We have already given extracts from
United States journals on both sides of the very pretty quarrel that the failure at
Wilmington has given rise to between the respective friends of these officers.
Whenever the
Yankees sustain a reverse, they must find a scapegoat, and the question now is whether
Butler or
Porter shall be that animal.
The friends of
Porter seem to be excessively irritated.
After expending unavailingly such an enormous amount of cold iron, it is somewhat provoking to produce such lame and impotent conclusions.
We suggest that the real party to blame is
General Whiting and
Colonel Lamb, who constructed a defence that proved impregnable to the most powerful fleet that ever assailed a fortress.
We have seen no evidence that
Admiral Porter failed in performing his duty, or
General Butler in performing his. The Confederates assume all the responsibility.
A correspondent of a New York journal, writing apparently from the fleet, says that a naval officer, "whose name is familiar to the
United States people as a household word," (meaning thereby, we suspect,
Admiral Porter,) pronounces
General Butler either "a black-hearted traitor or an arrant coward, " and that like opinions prevail in the fleet.
If
Admiral Porter and his officers give vent to their disappointment in such terms, it shows how galling was the repulse which they met at
Fort Fisher.
Let the
Admiral keep cool.
He has the reputation of a naval Lion, and it is somewhat annoying to be laid low by a Lamb; but the
Lion should be magnanimous, and not console himself by cuffing his friends in this savage way for a flogging which they were trying to prevent.
The idea of
Butler being "a black-hearted traitor" to the
United States could scarcely have been uttered by any man not half-frenzied by a smashing defeat.
We predict that
Porter will come out as badly worsted from the personal conflict as from the assault on
Fort Fisher.
He is too extravagant with his bombshells.
