FEBRUARY 4th_–One of the enemy’s iron-clad gunboats has got past our batteries at Vicksburg. Gem Pemberton says it was struck “three times.” But it is through.
The enemy’s presses reiterate the assertion that Gen. Longstreet is in Tennessee with his corps; and that the detachments from Gen. Lee’s army amount to 75,000 men. This is evidently for the purpose to encourage Hooker’s army to cross the Rappahannock. These presses must know that Gen. Lee’s whole army was less than 75,000 men; that Longstreet is still with him, and that only one small brigade has been sent away to North Carolina. Well, let them come! They will be annihilated. But is it not diabolical in the New York Post, Times, etc. to urge their own people on to certain destruction? If Hooker had 300,000, he could not now come to Richmond!
We have extremely cold weather now; and, probably, the rivers in Virginia will be frozen over to-night.