The war news.
Perfect quiet prevails on the
Richmond and Petersburg lines.
Even the useless cannonade that has been kept up by the enemy at
Petersburg for several weeks was discontinued on Wednesday, and has not been resumed.
Stern winter engages the attention of the hostile armies, and their days are taken up in building huts and hauling fire-wood, and their nights in keeping themselves from freezing.
No newspapers were exchanged on the lines during yesterday.
The reason given by the
Yankee officers at
Fort Harrison is, that the
Yankee newspaper correspondents, who have hitherto furnished the files for exchange, are absent from the army, having gone North to spend the Christmas.
We have received no authentic intelligence from
Wilmington later than the official dispatch, mentioned yesterday, announcing the retreat of the
Porter Butler Armada.
There was a report on yesterday, which we failed to trace to its source, that the
Yankee expedition had been scattered by a fearful storm on the
Carolina coast and many of the vessels lost.
The thing is probable enough, though, as we have said, we have no authority for it beyond a flying rumor.
The inglorious termination of the attempt of
Butler and
Porter to capture
Wilmington has had a most cheering effect upon the spirits of our people — an effect which will be infinitely heightened when all the facts come to be fully known, as they soon will be through the letters of intelligent correspondents who were near the scene of operations Not yet has the crushing defeat administered to the enemy by
General Bragg and the small force under his command been fully appreciated.
Still enough own to produce a decidedly and to affect gold, that public pulse.
During days of this week there was a very decided apprehension in the community that
Wilmington, our last seaport, would succumb to the immense force sent against it, and the immediate effect was, that specie disappeared from the market; but the enemy, having expended their utmost strength on
Fort Fisher, an outpost of
Wilmington, and been disastrously beaten, it again crops out, and was on yesterday offering at forty-eight, with few buyers.
The opinion now is, that
Wilmington cannot be taken.
Its approaches, on account of the dangerous coast in the neighborhood of the mouth of the
Cape Fear river, cannot be subjected to a regular siege blockade; and that they cannot be taken by assault has just been demonstrated.
If the Butler-
Porter expedition failed, it is reasonable to suppose any similar one must fail also in an attack on
Wilmington.
Never again, it is believed, will they find its forts so slimly garrisoned.
