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 facts 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 Dahlgren'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and his fleet having withdrawn to the safe distance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 1001 b. 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 some por-
tion of the credit due to General Sherman's march
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
has had to do, and scores of able gene-
rals of smaller note. It
e. tis possible that Butler may
be more fortunate• If he be not a success as a
general, he has been
and is altogethergreat success as an adminis-
trator,
and trenchant an of too unscrupulous, dar-
ing,order of intellect to be
safely converted into a
neglect or injustice on 1 enemy Gover-
nment. by an act of
The fact, however
ence is on the decrease that his influ-
, aivi
are strong that war in the tentecithe probabilities
fieldno
him no more, and that the only k
war he willw
hereafter be permitted to wage will
rels--
nature of that in which he gained his firabtei of
the
a war against women and unarmed combatants,
war against disloyalists and sympathisers with the
a
the
South, awar which can never breed a Caesar
or
Napoleon, but which can easily produce a Ilaynau
an Alva, or a Fouquier Tinville, or a compound
of
the characteristics of these with the cunningand un-
scrupulousness of a Fouche or a Vidocq.
" Inter arma 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