To-day we have official intelligence confirming the brilliant achievement at Galveston; and it was Magruder’s work. He has men under him fitted for desperate enterprises; and he has always had a penchant for desperate work. So we shall expect to hear of more gallant exploits in that section. He took 600 prisoners.
We have news also from Vicksburg, and the city was not taken; on the contrary, the enemy had sailed away. I trust this is reliable; but the Northern papers persist in saying that Vicksburg has fallen, and that the event took place on the 3d inst.
Six hundred women and children—refugees—arrived at Petersburg yesterday from the North. They permit them to come now, when famine and pestilence are likely to be added to the other horrors of war! We are doomed to suffer this winter!
January 11th.—The message of Gov. Seymour, of New York, if I am not mistaken in its import and purposes, will have a distracting effect on the subjugation programme of the government at Washington. I shall look for riots, and perhaps rebellions and civil wars in the North.
Mr. Stanley, ycleped Governor of North Carolina, has written a letter (dated 31st December) to Gen. French, complaining that our soldiery have been guilty of taking slaves from their humane and loyal masters in Washington County, against their will; and demanding a restoration of them to their kind and beneficent owners, to whom they are anxious to return. Gen. French replies that he will do so very cheerfully, provided the United States authorities will return the slaves they have taken from masters loyal to the Confederate States. These may amount to 100,000. And he might have added that on the next day all—4,000,000—were to be emancipated, so far as the authority of the United States could accomplish it.
The enemy’s gun-boats (two) came up the York River last week, and destroyed an oyster boat. Beyond the deprivation of oysters, pigs, and poultry, we care little for these incursions.
January 12th.—The news of the successful defense of Vicksburg is confirmed by an official dispatch, to the effect that the enemy had departed up the Mississippi River. By the late Northern papers, we find they confess to a loss of 4000 men in the several attacks upon the town! Our estimate of their loss did not exceed that many hundred. They lost two generals, Morgan and another. We did not lose a hundred men, according to our accounts. The Herald (N. Y.) calls it “another Fredericksburg affair.”
The estimate of the enemy’s loss, at Murfreesborough, from 12,000 to 20,000, in killed, wounded, and prisoners, and ours at from four to nine thousand. Bragg says he will fight again near the same place, and his men are in high spirits.
Our men fight to kill now, since the emancipation doom has been pronounced. But we have had a hard rain and nightly frosts, which will put an end to campaigning during the remainder of the winter. The fighting will be on the water, or near it.
The legislature is in session, and resolutions inimical to the passport system have already been introduced. But where are State Rights now?