[Associated press Dispatches.]
from the North.
Petersburg Dec. 29.
--Northern dates to the 26th are received.
Christmas was a dull day with the Army of the Rappahannock.
The depletion of sutlers' stores rendered the time dreary.
No movements whatever have taken place on either side of the river, nor is there any indication of an immediate renewal of hostilities.
The New York Herald says the campaign in Mississippi in assuming an important shape.
It may not be long before two severe battles will have to be recorded in that region--one at Vicksburg, another at Jackson.
Porter's grand naval expedition is to surpass all others in magnitude.
According to a register just published, the Abolition army embraces over a million men.
A fire, involving the loss of $65,000 occurred in Washington street, New York, Thursday.
The Baltimore American's Suffolk correspondent is satisfied that the army in that vicinity is capable of marching into Richmond, and says the roads leading to the rebel capital are good and less protected than any other route, and the soldiers are all anxious to undertake the job.
Attorney-General Bates regards the admission of West Virginia as unconstitutional.
Lincoln, it is thought, will not sign the bill.
The Herald says the rebels in Western Tennessee and Northern Mississippi appear to have involved all our combinations against them in serious difficulties and drawbacks, and we shall be agreeably disappointed if great victories, instead of disheartening reverses, shall be results of winter campaign in the Southwest as now conducted.
The Herald says Foster's operations in North Carolina amount to nothing practically.
The expedition should never have been attempted, unless it was intended to — hold the railroad junction at Goldsboro' which commands the Atlaantic seaboard line, and constitutes a channel through which Richmond receives supplies from the Southern rebel States.
The only result of the late effort will be to arose the attention of the rebels to the importance of concentrating such force there as will defy further attempts on our part to cut this important Bulk in their lines of communication.--The attempt and failure are of a piece with all the other brilliant efforts of Washington Generalship.
What a pity that so much dash and heroism on the part of both officers and men should have been thrown away on an enterprise which, like she assault on the enemy's line at Fredericksburg, was destined from the first to be fruitless.
The Tribune's Suffolk correspondent, December 23d, says: ‘
Yesterday, politically speaking, was a dull election day in this section.
A few votes were cast in Suffolk, and no returns will be received from Isle of Wight, Windsor, or Smithfield.
The rebels from the other side of Blackwater came over to put a quietus upon Union men who might try to vote. ’
Lieut. Col. B. F. Underwood, of the New York Mounted Rifles, was sent with a detachment to carry the ballot-box out to the rebellious sections named, and had sent the precious ark of freedom as far as Smithfield, and was about visiting other places, when he was set upon by an overwhelming rebel force, and had a hard race for Suffolk. 