his line of battle
before the fort, and opened a terrific fire from his
heaviest guns. The garrison responded but feebly,
having retired, no doubt, to the shelter of the bomb-
proof defences. During the engagement six Par-
rott guns, throwing 100 lb. shot, burst on board as
many of the attacking fleet, and as only one gun of
the fort was silenced, the attack appears to have in-
flicted about six times the amount of damage upon
the besiegers as it inflicted upon the besieged. On
Saturday night a portion of General Butler's army
—now said to have comprised only 10,000 men, and
not 24,000, as first estimated—landed above the fort
to take part in the final assault upon Christmas-day,
which, in the ardent fancy of Porter and the cooler
judgment of Butler, was to result in the " Christmas
gift" more splendid than Sherman's, to be presented
to Mr. Lincoln and a grateful and admiring public.
But neither Butler nor Weitzel liked the look of
things on that windy Christmas morning. They
found the fort so little damaged by the explosion of
the 215 tons of gunpowder, and by the subsequent
pounding away of 60 war vessels and an undivulged
number of Parrott guns, that after due deliberation

they decided not to attempt to carry it by storm,
being especially induced to adopt this prudent course
by the knowledge that the garrison had been rein-
forced during the night by a large number of troops
from Richmond. They captured two unimportant
outworks, a flag, and 274 prisoners, and not being
in a condition to risk a regular siege, determined to
withdraw, which they appear to have done in safety.
Admiral Porter sent no report of his losses, but ad-
mits that 45 persons were killed and wounded by the
bursting of the Parrott guns. Thus ended the first,
and perhaps the last, scene in the great drama of the
attack on Wilmington—a scene that may not be
discreditable either to Admiral Porter or General
Butler, but which is in the highest degree creditable
to the engineering skill of General Beauregard, who
constructed Fort Fisher in a manner which enabled
its garrison to defy unscathed one of the most for-
midable attacks ever made upon a fortress. Gold,
which stood at a premium of 117 when the Cuba
took her departure on Wednesday, rose this morning
on the publication of Porter's and Butler's de-
spatches to 130, though stocks and Government
securities were but little affected.
There seems a determination in some quarters to
throw the blame of the Wilmington fiasco upon Ad-
miral Porter, and in other quarters more influential
to make General Butler the scapegoat of the na-
tional disappointment. For the last three days
there have been ominous growls in Washington, re-
echoed in New York, not only against Butler, but
against General Grant—two men who have long
held prominent places in the estimation of the Go-
vernment and the people. There is only room in
the public heart for one hero at a time, and the
Administration only measures merit by success.
Sherman is, therefore, for the time being the man of
the day, and Grant and Butler, against either of
whom it would have been next to treason to have
uttered a disparaging word a month ago, are pro-
nounced in Washington by the organs of the Go-
vernment to be failures quite as conspicuous as
M'Clellan or Burnside, or any other celebrity borne
upwards for a time by the flowing tide of the war,
and carried off to the depths again by the rapid ebb
of popular and administrative favour. There are
other indications, as far as General Grant is con-
cerned, that his sun of favour has set, and that
General Halleck, the irresponsible but powerful
counsellor of the President in all military affairs,
will sooner or later take advantage of the Lieuten-
ant-General's non-success before Richmond, to
vindicate his original estimate of Grant's military
genius, And induce the President to consign him to
a special command. At present General Grant is
the virtual Commander-in-Chief of the Federal
armies, and, as such, is fairly entitled to someporh-
tion of the credit due to General Sherman's are
through Georgia, which, if he did not originally
plan, he permitted and aided. But there is no
gratitude in the leaders of revolutions, and Grant,
having failed to justify the enormous expectations
entertained of him, will have to pay the penalty in
Popular depreciation of his character and merits, as
M'Clellau has had to do, and scores of able gene-
rals of smaller note. It is possible that Butler may
be more fortunate. If he be not a success as a
general, he been a great success as an adminis-
trator, and is altogether of too unscrupulous, dar-
ing, and trenchant'
an order of intellect to be
safely converted into
neglect or injustice onanthe enemypart of the Govern-
by an act of
Govern-
ment. The fact, however,
on the decrease, and
that his influ-
encethe probabilities
are strong that war in the tied nteicl field will know
him no more, and that the only war ar he will
hereafter be permitted to wage a
unarmed
Corn laturels--
nature of that in which he gained his of the
a war against women and
ants'
a
war against dislo
yalists and sympathisers with the
South, a:war which can never breed a Caesar
or
Napoleon, but which can easily produce a Hayna:
an Alva, or a Fouquier Tinville, or a compound of
the characteristics of these with the cunningand
scrupulousness of a Fouche or a Vidocq.
" Inter arena silent leges" is an ancient apophthegm
that has received a modern application during the
present war. The judges have long been mute—.
when the Administration commanded ; but there are
symptoms of a change. The patience with which
the American people have submitted to every act of
arbitrary power that seemed in their eyes to be jus-
tified by public necessity,• or what they seem to con-
sider the same thing, the restoration of that darling

