WILMINGTON.
[FROM OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT.]
New York, Januarg 21, 1865. I HOPE that none of the readers of the Spectator have much at stake in blockade-running, for if they have they must have found the news taken out by the steamer of Wednesday last anything but agreeable. The capture of Fort Fisher, which took place on the 15th (Sunday), is admitted by the rebels themselves to close the port of Wilmington effectually, although, according to their usual manner of announcing such reverses, they say, now that the port is closed, that they are " not sure that it is not a blessing in disguise." It is indeed a blessing in disguise, though not exactly in the sense in which they use the phrase, and they may rest assured that they will continue in the receipt of such blessings from.the same hands until they finally have bestowed upon them the supremest earthly blessings—peace, good government, universal freedom, and diffused prosperity.
The New York Times, announcing on Tuesday last the depar- ture of the second expedition, remarked," The rebels on Friday last were probably as much startled by the fact as the people of this city were astonished by the news of another naval and military attack on Wilmington." But the readers of the Spectator containing my letter of a fortnight ago were fully informed upon this subject. There was, however, no very great disparity between the force which abandoned the attempt to take the fort and that which succeeded in it. Only one brigade was added to the very same body of troops that went out in the first expedition under General Butler. And as if to show there was no "regular-army" prejudice among the influences which caused that officer's removal, the second expedition was placed under the command of General Terry, who, like his predecessor, came from civil life. He, however, is one of a very few of our officers who without a West-Point educa- tion have proved capable of doing more in the field than to lead a regiment with spirit. General Polter, of this city, is another ; and besides there are not more than would make up half- a-dozen. General Terry receives commendations on all sides, from none more heartily than from officers of the regular service, for the ability, no less than for the promptness, deci- sion, and spirit shown by him in the capture of this important system of fortifications,—for it was much more than a fort. The detailed reports of the affair which have been made public within the last day or two are unusually clear, connected, and thorough.
The troops arrived at the rendezvous punctually, and after a bombardment of the works for two days and a half, under cover of which they were landed, the assault was made on Sunday after- noon, December 15, at a little after three o'clock. Fort Fisher is on a stretch of sandy beach, which is made a peninsula by one of those numberless inlets and creeks which make our southern shores a mere lace-work of land and water. The troops were landed on the upper side of the fort, that is, on the side nearest Wilmington. Here a line 4,000 strong was thrown directly across the peninsula, which, under cover of the field-works originally contemplated as an essential part of the plan by General Grant, was able to hold the rebel General Hoke's forces, said to be 5,000 strong, on the Wilmington side completely in check when he moved down to relieve the fort by a rear attack. The bombard- ment had seriously injured the sea front of the fort, and so covered some of the guns with earth that they would not work, but still, held as it was by an able officer and 2,300 determined men, its strength offensive and defensive was very great. The assault was made upon the sea and the laud face simultaneously. That upon the sea side was made by a naval detachment consisting of 1,400 sailors and marines, the sailors being armed with cutlasses and re- volvers. They charged across the level beach at the double quick, but were exposed to such a terrible fire of grape, canister, and musketry that they reached the abatis much reduced and terribly shaken. Some parties retreated, suffering no less in their retreat than in their advance. Others pressed on, and even mounted the parapet, from which, however, they were swept away. Admiral Porter expresses a decided opinion that the repulse was owing to the failure of the marines to keep up a steady musketry fire, by which he feels sure they could have cleared the parapet of the enemy. But as it was, the repulse on this side proved complete and final. On the land side the task to be accomplished was much more difficult. The front here had hardly been touched by the naval fire. The approach was over more than half a mile of sand without shelter of any kind. There was a thick abatis, wet ditch, and a parapet fifteen feet high. The assault here was made by 3,000 men of the Tenth Corps, under Colonel Curtis. In less than half an hour they had effected a lodgment upon the parapet, from which they could not be driven. But the fort was so well constructed and so desperately defended that they could not advance without reinforcements. Within the walls there were traverses, seven in number, from which grape, canister, and musketry fire was poured upon the assailants. The naval detachment was withdrawn from the sea front and placed in the line which fronted Hoke, from which a brigade was taken to strengthen the assaulting column. By this step of course, the sea front being no longer threatened, the gar- rison were enabled to turn their attention entirely to the assault from the land side, and during the quasi lull several hundred—said to be between 600 and 700—rebel troops from the surrounding works were poured into the main fort. Then began a close and bloody struggle within the works for their possession. The garrison fought bravely and well, but although the assaulting column was now but about one quarter the superior in numbers, they slowly and steadily advanced upon the former, who stubbornly contested every foot of ground from their traverses. The naval fire could be and was kept up upon the most remote of these, but not of course upon those where the actual conflict was going on . From traverse to traverse, however, the assailants forced their way for seven long hours, during which the fleet saw no friendly flag upon the parapet, and heard only the roar, the rattle, the clamour, the rebel yell, and the Union cheer of the invisible conflict. At last, however, there burst out one great cheer with no answering yell, a Union flag and flaming torches appeared
upon the parapet, and at a little before ten o'clock at night the fort was won. The garrison, driven out seaward, were of course followed, and of course were all obliged to surrender uncondition- ally; and thus ends the history of a fortification upon which Beau- regard had expended all his skill, and which he, and the Richmond papers on his authority, had declared only a few days before could not be taken. He perhaps was not unreasonably proud of his work, for Admiral Porter, a sober-minded and experienced man, says in his last report that he was in the Malakoff a few days after its surrender to the Allied forces, and that that world-renowned work "won't compare either in size or strength with Fort Fisher." For the possession of this place we paid 900 men killed and wounded, including in the latter the two colonels who led the assault ; and although this number seems small in comparison either with the importance of the affair or the losses in some of our battles, it reaches the very high proportion of nearly one-third of the success- ful assaulting column. During the movements preliminary to the assault two gunboats came down the river from Wilmington, and shelled the woods about a mile from the laud face of the fort, in which the troops were held during the reconnaissance. They were driven off and went up the river. If they were, as they are confidently asserted to have been, the Tallahassee and the Chicamanga, the fate of those ocean pests is sealed, and our merchants and ship- owners will have great additional reason for rejoicing at the suc- cessful issue of this expedition, which in that case has at the same time deprived the insurgents of their last two privateers and of the means of paying for others. Only Galveston in Texas now remains open to blockade-runners. Once in a while one gets in there, but the place is so remote, and transportation from it is so difficult and expensive, that it is of very little importance.
