14 JANUARY 1865, Page 13

SAVANNAH AND WILMINGTON.

[FROM OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT.] New York, December 31, 1864. IT is difficult for a correspondent in New York, the subjects of whose letters must be somewhat determined by the events of the day, to decide what will be a new topic upon the arrival of his letter in London. Thus, for instance, the occupation of Savannah by General Sherman was not known even in Washington until two days after the departure of the steamer which took my last letter ; and yet that steamer may have by telegraph and despatch-boat received that news at Cape Race, which stretches a thousand miles north-eastward from here, and thus the event may be commented upon in the Spectator a week before this letter can appear. The abandonment of the military attempt upon Wilmington, too, although we knew of it here but yesterday, may be reported in London by a steamer which put to sea last Wednesday. So much has the telegraph already done toward spanning the Atlantic. One must hobble on after, however, to the best of one's ability.

The complete success of General Sherma'ns bold and skilfully conducted march, the capture of Savannah with its 150 pieces of artillery and its 32,000 bales of cotton, and, most important of all, the opening of the Savannah River, which commands a new and interior base of operations that can be held by the navy, gave us of course great gratification, but the escape of General Hardee with his 15,000 men was a disappointment the severity of which has not been adequately made public. It seemed ungracious to grumble in the newspapers because such a grand undertaking as that which Sherman carried out so admirably was not in all respects so successful as it might have been, and when it was as successful as we or General Sherman himself had the right to expect that it would be. It might have been really impossible for Admiral Dahl- gien to cut off the city by his gunboats, yet in our hearts, if not in public, we are saying, "If Farragut had been there he would have done it, in spite of the rams and the iron-clads." But although what we need, and what General Grant seeks, to capture is not cities, but armies, Savannah from its position is a most important step toward attaining the great object of this long campaign-, -a campaign which seems to have declared itself, like a French Chti.mber in revolutionary times, en permanence.

The fate of the Wilmington expedition reminds me of what a Yankee farm labourer said of the end of a feeble, sickly calf, when he was asked if the creature was dead,—" Wal, no ! he didn't xacly seem ter die ; he kin o' gin aout." The military part of the attempt has for the present been simply abandoned without effort. The difficulties of the undertaking seem to have proved to be quite as I anticipated, and, as you know already, I anticipated failure. It now turns out that there was no intention of attempt- ing the capture of the town itself, to Which, as I told you, the most important vessels in Admiral Porter's fleet were incompetent from their draught of water. The purpose was only to take and

