Memphis Daily Appeal

From Virginia.

The Richmond Examiner, of the 2d inst., says:

We learn from Fredericksburg that the enemy
have made a formal demand for, and taken possession of, the railroad depot and the public stores
which were deserted by our troops without being
destroyed. Five gunboats and twenty-two barges
have come up the river and anchored at the
wharf. The barges are said to be common canal
boats. It is thought that the purpose of the enemy
is to construct a bridge over which to pass his
army across the Rappahannock. The tugs are
low, light draught, dirty looking things, bearing
two or three small guns each. They are altogether wooden, and a good battery of field artillery might have sunk the whole concern, barges
and all.

The protection afforded by the enemy to fugitive negroes is said to be playing havoc with
slave property in the neighborhood of Fredericksburg. The slaves are flocking to the Federal
army by hundreds. As many as eighty had
gone off at one time from the river plantations,
and it is said that there is scarcely a slaveholder
in Fredericksburg who has not lost one or more
of his negroes.