Our Wilmington Correspondence.
Wilmington, North Carolina, December 19, 1864.
There has been considerable excitement here for the last two or three days, and especially yesterday, when the local forces were called out and other measures taken to resist the reported landing of the enemy.
Without giving the authority upon which the statement is made, I may remark that intelligence has been received to the effect that a land force, estimated at twenty thousand men, together with the fleet of monitors and gunboats which has for some time been assembling at Fortress Monroe, sailed on Friday, the 16th, for the south, with the intention of making a descent on the coast in the vicinity of Newbern and Wilmington.
Other facts and circumstances were reported in connection with the expedition, which I need not stop to relate.
If Wilmington had been the destination of the enemy, the fleet should have arrived off the mouth of the Cape Fear on Saturday; any how, on Sunday; but up to the hour at which I write--5 P. M. Monday--nothing has been seen or heard of it, either here or at Newbern.--The weather, which is rough outside, may have made it necessary for the monitors to put into port at some point further north, or the fleet may have kept on to Charleston or Port Royal — provided, always, that it has sailed at all. Beast Butler is reported to be in command of the expeditionary forces, and this leads to the belief that their destination is the South Carolina coast.
At this inclement and stormy period of the year, it would be a dangerous operation for an enemy to attempt to land an army by such boats upon the open beach, and it would be quite as difficult to subsist it there after it had landed.
It is out of the question to land artillery and cavalry.
It would appear necessary, therefore, for the enemy first to reduce the forts at the mouth of the Cape Fear by a sea attack, which is considered here to be impossible, owing to the strength of the forts and shore batteries and the insufficient depth of the water.
A few days will decide whether the expedition has sailed at all; and if so, to what point and in what force.
Trustworthy accounts from Georgia are sufficiently discouraging.
Some woeful blunders have been committed there, and some in Richmond.
Sherman's movement will be finally and fully successful.
A base will be secured on the sea, from which our lines of communication will be assailed, and an effort made to isolate Lee's army in Virginia and to cut off its supplies.
The grand object he has in view, however, is not the destruction of railway lines and the reduction of Savannah and Charleston; these are only means to help him to an end; and that end — which is the real object of his advance to the sea and of Grant's present comprehensive combinations — is the complete isolation of Lee's army and the enforced evacuation of Virginia by the Confederates.
The enemy, once in possession of Savannah, Charleston and Wilmington, would be in a position to successfully assail our communication at the railway angles or elbows at Goldsboro', Branchville and Millen.
These, if not strategic, are, at all events, most important points.
Indeed, if any place in the Confederacy may be called a vital point, it is Branchville; and, if Sherman's success extend to Charleston, it will require an army to defend it.
It may well be doubted, therefore, whether the President and General Lee, looking alone to the security of Richmond and Virginia — which it is feared engrosses too much the attention of both — did not lose an opportunity to place the safety of Virginia beyond future danger, and at the same time to strike the foe a fatal blow, when they declined to send 10,000 seasoned troops to Georgia.
With this force, added to the forces already there, the destruction of Sherman would have been assured.
There has not been the least danger of an attack upon Richmond and Petersburg since the last assault, on the 27th of December. All of Grant's recent manœuvres were undertaken for the purpose, doubtless, of producing a different impression, and to prevent reinforcements being sent to Georgia.
This is not more evident now than it was two weeks ago; and the wonder is that everybody did not see it. 