Latest from the North.
the attack on Charleston abandoned.
Northern dates of the 15th inst., are received.--The attempt to capture Charleston is for the present definitely abandoned.
The army of General Hunter has returned to Hilton Head, and the iron-clads to Port Royal. The Herald says ‘"the attempt to take Charleston is, for the time, abandoned. The iron-clad fleet of Admiral Dupont and the army of General Hunter have been withdrawn to Port Royal. The experiment proved too hazardous. The batteries of the enemy at Sumter, Moultrie, and Cummings's Point, and the obstructions in the channels, presented obstacles too formidable to be overcome by the force brought against them. By the arrival of the Arago, from Charleston bar on the 11th inst., we learn these facts. The fire from the batteries was tremendous, as the condition of the Keokuk shows. She was fairly riddled through and through with highly polished steel shot, weighing a hundred pounds each, furnished to the rebels by England. Our vessels fired in all only one hundred and fifty one shots at the forts, while the latter struck the boats over five hundred and twenty times. The armed transport George Washington was destroyed by the rebels in Coosaw river, near Port Royal, on Thursday morning last, as before reported. She remained behind for special service under Col. Hawley, who was acting as post commandant at Hilton Head while the forces were away. General Saxton, who was in command at Beaufort, sent for the Washington to make a reconnaissance around the Island. In company with the gunboat Hale, she went up the Coosaw river, was attacked by a rebel battery, which sent a shot through her magazine and blew her up. The crew were fired upon while attempting to escape, and several of them killed and wounded."’
In the engagement the new Ironsides received 65 shots, the Keokuk 90, Wechawken 60, Montauk 20, Passaic 58, Nantucket 31, Catakill 51, Patapsco 45, and the Nahant 80. The Herald's correspondent thus writes of the last hours of the Keokuk:
‘ In coming out of the action yesterday, the Keokuk had the advance, and before she had arrived at the buoy I was alongside of her in a small boat. It was nearly dark at the time, but I could see in the dim light that she had been the target of the most powerful guns the rebels could command.--Great holes were visible in her sides, her prow, her after turret, and her smoke stack. Her plates were bent. She was making water rapidly, and it was plainly to be seen that she was used up and disabled. Before the action her sloping sides and her turrets had been "slushed" with tallow, and to avoid contact with this substance I placed my feet in the shot holes and literally ascended to her deck as by a ladder. Until that moment I confess my conception of the terrible earnestness with which the rebels had fought was far behind the reality.--So thickly did she wear her scars that no one had been able to count them. One round shot penetrated her after turret, the sides of which it will be remembered are the frustums of cones, while the turrets of the Monitors are pedicular cylinders. Another shot passed through her port bow, and still another through her starboard quarter. These were all steel projectiles of 100 pounds weight, and polished to the smoothness of a knife blade. The terrible effect of these projectiles may be imagined when it is stated that one of them striking the after turret at right angles when the vessel was almost under the walls of the fort buried itself in the iron mail and there remains. These shot it will be remembered were furnished to the rebels by neutral Englishmen, and have certainly proved a striking illustration of the fairness and uprightness which characterize the concoct of John Bull towards us in this war.
’ The Herald has the following comment upon the disaster at Charleston, and its effect upon the coming campaign:
‘ The repulse of Admiral Dupont's iron clad fleet at Charleston indefinitely postpones, we suspect, the resumption of active operations against that rebel stronghold. The door will doubtless be kept more closely garden than heretofore against English blockade runners, with their aid and comfort to the enemy," but as the sickly summer season will in a few weeks revisit the South Carolina seacoast, we conclude that nothing but some over whelming Union successes in other quarters will secure the capture of Charleston before the return of the of autumn, indeed, it is broadly hinted in a leading Abolition journal that the idea of a crushing spring campaign has been abandoned at Washington, and that probably our military operations, until the end of the summer, will be limited to pegging a little there, as the occasion may invite or demand.
The failure at Charleston, together with the failure at Vicksburg to any decisive advantage over the enemy, has at all events put an end to the late confident expectations of the country in regard to the vigorous and decisive prosecution of the war.
’ The Herald, speaking of the attack on Suffolk by the Confederates, says:
‘ The object of this attack is to prevent reinforcements from reaching Gen. Foster in his perilous position at Washington, S. C, and to cut off our forces at Suffolk from communication with Norfolk, which latter place no doubt the rebels intend to invest. Intelligence reached Fortress Monroe on the 13th that the enemy had retreated four miles from Suffolk, and that the gunboats sent to Foster's assistance had succeeded in running the rebel batteries.
Gold opened in New York on the 14th at 158, fell to 15½, railed to 155½, and closed at 154¾ bid.
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