Union which they prize beyond liberty, has been
wonderful, though not admirable. And not only
the quiet patience of the many but the lout applause
of the few who ought to be the guides and instruc-
tors of the multitude, whenever the Ad.ninistration
overrode the law and the Constituti m for the pre-
vention or the punishment of adverse action on the
part of political opponents, has been of a nature to
astonish the world. The progress of the war has
abundantly shown that there was no constitutional
or personal right of which a large majority were not
willing to divest themselves, provided they could
preserve what it is the fa-shion to call the "life of
the nation." The life of a nation is liberty, the sense

of right, the supremacy of law, the spirit of honour,
the elevation of opinion, without which a nation is

but a vile body, upon which tyrants may experi-
ment, and not a living soul to act a noble part in
the great drama of humanity. And perhaps worse
than the assumption of unconstitutional power

on the part of the Administration and its obe-
dient and too willing generals, and the tame, if

not grateful acquiescence of the people, has been
the subserviency of the bench of justice, when-

ever the civil and the military power came, or
seemed to come, into collision. When Mr. Va.'lan-
digham was arrested without the shadow of a rea-
sonable pretext, when he was condemned by a mili-
tary tribunal without the shadow of a proved offence,
and when he was banished to the South without the
shadow of a justification for such punishment,
either in the law of his State or in the Constitution
of the Republic, but in open defiance of both, a
judge was found to declare that he had no jurisdic-
tion. In like manner when the New York World
and Journal of Commerce were suppressed for an
act of inadvertency committed without malice or
arriZre pewee, and explained by voluntary action
long before the military authorities had any cogni-
sance of the circumstances, it was impossible for
those journals to obtain redress, or to induce a court
of law to declare that in the State of New York the

law was the law, and that no military interloper, by
whomsoever appointed or maintained in power,
should set it at defiance. These are but two in-
stances out of hundreds, but they are sufficient to
show, in the absence of all proof of any stand made
by a judge in any part of the Union in defence of
the law of which he is the representative—except in
the case of Judge Carmichael in Maryland, who was
arrested on the bench for his pains—that the judges
as a body have either been smitten with the passion
of their countrymen for Union a tout prix, or that
they have been weak, time-serving, corrupt politi-
cians, more anxious to curry favour with the dis-
pensers of power and patronage than to do their
duty to their consciences, or to the noble profession
of which they are members. It is therefore pleasant
to see, though at the eleventh hour, that the mind
of at least one judge is cast in a nobler mould, and
that neither fear nor favour can blind him to the
great and palpable duty before him of doing jus-
tice as the law prescribes. Judge Wayne, of the
district of Columbia, is the magistrate in question—
the rara avis in terra, the grain of salt, the leaven
in the lump, the faithful among the faithless, the
one swallow that makes the summer. A person
named Baker! a detective in the employ of Mr.
Seward or of Mr. Stanton, or of both—an illiterate
and vulgar policeman, though calling himself a co-
lonel—the same person who made himself infamous
a year and a half ago in the case of Mrs. Brinsmeade,
whom, -to use his own hideous slang, he " piped"
from Washington to New York—arrested a certain
Dr. Gwynne, whom he suspected, or at all events
accused, of disloyal practices or sympathies, and
committed him to the old Capitol prison at Wash-
ington. He afterwards took possession in the post-
office of all the letters addressed to Dr. Gwynne, cut
them open or broke their seals, in the search (which
proved futile) of evidence that might fasten upon
the doctor a guilty knowledge of or complicity in
some plot against the Government, and continued
this gross invasion of personalrights for many weeks,
if not months. Ultimately, as there was no tenable
or colourable charge against him, Dr. Gwynne suc-
ceeded in obtaining his release and forthwith com-
menced an action against Baker for false imprison-
ment. Baker pleaded that in arresting Gwynne he
was authorised by the President ; and Judge Wayne
ruled in his address to the jury that the plea was in-
valid, that the President was not the creator but the
creature of the law, that his authority could not
justify Baker or anybody else in the commission of
wrong, and that consequently there must be a ver-
dict for the plaintiff. The jury found accordingly.
This case is but the first of a multitude that may
yet come before the courts, and in which the defen-
dants will not be obscure constables, but such high
personages as Mr. Seward, Mr. Stanton, Mr.
Simon Cameron, General M'Clellan, and per-
haps Mr. Lincoln. No doubt the case of Dr.
Gwynne against Colonel Baker will be carried
by appeal before the Supreme Court of the United
States, the highest tribunal in the land, and of
which Mr. Sahnon P. Chase is, by the grace and
favour if not by the -gratitude of Mr. Lincoln, the
Chief Justice. As Mr. Chase is a sound lawyer, as
he is independent for the future of Mr. Lincoln's
goodwill, as he is well known to entertain a very
low opinion of the intellectual status of the Presi-
dent, and as, moreover, though Chief Justice, he
still aspires to the Presidency, after Mr. Lincoln
shall have served his second term, it is possible that
the Supreme Court, led by Mr. Chase, may ratify
the law of Judge Wayne, and that there may be con-
fusion generally among the pimps and panders of
arbitrary power, unless a special Act of Indemnity
shall be passed to save them from the grip of the
law which they have outraged. Such an Act, how-
ever, will be powerless to shield them and their acts
from the hostile verdict of succeeding generations.
Passion rages but for awhile. Reason, though
silenced in one generation, resumes her voice in the
next and gives their true place in history to all
minions and wrong-doers, all parasites and flat-
terers, and all oppressors with brains or without.