It is worth while for the readers of the Spectator to notice that the General who defended Fort Fisher, was like him who captured it, a Yankee, a Yankee pure and simple, born and bred in Con- necticut, of old New-England stock. His career illustrates better than all assertion or theorizing can the cause of this rebel- lion, and the motive which led to the assertion of the principle upon which its authors base and its apologists defend it. This Yankee went southward and " married some niggers," as the phrase is, and lo ! straightway he becomes a vehement assertor of the doc- trine of State sovereignty. For it is a remarkable fact that just in proportion to the interest, direct or indirect, political or com- mercial, which men here had in the perpetuation and extension of slavery was the strength of their adhesion to the doctrine of State sovereignty, with its corollary, the right of secession.
In Edward Everett, who died on Sunday last, we have lost one of our most eminent citizens, a man who by his varied accomplish- ments, his sound judgment, and his well-balanced character reached and for many years has maintained without dispute a dis- tinction unequalled here by any other since the death of Mr. Webster. It is very rarely that one man has borne all the honours which have fallen to Mr. Everett's share. He was ten years a member of Congress, four times Governor of Massachusetts, Ministei of the United States at the British capital, Secretary of State during Mr. Fillmore's administration, an President of Harvard University, the duties of which office, however, were so severe that after discharging them with eminent ability for three years he was obliged to resign his chair. He had in earlier life been Professor of Greek in the same institution, and it is worthy of note that after his election to this post, and before he assumed its duties, he spent two years and more in Germany, in the study of Greek literature. The University thought him already fitted for the place. He was not satisfied with his acquirements. In this disposition toward thoroughness and self-distrust he was not singular. Not a few of our scholars have pursued a course somewhat similar when about to assume similar responsibilities. Mr. Everett, you will see, was a marked instance in refutation of an opinion which has been expressed on your side of the water, that our State Governments sap the vitality of the National Government by absorbing the best talent and the highest character in the country, that any man is good enough to send to Washington, but only the best men will do for the government of the State. No opinion could be more erroneous. The State Legislatures are invariably composed of men very much inferior in ability and in character, as well as younger. In fact they are schools of discipline and probation, from which men are taken and sent to Congress. The advancement is so common as to become almost a rule :—member of Lower House in the State, member of Upper House in the State, member of Congress, or perhaps governor, and then senator of the United States. Mr. Seward rose thus to be Governor of New York before he was senator. Senator Morgan from New York served two years as Governor of the State. Hamilton Fish, his predecessor, left
the Governor's chair for the senate chamber. Mr. Raymond, the editor of the New York Times, was member and then Speaker of the Lower House of our State Legislature, then Lieutenant- Governor of the State and Speaker of• the Upper House, and now he has just been elected member of the Lower House of Congress. And do you exclaim, " What ! does all this filtering, then, only obtain what we see at Washington ?" True, only that. But in passing judgment upon this confession, condemn not, as you always do, our people and our civilization, our social and intellectual culture and our moral tone, but a faulty and apparently trivial article in our Con- stitution which provides that members of the House of Represen- tatives shall be residents of the districts from which they are sent. Cultivated districts send cultivated men, but the districts in which the electors are composed of pioneers, or of Irish peasants, or of Red River slave drivers of the Legree stamp, send such men as live among them and take the trouble to win popularity. And in a country like this, where culture is diffused rather than concentrated, while this constitutional provision is in force how few men of the highest character and ability can with reason be looked for in, the Lower House of Congress ! The senate, especially since the ab- sence of the members from the slaveholding States, is a body of much higher character and dignity. The reason is that the senators representing, not the people of the United States, but in- dividual States, are not elected from districts by the people, but appointed by the Legislatures of the States, upon whom there is
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