hold the works commanding the entrance to the harbour, and thus close it effectively against blockade-runners. The planning of the expedition is due in a great measure to General Butler, who is very ambitious of purelymilitary success, and whose foresight and decision of character are well suited to the attainment of such success if he had only the necessary military knowledge. "If our new Lord Chancellor only knew a little law, he would know a little of everything." But General Butler is eager, and not unnaturally, for the sort of success which with us at least he could afford to do very well with- out, and he had a worthy ambition to wear the capture of the Wilmington defences as a feather in his cap. It has not been said publicly, but those who must know say privately, that the novel project which distinguished this abandoned attempt, that of ex- ploding an immense mass of gunpowder outside the enemy's works, was General Butler's. The reported effects of the recent explosion near London, were regarded as reason for believing that sufficient destruction and demoralization would ensue upon a similar explosion close under the walls of Fort Fisher, to make the assault comparatively easy and certainly successful, especially under the guns of a powerful fleet. General Butler was freed from the jealousy and severe military criticism of his previous subordinate, General W. T. (" Baldy ") Smith, and was personally and profes- sionally upon the most accordant terms with General Weitzel, a West Point officer who, I find, enjoys the confidence and respect of his brother officers of all grades ; Admiral Porter's fleet was certainly adequate to the task before it, and all seemed to promise well. But in the first place, General Butler seems to have had not quite half the number of men which it was intended that he should have, if it be true, as all accounts say, that he had but 7,000. It is now asserted by some persons who ought to know that what they say will have a certain weight, that General Butler was given this inadequate force in order that he might find himself incompetent to his work, and by withdrawing from it lose something of his great favour with the public, which makes him a very difficult man to manage by those who like to be managers. In the next place, the explosion was an utter failure. The vessel, a propeller steamer, contain- ing more than 430,000 pounds of powder, was towed, with steam up, into shallow water, and then by her own motive power beached within 300 yards of Fort Fisher. A fire of pinewood was then lit upon her lower deck, and the few men who had volunteered for this somewhat perilous undertaking escaped in a small boat to the towing vessel, the Wilderness, which made all speed to join the fleet, which was kept twelve miles in the offing. Everything took place according to the programme, except the destruction and the demoralization. The explosion was of course awful, but the earthen ramparts of Fort Fisher were unharmed, and as to the effect upon the garrison nothing is known. How indeed could its effect in that quarter be known or taken advantage of by those for whose benefit this novel attack was made? The fleet was twelve miles off. The explosion took place at a quarter to two o'clock a.m., and the fleet got under way at daylight, and began the attack, which was to make way for and protect the military assault, at half-past eleven o'clock, about ten hours after this hoped- for demoralization was to have taken place ! Surely, the Confede- rate officers and soldiers have not shown themselves to be made of such poor stuff that in a desperate case their demoralization at a mere explosion should be expected to last as long as that. If the ex- plosion could have been effected in such a manner that the bom- bardment could have been immediately commenced and the assault have followed promptly the plan might have worked, but as it was there was only utter failure. The navy did its work well. Even General Butler cannot deny that. Admiral Porter twice com- pletely silenced Fort Fisher and all the surrounding batteries. But when only half the troops, about 3,000 men, had been landed, Generals -Butler :ind Weitzel came to the conclusion that the assault was impracticable ; and therefore, although some of their skirmishers had entered the outworks of the fort, and even brought away the flag of the outer bastion, and thus had taken more than 200 prisoners, they stopped the embarkation and returned to their ships, with the loss of none killed and fourteen wounded. Cap- tured despatches contained information that a force of 6,000 men was marching to the relief of the fort,—but were those despatches genuine ? And if they were, was the case so hopeless ? We may be wrong, but, as in the Savannah case, we say in our hearts, if Grant had been there, or Sherman, or Sheridan, or Thomas, it had been otherwise. The fleet continues to threaten and even to bom- bard the fort, and it is not improbable that another land expedition may be immediately sent down.

The Spectator itself may have directly or indirectly exposed the absurdity of the announcement in the London Times in its leading article upon our late election,—that Mr. Lincoln's success was due to his "having defied and insulted England, which is the tradi- tionary way of obtaining the Irish vote." But I wish to say that no greater misrepresentation of the truth could have been made. It is not merely, that Mr. Lincoln ha defied and insulted neither the British Government nor the British people, nor in fact any other government or people, although that Lis true, but that the whole Irish vote in a body was cast plump against him. Is there no limit to the presumption of the Times upon the ignorance of its readers? If the Irish emigrants held, as many of you seem to think they do, the balance of political power in this country, Mr. Lincoln would have been utterly and hopelessly defeated. But 'nothing could be further from the true state of the case than such an opinion. The Irish hold no such power, or anything like it. In the City of New York they do, but not even in the State. When will Europe learn that this little island is not the country, and does not even represent the country in any respect?

We are perhaps about to try an experiment in taxation which, I believe, is entirely new, that is, a tax of 1 per cent. on all sales. The proposition is received with favour by the people be- cause, in the first place, the mode proposed is the easiest and pleasantest way of paying taxes, and that most in accordance with our habits hitherto, and in the next because it will tend to diminish the number of middlemen and speculators, but chiefly because of the equitable distribution of taxes when they are Collected in this manner. Each man will pay just according to his expenditure, and no man's expenditure will be diminished by the addition of 1 per cent. to the cost of what he buys. As to what such a tax will produce, the yearly sales in the States not included in the Con- federacy are, as near as can be estimated, eleven thousand millions of dollars, on which 1 per cent. of course is one hundred and ten millions. Not quite unkindred to this fact is the other, that the commerce of the Hudson River, known to those of you who know it at all chiefly for its beautiful scenery, is greater than that between all foreign countries combined and the United States. I can- not give you the figures, but accept my assurance of the fact. I mean that the yearly value of the commodities, mineral, agricul- tural, and manufactured which are brought to this city by the Hudson River, at the mouth of which it stands, is greater than that of all the commodities brought to this country from all other