The Daily Dispatch: August 16, 1864., [Electronic resource]

Baltimore papers of the 13th were received last night. They furnish the following items of news:

Heavy firing was heard on Thursday last in the direction of Winchester. It is questionable whether Early will wait and give battle to the superior forces now arrayed against him. Much more probable is the announcement, made yesterday, that he was retiring up the Valley, followed by a portion of Sheridan's cavalry, and that there had been skirmishes with the rear guard.

A telegram from New York, dated last evening, the 12th, reports the capture and destruction of seven vessels, some sixty miles southeast of Sandy Hook, by the new Confederate steamer Tallahassee.

Passengers by the Evening Star, which reached New York from New Orleans yesterday, report that the Confederates were in strong force outside of Algiers, within six or seven miles of New Orleans, and that they were fortifying their position with the intention of making it a base of operations.

In Kentucky the guerrillas continue to be particularly active. The town of Brandenburg was entered by about twenty guerrillas yesterday, and at last advices fighting was going on there. On Wednesday last a force of Confederates dashed into the town of Hickman, burned all the cotton and tobacco that was stored there, and committed other depredations.

Government officials deny the correctness of the reported difficulties in the Cabinet. Mr. Stanton has said that it required much solicitation to induce him to accept his office in the first place, and he will not voluntarily relinquish the place.

The Seventy-second Pennsylvania regiment, (Baxter's Fire Zouaves,) passed through the city to- day en route for home, its term of service having expired. This regiment was originally one thousand five hundred strong, and returns home with but one hundred and eighty muskets.

A petition is circulating in Ohio and other States requesting Lincoln to defer the draft for half a million more men until an attempt has been made by negotiation to secure peace, based on the Constitution and Union.

The Herald of Friday last commences its leading editorial with the remark:

‘ Considering the desperate straits to which the rebellion is now reduced, we think the time has arrived when the Administration, in behalf of peace and re-union, may advantageously open the door to an armistice and a convention of all the States.

’ President Lincoln, therefore, in our opinion, will establish a claim to great sagacity and wisdom as a statesman and a politician, in taking the initiative in behalf of peace by dispatching three commissioners to Richmond with the overtures suggested. If they fail, this turbulent and demoralizing peace faction of the North will be disarmed and silenced; if they succeed in an armistice, we may safely hail it as the end of the war, and of the reign of Jeff. Davis, and the end of the Southern Confederacy.