The Daily Dispatch: January 5, 1865., [Electronic resource]

We know not whether we are justified in giving credit to the intelligence published by us yesterday, and derived from a neighboring journal, to the effect that General Hood had been attacked when in the act of raising the siege of Nashville, and that, on the 20th of December, he had made up for his ill-fortune by defeating the enemy severely at Columbia. We say we know not whether this report is entitled to entire credit; but the substance of it corresponds so well with what we had previously conceived to be the true state of the case that we cannot avoid attributing to it a certain degree of probability at least. Had General Hood been so badly beaten on the 15th of December as to compel a retreat so rapid and disorderly that it entailed a loss of ten thousand prisoners, in addition to the killed and wounded, it is impossible that he should have been, on the 19th, only twenty-two miles from the field of battle. His army would, by that time, either have been many miles farther off or it would have been entirely dispersed, especially when we take into consideration the Yankee statement that Thomas lost only three thousand men in the battle itself, and that Hood lost double that number, besides eight hundred prisoners; that the immense subsequent captures were a consequence of the total rout sustained by Hood, and that his white force previously to the action was but thirty-five thousand. Still farther it impossible that an army thus badly ruled, and losing thus enormously, should have been able to hold together tenaciously as to be found, at the end of one week from the destructive battle, only forty-one miles from the field, while the army was not nearer than fifteen miles in the rear. From the same Yankee papers we are hearing every day of preparations made to prevent this routed and disorganized army from crossing the Tennessee, thereby assigning to it a which most assuredly it would not possess had it ever suffered as severely as the Yankees pretend it has.--The annihilation of Hood, indeed, seems to resemble that of Early last fall. It is quite consistent with his still continuing to hold his ground and to present and defiant an attitude as ever.

These facts we noticed some days ago, and we ventured to suggest at the time that when the truth came to be known, brought the report of General Hood himself, or from other trustworthy sources, would be found that the panic into which our people had been thrown by the Yankee reports was greatly disproportion to the actual facts of the case.

Corresponding so well as the intelligence in question does with our own preconceived views of the matter, we cannot but place a certain degree of reliance upon it. If, on the 20th of December, there was another battle, in which Hood obtained a signal victory and captured one whole Yankee brigade; and if, about the same time, Forrest captured another entire brigade, with a train of six hundred wagons, we can easily account for what would be altogether unaccountable upon the supposition that the Yankees told the truth — namely: the tardiness of their pursuit. It is absolutely impossible that an army which had routed another army, taken from it eight hundred prisoners on the field of battle and ten thousand more in the pursuit, should, at the end of ten days, find itself still fifteen miles from that routed and disorganized army, having pursued at the rate of five miles a day. But if, in the interval, the pursuing army had itself met with a severe reverse, the whole thing is intelligible enough.

We think it plain enough that our people had allowed themselves to give way to a panic much too easily — that there is no real cause for alarm with regard to the safety of Hood's army, and that there is far less for the despondency, approaching despair, which has come over the minds of many who are not wont to be either despondent or desperate. Our people must come out of this cloud. They must, as before, bend up all their energies to encounter the trials yet before them. They should recollect that they have already encountered a force such as the Yankees will never be able to bring again into the field, and that they have encountered it successfully. If they would resolve to receive, hereafter, Yankee statements — gotten up always for effect — with more grains of allowance than heretofore, it would be quite as well for their own peace of mind, and infinitely better for the public cause.